A WEEK IN THE LIFE A PSYCHO-SLUT: Part 2 - TGIFF

Continued from: My Adventures on Monday-Thursday

As stated last time: If the title didn't warn you that this one's about to get ugly, then you must not know me very well yet.

If you have school shooter trauma, blood & violence trauma, or anything of the like, this one may not be for you.

There were no guns involved in this episode of my life, but I'm about to open the door to a very dark room, and I'm going to look into the eyes of the one who lives there. You can look, too, if you want. It's scary to let you look. But stick with me. I promise we'll head back upstairs after this one. Not to the shallows. I'll just need a little bit of sun and air once we close this book.

Spring 1987

8th Grade

There’s the usual clump of jerks. Smirking. Whispering. Not whispering. Making threats with their eyes instead. The rolling sea of them stands between my locker and my next class. I set my teeth, focus my laser-gaze on the spaces between their bodies, and launch off.

Bobby lunges in at me like he’s gonna knock my books out of my hands. I have them clutched close to my chest, but I still jump back.

Everybody laughs.

“Chickenshit.”

“Buk-buk-buk-buk…”

“Scaredy-cat.”

They jump in and out, lurch and feint with their “boogedy” faces and sounds.

I’m almost through. I’m almost to the stairs. If I can just make it--

Somebody stretches out a foot and hooks it around my ankle. The rough shove on my back propels me out over the yawning nothingness. I have to drop my books so I can scrabble for a handhold. The railing is one long, skinny loop of black iron pipe, curved at the top and bottom of the stairs. Very smooth. Almost oily. Steven and Bobby and Cal and Dan love to slide down it. They go flying off the bottom U where it flattens out and affords them exquisite launch capability.

I just go flying down the stairs.

I claw for the railing. A few of my fingers manage to curl around it. My body slingshots around and I hold on for dear life. My feet remain on the fourth stair while my butt plummets toward certain doom. My hand slips. I manage to scrape a foot across the edge of the step, getting it under me enough to prevent a full-out backwards barrel-roll. I haul myself up, gaining a few inches of ground while scooting my foot down another step.

Cheers abound at my miraculous save--more malicious triumph.

But a clump of silhouettes gathers at the top of the staircase, looming. I know those shapes well enough for roll call. I also know the kind of grins they're wearing. Bobby whacks Shane's arm in preparation. I want to hop onto the railing and whoosh down it, but that would be fleeing and they’ll have to chase, so I put my nose in the air. Rolling my eyes, I march down the stairs as best I can. My ankle can’t support my full weight so I have to lean on the railing.

At the bottom, a gaggle of seventh-graders lingers about their lockers. They snicker and make snide comments--not nearly as nasty and vulgar as those of my classmates, but still cruel. At least nobody kicks my stuff when I hunker down to retrieve my scattered books and papers.

Doesn’t matter. The eighth grade boys have made it down behind me. As I reach for my English homework, somebody gooses my exposed ass. I squawk and whirl around to see who it was, but it could have been any one of those leering, sniggering, hateful assholes.

“What?” Mitch thrusts his chin at me. “We heard you like that.”

Bobby sniffs through his nose. “Oh, we’re not good enough for you ‘cause we’re not from the big city?”

Shane. “You want it. You like it and you know it.”

Cal. “Yeah, we heard all about it.”

“Way more than we wanted to!” Mitch again.

They all make gagging noises and clap each other on the back because they’re such big heroes.

Even that seventh-grade pipsqueak Jared joins in, flinging his hair and moaning through his gnawing rat-teeth. That little jerk used to lie in wait for me in the woods once I started avoiding The Pack by taking the back sneaky route home. He’d sick his dog on me. I hated that dog. I hate him. Vicious little ankle-biters, the both of them. He used to smash my pet fuzzy caterpillars with his fist, and threaten to tear their wings off when they became butterflies.

I want to punt him in the nuts. Slam his face onto the stair railing. Punch every one of them straight in the balls. I want to rip off their dicks and cram them down every one of their gawking, jeering, sneering throats.

I bet their dicks are nasty and spongey, too. Little Trents-in-the-making.

Miraculously, I make it into Mrs. Dietrich's classroom. The blood still pounds in my ears as I slide into my seat. My heart hammers my ribcage. I decide to become overly occupied with opening my book, but I can’t see anything through the blur of tears. I try to hold them back before they can spill.

I am not sad. I am not scared. I am so infuriated that the volcano is causing tremors in my body. The tears are just steam blowing off through the vents made by the earth fractured under the pressure.

• Authority figures won’t make it stop.

• If I try to make it stop, authority figures will punish me like I’m one of the bullies.

• My parents won’t do anything.

• Except to me if I get in trouble at school for trying to “work it out myself.”

• Nope.

• I am not pissing off my dad.

• Not with what happens for just looking at him wrong.

• If I got in real trouble?

• No way.

• Then I lose the one safe place I have left.

• Not an option.

• I can’t move to another town.

• I’ve asked.

• More like begged.

• Nope.

• If I try to fight back and I lose, it’ll happen harder and more often.

• If I still keep fighting, they’ll do something worse.

• I’ve seen it over and over and over.

And it could get so much worse than this. All I have to do is start fighting back.

• Then again, what happens if I win?

• I might do something worse.

• I can’t guarantee I would stop once I started.

• Then I would become the bully.

• Or maybe something else.

I think that's the thing that scares me the most.

The first half of Tyler’s Story is brutal.

Depending on your sensitivities, you might want to look away for this part.

Yeah.

Also NOT an option.

• I only see one choice left.

• Don’t react.

• Wait for them to get bored.

• Turn the other cheek.

• Well, I have two.

• Oh, I guess I have four.

• Someday I will be able to escape this slice of Hell.

• Four years, seven weeks, two hours, sixteen minutes and--

I glance at the clock.

“Is everything all right?” Mrs. Dietrich asks.

“I’m fine,” I mutter, like a good Minnesota-nice girl.

I can tell she doesn’t believe me, but she lets me be, which is exactly what I want right now.

Thank God it's fucking Friday, because I can slam the door on all of this. I can blow the volcano’s top in the afternoon bawl-session before Dad gets home. I can beat the unholy snot out of my mattress and pillow. My mom probably won't even notice, and if she does, she'll pretend that she didn't.

It was her idea anyway. Like the paper bag on the back of my closet door. Put all the nasty things I wanna say in there. Put all the nasty things they say and do and all the things that make me sad and mad. Things that are too big to keep inside my heart. Things that won't stop burning up gears in my mind.

Well, that was back in second grade, and that bag has long since overflowed to fill this whole house. So I inflict upon my mattress what I burn to do to them. My pillow holds all my screams. That way, I can pretend I'm suitable to sit down for a nice family supper.

I just have to make it through the end of this day without bashing anybody’s skull against the concrete, or having my own cracked open at the bottom of the stairs. That's their answer. Not mine. I don't wanna have to use my hands and my mouth as weapons. I shouldn't have to! They were made for something else.

They were made for singing and playing music and cheering my heart out and telling stories on stages.

They were made for other things, too. I'll finally get to see Jake tonight. To feel his arms around me again. To drink in the molten honey of his kisses. I’ll get to be touched softly and passionately. I’ll get to be called “beautiful” by his eyes and “amazing” by his smile. His hands will call me the opposite of the Disgusting Slutty Dog and mine will call him “wondrous.” So will my lips, whether I'm using them for words or not.

After that, for two blessed days, I can pretend I will never have to go back to that place again. If I can keep going like this, if I can just outlast them, someday it'll be true.

“...broken heartstrings bled the blues as we tried to empty ourselves

so we would feel nothing.

Don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone.”

~Shane Koyczan, To This Day Project

You asked how I became a martial artist? You asked why I chose belly dance over every other form out there? Are you beginning to understand why yet?

I think the word he's looking for is actually "Vaporized," not invisible. But that wouldn't work so well for the beautiful song, so we'll just have to use our semantics translation devices, because I've found that having invisible pain is actually far worse than what shows on the outside. Brain damage isn't the only Hidden Injury I live with.

I take a lot of flack for writing about this stuff. As I post these tales, I take more crap about it than I have people cheering me on. They're still at my back and in my ear, screaming the adult renditions of, "Oh, wahhhhhhh! Cry baby!"

But this is the only way to make this kind of injury, this kind of rampant, insidious cultural disease VISIBLE. The hefty movements and fist-raised uprisings that have exploded over the past few years have shown it in glaring clarity: only when the pain of abuse is made visible--and when it's understood compassionately and championed passionately by those who work against it--that's the only way to make it stop.

It's the only way we can start to heal.

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THE STOP BULLYING SITE WITH MANY RESOURCES

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--UP NEXT: HOW I AT LAST BEGAN LEARNING THE ARTS OF SELF-DEFENSE.

--OR if you missed how all this started and want to go back to the beginning of these adventures in bullying, I'd suggest starting HERE.

--If you'd rather read about dance or other prettier stuff, you can find it here:

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