Do You Still Remember Your Bully’s Birthday?

There’s something my readers need to know for the purpose of this post: I’m a bit odd. Not the quirky “Ooh, look at my collection of cool rocks or skulls/I’m into Tarot and the moon” and shit, more like “I have a collection of broken glass that I used to break with my own hands in school and now my palms are as thick as leather” and “I created a language to go with the world in my head and I use this language and symbols around the flat and pretend that people don’t look at these symbols and writing and quickly glance at me to make sure I’m not trying to hex them” odd. There are a lot of other examples, but if I gave all of these examples, this post could turn into a short novel.

And (why am I starting my sentences with ‘and’? My English teachers would kill me!), this made my school life a living hell. From when I started grade school to when I left high school, I was the weird one. In grade and elementary school, the other children didn’t really care because none of us were proper individuals yet (are we ever truly an individual?), and we just wanted to play. Then high school came, and the trials of teenagehood and trying to “fit in” became the most important thing the majority of us could think about.

The thing is, I didn’t fit in anywhere. I wasn’t the “it girl”. I wasn’t the nerdy type. I wasn’t the jock, I wasn’t the “one who got away”. I was just the weird one who saved the drowning bugs from the water fountain and asked questions my other classmates were either too embarrassed or afraid to ask. I was the one who spent my lunches at the end of the field, alone, because I didn’t have any friends. I was the one who spent some lunches sleeping on the floor in English class during breaks and lunch because the floor was more comfortable than the stares on the field.

In grade 10 (or sophomore year for the Americans), a new girl started at the school. She had come from outside the country, and she was almost exactly like me, except more confident. She was also the outcast of her previous school. She was the ‘troublemaker’, the smoker (of all things), and she latched onto me faster than a barnacle on a boat. I didn’t complain; her friendship after years of people actively avoiding me was refreshing, but the children who bullied me didn’t disappear. They just faded to the background while I was focused on the new girl who was as odd as I was.

Until I realized she was only as odd as she wanted to be. She could have been the most popular girl in school if she didn’t avoid the status quo like snails avoid salt, but she chose not to because it suited her agenda. I didn’t hold this against her. It was her way of surviving in the same world I needed to survive, the only difference was that she wasn’t treated like a leper for the first few years of high school.

Back to the bullies. There were so many of them. Children. Teachers. And even some parents looked at me with scorn (after hearing about what a bad student I was by their darling children, no doubt). Not all of the bullies were up front about it, though. There were the obvious ones. Those who called me names like ‘freak’. And ‘weirdo’. And ‘loser’, either to my face or on my uniform when they wrote those words on my blazer with hole reinforcements (the little plastic things you put on page holes to protect them in files).

I don’t remember the teacher’s birthdays, not even those I liked; I was too busy surviving the daily onslaught of new nicknames and ways to make me cry. But the students who bullied me? I still remember all of their names. First and last. I remember their birthdays. I remember the cars their parents drove. I remember the fear I had when they were down the hall. Not doing anything nefarious, just standing there. As if to say: Speak to me, I dare you. Loser.

The new girl became my friend, and that was great. We kept in touch a few years after we left school. She drove me to my now husband’s house late at night because I needed to see him. To feel how he protected me. Then I found out she slept with my no# 1 bully—he was also the guy I had the biggest crush on in the beginning—as a friends–with–benefits situation after she left the country. I might remember all of my bullies’ birthdays because it was a necessity when I was in school: How DARE you forget my birthday, loser? No one told me that out of all of them, I remember hers the most. The worst bully I had, without realizing she was my ultimate bully at the time. The betrayal was unlike anything I had experienced. And I still remember her birthday. 18 years later.