Bullies

After the Parkland shooting, there has been a lot of talk about bullying and mental illness in schools. I never suffered from a mental illness, but I did suffer from bullying as a kid. 

Let me take you back to the year 1989. I was in kindergarten. I remember the first day of school. I was a little sprocket, holding my red backpack while my mom walked me to the bus stop. I was dressed in one of my best dresses. My mom always sent me to school in a beautiful dress, and I always had a bow or a flower in my curly, dark brown hair. 

The night before, my mom read me the story of the Bernstein Bears and their first day of kindergarten. I was looking forward to meeting my teacher and starting school. I asked my mom to pack me a peanut butter sandwich like in the book. I thought my first day would be just like in the book.

I stepped up on the bus and turned back to look at my mom. She stood there smiling at me and told me to have a great day. She blew me a kiss. As I made my way through the packed bus, I saw that there was a pair of girls with an empty seat behind them. I sat down in the seat and looked out the window. There was my mom, still smiling. I started to feel sad because I was leaving my mom behind for a whole day. My mom saw me start to frown, and she motioned for me to smile. She blew me  more kisses, and I blew her kisses back. She made the sign of the cross and I crossed myself. Then, the bus started to pull off. I was on my way to school. 

I watched my neighborhood turn into a motion picture of flowing scenery, streets melting from one into the other. I wondered what my classmates would be like. I wondered what school would be like. My thoughts were interrupted by a "HEY YOU!" 

I looked up to see both of the girls in the seat in front of me leaning over me. I didn't say anything. 

"Who are you?" I replied with my full name. I started to feel scared. Why were these girls being so aggressive? I had just gotten there. 

"You know you can't sit there, right?" 

"Um, no." I didn't know what to say. I didn't realize that there were rules to the bus. They didn't talk about that in the Bernstein Bears book. 

The girls started to laugh. "You can only sit where we tell you to sit!" 

"Okay." What else was I going to do? I didn't want to make trouble with people I didn't know. I was 4 at the time, about to turn 5. 

The school day itself was magnificent. Kindergarten was a blast, and I loved my teacher. I got into the habit of bringing her a rose from my family's garden while our rose bush was in bloom. Every day started with a hug. It was wonderful. 

The bus ride home, however, was another story. Those two girls were waiting for me, and they made every ride home unbearable. They would laugh at my clothes, at my hair, and any little thing I did. Not long after that first day of school, I started to cry to my mother. 

"What's wrong?" she asked me. You need to understand this about my mother's voice - it's one of the sweetest sounds you will ever hear. She also has an adorable Spanish accent. 

I looked up at my mom and started to cry. I told her about the two girls on the bus. My mom told me to fire back at them. 

"Those girls aren't better than you! Stand up to them! Tell them that their words mean nothing! Be proud of who you are!" 

And I did exactly that. The next day, when they started to laugh at me, I started laughing at them back. They thought I lost my mind and asked me what was so funny. 

"You are!" 

They paused for a moment and looked at me. Then they started laughing at me again. 

"She's crazy! Stupid girl! Stupid girl!" 

I got upset. My mom's trick backfired. My face got hot and I started to fight back the tears. As we pulled up to my bus stop, I looked anxiously for my mom. I went straight to her and I started to cry. I told her that the master plan had failed. 

My mom got angry. "This is enough! Tomorrow, I want you to show me who these girls are!" 

And I did. The next morning, my mom came with me to the bus stop. She got on the bus with me and I pointed out the two girls to her. My mom demanded their names. Wide-eyed, the two girls told my mom their names. 

"I am going to find your parents and tell them about your behavior! You do not treat people this way! Do you understand me? You do not act this way!" 

After that day, the girls left me alone, but I encountered other bullies in school. 

Kindergarten and first grade went smoothly without incident. I had a friend, Danielle. We spent so much time at each other's houses. She was a Jewish little girl and she was one of my first best friends. Around first grade was when I learned that I was Palestinian. We would see the news and we wouldn't understand why people couldn't be friends like us. 

After first grade, Danielle was moved to another class. It was a living hell without her, and by fifth grade she had left the school. Fifth grade started to get better but not by much. 

In second grade, there was a boy that, for some reason, really hated me. I always tried to be nice, but he and his friends used to make fun of me. I thought by being nice, they would stop being cruel. I was starting to get a little chubby, so my weight was a prime topic for ridicule. My hair always used to be pulled back in a half ponytail. 

One day, I was late to school. I went rushing to my classroom, and I saw the boy in the hall. He was heading towards our classroom and was quite a distance ahead of me. I don't know why, but I greeted him. "Hi, Colin!"

He turned around in a rage. I never knew little boys could become so vicious. He started to run towards me. "I've had enough of you!" 

I froze. Enough of me? I just got here.

He grabbed my shoulders and slammed me into the wall. I started to cry. He then grabbed my hair and pulled really hard. I started to shout. "Please help me! Someone please help me!" He took my head and slammed it into the wall a few times. It hurt so much. After what seemed like an eternity, a teacher popped her head into the hallway and saw the two of us. 

She rushed towards us and ordered him to get away from me. Another teacher came, pulled him off me, and ordered him to go to principal's office. They felt the back of my head. It had big knots. After some time icing my head in the nurse's office, I went back to my classroom. Some of the kids that were friends with the boy asked me why I got him into trouble. They told me I should've just kept quiet. The rest of the school year I was an outcast. I remember one day, one of the kids told me that nobody in the school liked me. I snapped at her. "That's not true. I have a lot of friends. You're all just not one of them!"

And it was true. I had friends outside school. I was friends with the kids of family friends, but my best friends outside school were the neighbor kids. To summon each other after homework was finished, we would stand outside in each other's yards and shout each other's names. "HEY KELLY, YOU WANT TO COME OUT AND PLAY?" Eventually, we started to use telephones instead of the intense volume of our voices. 

And when we would come out of the house, it was a celebration. We were anything we wanted to be. I was a warrior princess. I was an ecomancer. I was a Native American princess. I was a sorceress. I could fly. Hide and seek. Dragons. Unicorns. Pegasus. Magical creatures were everywhere. Plants were mystical and had special powers. 

We would set off to explore the neighborhood on our bikes, except our bikes were magic carpets or horses. In the summer, we were mermaids and we'd swim until our skin became so wrinkled that it looked like we had aged sixty years. My favorite memory is running so fast through the unfenced backyards of the neighborhood that it felt like I was unstoppable. Those were some of my happiest memories.  

Third and fourth grades I was still basically an outcast. Bringing Arabic food to lunch didn't help either; they thought it was alien food. Imagine bringing stuffed grape leaves to school where the standard fare was a hotdog. "What is that?" the kids would say. And then I would explain the name in Arabic because I didn't know what the names were in English. This further added to my weirdness. "How do you eat that? That's so weird! You are so weird! Look at what she has! Freak!" 

Danielle was in my class again mid-year in third grade, but it didn't help much. I was always the kid that got picked last. Nobody wanted me at their lunch table, but everyone wanted me to sit next to them for tests because I was always in honor roll. 

I might have been chubby, but I was damn smart, and I knew it and they knew it. Eventually, I started to use my smarts to my advantage. I would bribe kids to be nice to me, but it didn't always work. I remember one time during class, a kid shouted at me that I was a fat pig. I remember how my eyes welled up. Danielle was sitting next to me. 

"Hey, don't listen to him. Do you know what you are?" 

"What?" 

"Unique. You are unique." I still remember her smile in that moment. 

I pondered the word the rest of class. Later that day, I turned it into a bookmark. Danielle left our school after fourth grade. I didn't know what I would do without her. 

Luckily, I made a friend in fifth grade. I was still heavy and I still wanted to be accepted by the kids. I tried to act tough, but it still hurt every time I was picked last or every time someone said something mean. My friend at the time, Michelle, would ward off some of the kids, but it was never enough. The worst was when we were at physical education (PE) doing scooter races. Every kid that raced got loud cheers. When it was my turn, everyone was silent as I clumsily made my way on the scooter. I remember the teached clapping for me, telling me what a good job I did. It didn't help. I felt humiliated. 

I remember one day, at PE, I pissed off one of the boys. He started to advance towards me. Recalling how Colin slammed my head into the wall, I decided to avoid the confrontation and started to run. 

"GET BACK HERE NOW!" he shouted at me. 

"NO!" I yelled back. 

I started to run as fast as I could towards the soccer fields where there were games actively happening. I knew I couldn't run too far into the games, but I couldn't face this boy either and risk getting beat up. I did the only thing I could. I stopped running immediately and I ducked down into a ball. The boy fell over me. I started running back towards the teacher station. I figured if I got near the teacher, he couldn't do anything to me. 

I looked over my shoulder, and there he was, still in hot pursuit. Eventually, I got to the teacher, out of breath. The teacher asked me how I was doing. 

"Oh, me? I'm great. Great." 

The boy stopped chasing me once he saw that I was next to the teacher. He left me alone the rest of that class. 

I remember my main goal for middle school was to avoid being picked on again. I wanted to go to a whole new school, where nobody knew me and I could reinvent myself. I did reinvent myself, but middle school had its own set of misery. High school was mostly fine until 9-11, and I faced some hatred in college and even in law school. As I got older, I would want to kill myself. I've had many dark nights. Instead of committing suicide, I would cry and pray, and I would think of how my mom and dad would react if they found me dead. I couldn't do that to them. I didn't live for myself, but for my family. 

As I look back on my experiences, I realize that I never had the urge to pick up a gun or a knife and hurt the people that were hurting me. Instead, I wanted to get away from them or show them that I was better than they were. I made it my life's mission to outdo all of them... and I think it's safe to say that I did. 

I didn't let them get the best of me or turn me into something ugly, and that's how I won the war. 

photo credit: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-at-controlling-bullying/9920/