I guess I’m in a slight brooding mood tonight. It is likely due to reading and semi editing some stories I like. The stories are written by someone whose first language isn’t English. She did well translating them from German though, but sometimes things don’t flow correctly or simply are hard to make sense of. I left all the British spellings though.
Reading them again, I cannot help but remember my adolescence again. Around that time I read a lot. I got into the Internet long before my peers and found some bits of hope on it. Those bits of hope were from stories. The stories I am reading/editing were some of the stories I read during that hard time in my life. They gave me hope because they showed me I was not alone.
The main characters were usual very troubled, outcasts or the like. They dealt with cruel peers, hard situations and so forth. They found a place to belong in the end though… they always found a happy ending, or the beginning of a better future.
While in the middle of reading/editing the third story so far, I stopped to take a quick shower. At that time I remembered a girl who was a real bitch towards me in middle school. I address her simply as Kennedy. I never knew what her deal was when it came to me, but I know she could b cruel to those who considered her a friend. Maybe it was her nature. It was a sad nature, though… having to hurt and belittle others to make herself feel better. That is my theory anyway.
I remember her accusing me of being homosexual. I remember what caused that accusation. We were in the same PE class one year. Basketball was the activity of the day. Most of the girls hung back despite we were in a line. They were chatting and being annoying as far as I was concerned, so I pushed past them to participate. Someone didn’t like that, said I cut in line. I rolled my eyes and made a comment about not caring about the boys like they did. More or less, I wasn’t boy crazy nor was I afraid to play against them.
Well, later on at the side of the bleachers Kennedy approached me and asked if I was a lesbian. I eyed her unamused and replied flatly, “No, I’m a loner.” Well, being the genius that she is, she replied, “You are a lesbian!” I rolled my eyes and replied, “No, I just don’t like most people.”
I suppose that is what started it all.
I never really minded her. She wasn’t really on my radar. I actually saw her as, “Oh, her… she’s okay.” Boy, was I wrong.
She was friends with two girls I had hung out with all through elementary. One night I was on the computer and one of those girls contacted me on messenger. Pretty soon, I realized it wasn’t one of them, but someone simply using her handle while she was away from the computer.
I guess it was my fault. I should have left the moment it started to get ugly. I wanted to know who it was, though. I wanted to know the true face of my attacker. It was cowardly to cyber-bully me using a friend’s handle. After enduring endless insults she finally told em who she was. It was Kennedy.
I don’t really recall what she said to me that night… Well, I know there were a lot of comments about me being a sick faggot and such… but if logic proves correctly, I’m pretty sure she likely told me to die or that people like me should be dead. I assume this because that night I did consider killing myself. I was thirteen at most.
That consideration wasn’t just because of her attacking me that night, though. No, I suffered from depression since I was twelve, maybe even a year earlier than that. My friends from elementary school were drifting away, peers were becoming superficial and mean, cliques and fads went over my head. Basically, I fit nowhere.
I lived that night, though.
I broke down during first period. We had the same math class then. It might have been the next day or whenever school began again because for all I know she could have attacked me during the week or the weekend. It wasn’t an emotional break down. It was a physical one.
I never knew what they were until that spring or maybe even that summer… maybe it was a year later. I had them plenty when little though. We found out they were panic attacks after I had the worst one I ever experienced in my life.
Well, I had one that morning. I had to leave the classroom. I might have even gone home that day because of its severity.
It was probably one of those girls who told me that Kennedy thought I had to leave the classroom because of what she did to me the night before over chat. To this day that pisses me off. It doesn’t annoy me as much as it did back then, but it is still annoying to know a thirteen year old girl felt smug and proud of herself because she thought she scared someone from being in the same classroom as her. Bullshit.
Like all the boys who made my life hell at that time, her stupid words wouldn’t scare me off and if she did have the nerve to approach me I would have either punched her in the spine or kicked hr hard in the shin. In fact, I think it would have been nice to have done so to her. I never got the chance since she never confronted me face to face, though.
To this day, I also never understood how those two girls who had been my friends in elementary could be friends with her. I do not remember which of them it was, but one of them endured a cruel birthday prank from Kennedy. Despite crying to me about it, she still stayed friends with her. I guess belonging with a clique was more important than coming back to me and actually being friends.
I really should have given up on them back then. I was too loyal and had too strong of morals though. In the very last years I became resentful of them. I’m rather ashamed of that, but that is what I got for clinging onto a promise that meant nothing to them and yet everything to me.
There are plenty of other times. There are plenty of other people. People like Kennedy, people who weren’t as bad as Kennedy, but I have no interest in searching for those times. I had no interest in having memories of her pop up in my brain… They did however and so I write.
I hate how closed minded some people can be. I hate how people can say things so carelessly. I hate how people never stop to think. I hate the fact that I probably am guilty of those things but have never been aware of it.
I doubt it would have ever helped, but sometimes I wonder if they would have done things differently if they had known.

I didn’t like boys (I didn’t like most girls either.)
Would it have helped if I told them that boys would hit me, throw things at me and call me names?
I walked funny.
Would it have helped if I told them one of my legs is shorter than the other, but I never realized it until many years later?
They asked me why I wasn’t pretty like my older sister. Why was I ugly?
Would it have helped if I told them  that even though both my sister and I are of the same ethnicity, but were adopted from different families?
Why was I so weird?
Would it have helped if I told them if I told you that I am bi-polar, have Aspergers and an audio processing disorder but never knew these things until I was finally out of school?

Would they have even listened? I doubt it.
There were many other things going on. Things at home… but I don’t feel like writing about that either.
The world is just full of ignorant, stupid people.

Still, there is that small bit of hope. There are others out there who know the exact same pain. Sometimes it is the same amount you are feeling, sometimes it is less, sometimes it is more. That is what I learned from those stories I read.