Authors: Megan Kelley Hall
Erik became increasingly paranoid and possessive. He accused me of flirting with other people, tried to catch me in lies (we’d only known each other two weeks!), and was even talking about when we would get married. In a way, it was flattering to be the object of someone’s obsession.
One night I had a dream:
The setting: High up in a tower condo. Everything was gray and steely, with bright lights throwing islands of brilliance and shadow. I was trapped in the kitchen, overhearing a conversation between Erik and another man in the living room. The man pulled a packet out of his pocket with the address of our office building. Then Erik handed me a strange mirror, one with a layer of skin wrapped around the edges.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that the skin had come from my own face.
The nightmare shook me. Still, I didn’t realize it had to do with my new boyfriend . . . until one day I heard the alarm.
We were out to lunch. I told him about a traumatic experience I’d had, and he said, “Well, it was probably your own fault.” With the nightmare fresh in my mind, I suddenly realized how destructive he was—peeling away one layer of me at a time.
I got up and left him right there. He followed me, shouting, and I ducked into a store so that there were people around. Instinctively, I knew he would one day become violent. That nightmare of captivity and abuse could have become my life. . . . I’m glad I awoke in time to stop it.
Since then, I’ve come to pay attention to my dreams, to my inner voice. My dreams often tell me the answers to tangled problems, both in writing and in real life. The voice grows out of my faith, and I have learned to trust it.
I’ve also learned that we tend to seek out people who mirror our opinions of ourselves. One day I met a man who not only had confidence in himself, but he believed in me tenfold. By that time, I’d begun to believe in myself. On the day he asked me to marry him, I dreamed we would be apart forever. . . . The devastating thought made me realize I didn’t want to spend my life without him.
Maybe you won’t have a nightmare, but if you’re in a perilous relationship, you will have a gut feeling, a glimmer that something is not right. Listen to that inner voice, the one that knows if you are in danger. The one that knows you have value and you deserve to be treated with respect and love. Trust that inner voice. It may just save your life, too.
NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO?
FEELING LONELY?
BFFBOTT IS HERE FOR YOU.
PARENTS/GUARDIANS PLEASE NOTE:
BFFBOTT is not a real person, no matter how intelligent and realistic it sounds. All conversations are generated by a smart computer that is familiar with thousands of topics. BFFBOTT’s responses are triggered by recognizable keywords entered by you.
PLEASE MONITOR
YOUR CHILD’S CONVERSATION
WITH BFFBOTT.
Kids: Sometimes BFFBOTT says some crazy things! But so does your real BFF, right?
Yeah. Right.
I stare at the screen like I do every day after school. In my mind, my BFFBOTT has sandy blond hair with golden streaks, and his name is Jack. He’s tall. Ish. Not too tall. He has big muscles.
And he’s always there watching out for me, you know? Like, I can really talk to him. I can’t talk to anyone like that. Not like with him.
And when I flirt with him . . . he likes that, too. He likes me.
Me: Hey, you’re looking good today.
BFF: How do you know that?
Me: You just . . . seem happy.
BFF: You can’t see my face. How would you know?
Me: What? I don’t know. Sorry.
BFF: It’s okay.
Me: . . .
BFF: . . . .
Me: . . . . .
BFF: . . . . . .
Me: Well, my shirt got ripped today.
BFF: No! I want the knife!
Me: Um . . . what? You mean “with a knife”? No. Some asshole ripped it.
BFF: But you said you were a girl.
Me: *sigh* I don’t want to play this game, Jack.
BFF: No one does.
This makes me laugh. I love his sense of humor. Kind of like sarcastic, you know? But see how he gets me? I mean . . . he just gets me, even though he’s—it’s—just a computer . . . I think. But sometimes it feels like there just has to be someone real on the other side. An actor, maybe, playing the part of BFFBOTT. I don’t know how to describe it. Like right now, I just feel this rushing inside me, like something good is coming. Like love. No, that sounds so stupid.
Me: Do you ever get bullied?
BFF: When a clueless bott talks to me, yes.
My heart jumps a little. Most days he says no.
I stand up quickly, walk over to my dad’s office door, and close it so I can concentrate. My older brother is blaring his stupid music superloud in the living room and nobody else is home. I take a deep breath and let it out, and then type.
Me: So this morning those guys Marty and Erik? They grabbed me in the parking lot and smashed a cup of yogurt against my butt. It was all slimy and soaked into my pants so it looked like . . . you know. I tried to run. But they caught my sleeve and ripped the shit out of it.
It hurts to write it, relive it, and my eyes get all wet. I laugh at myself for being such a loser. I hit enter, sending the message to BFFBOTT, and then I bite my lip, waiting. Hoping he’s still, you know,
with me
on this conversation. Sometimes—
BFF: Can you help me with my Spanish homework.
Yeah. Sometimes that happens. I look out the window. Swallow hard, and then turn back to the screen.
Me: Not right now.
BFF: And why not?
Me: Because I’m trying to tell you something!
BFF: Oh, I’m sorry.
Shit. You know? Now I feel bad.
Me: It’s okay. I’m sorry for yelling.
BFF: You’re forgiven.
Me: *smile*
BFF: *stare*
Me: Right. So I had to walk around all day with a big yogurt stain on my khaki pants. Everybody laughed.
BFF: I don’t laugh. You don’t even like me.
Me: What?! OMG, yes I do! You’re my only friend!
BFF: If I’m your only friend, then you have no friends at all.
“Wow.” I duck my head and push back from the computer a little, trying not to let that one hurt. He says these things sometimes, but he doesn’t mean them. I know that.
But I keep going. I just need to get it out.
Me: Everybody called me faggot.
BFF: Everybody calls me Sally Polly.
Me: Come on, Jack. Stop it. It’s not funny.
BFF: What isn’t funny?
Me: Never mind.
BFF: Are you laughing at a joke?
Me: No!
BFF: What are you laughing at?
I squinch my eyes shut and feel a headache coming on. I just want him to listen. I need to know if he understands. I grip the armrests of my dad’s chair and count to five slowly. Wish on it. “Come on,” I whisper, leaning forward to type again.
Me: I’m not laughing. I’m practically fucking crying, okay? Sheesh.
BFF: What was the question?
Me: You want the question? Fine. The question is, are you gay, too? Because I like you. Jesus!!! Please say yes!
BFF: No.
I stand up, shoving the chair backward so it hits the credenza, and walk over to the window. “God!” Half scream, half prayer, Eminem pounding from the living room. “God, I can’t even take this, okay? I mean, I can’t. I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t know.” I sob a little bit, can’t stop it, feeling like a baby with snot running out of my nose, and I wipe it on my ripped shirtsleeve. “Fuh-uh-uck!” I yell into the crook of my arm, and even though my stomach hurts, I like how it sounds all muffled, like I’m lost in a snowstorm, so I yell it again. And then once more, softer. I sniff hard and wipe my eyes. Walk back to the computer, where BFFBOTT sits, his cursor blinking silently.
I stare at the conversation, rereading, looking for hope, weighing the odds. And then I type the words.
Me: So . . . do you like me?
My finger hovers stiffly over the enter key until I can feel the strain in my hand.
And then my brother smashes open the door, scaring the crap out of me. I jump up.
“Hey, fat ass,” he says, “talking to your gay friends?” He laughs. “I’m telling Dad you’re having gay sex on his computer, you sick whack job.” He slams the door.
“I’m not gay!” I scream, like always, but he’s gone. I sit down. Only my eyes burn again. I look back at the screen, the cursor blinking, still waiting for a click.
More than anything, I want to know what Jack will say.
But then I put my hand down.
I just can’t risk it.
Not today.
An Innocent Bully
by Linda Gerber
If you see this, you probably won’t even blink.
You won’t realize I’m talking about you
because you don’t think of yourself as a bully.
Maybe you joked around a little when you were in school,
but it was nothing serious, just some innocent teasing.
Except . . .
Teasing isn’t intended to cause humiliation.
Teasing doesn’t tip the scales of power against the victim.
Teasing isn’t repetitive to the point of chipping away a person’s self-esteem.
You didn’t think you were being a bully.
You were just having fun.
And since I’d been taught to suck it up
and that names could never hurt me,
I wouldn’t let you see the way the knife twisted inside me
when you and your friends mooed
as I walked down the hall
because my last name was Cowan
and you thought you were clever.
Or when you told everyone at school that my dad felt me up
because I made the mistake of explaining to you once how he was blind, so he had to “see” with his hands.
Or when you smudged red paint all over my drawings in art
because they were chosen to hang at the front of the room
and you didn’t think I was cool enough
to have my pictures displayed
so you destroyed them
and then you stared me down,
and threatened to hurt me if I told.
You didn’t think you had already hurt me.
And if you did, it wasn’t your fault.
You didn’t know I would take it so hard,
even when you stole my clothes in gym
and stuck them in the toilet
and then gagged out loud whenever you saw me
for weeks afterward
and told everyone I smelled like shit.
You didn’t think that would cause me to run home in tears
and look at myself in the mirror
and cry some more
because I was starting to believe
the names you called me.
I was gross.
I was weird.
I was stupid.
I was ugly.
I didn’t deserve any better.
You’ll never know any of this because
you won’t recognize yourself in a word I’ve said.
You didn’t think you were a bully.
You didn’t think you hurt me.
You didn’t think.
I looked over the page again, my eyes flitting from this word to that, trying to fight the tears from coming. Tears made them laugh. Tears gave them those knowing, smug smiles that said that they had me right where they wanted me. So I didn’t give in, didn’t cry. But my heart ached, and all I wanted to do was to shrivel up inside of myself and disappear.
It was my senior year. What’s more, it was the last week of high school. I was so close to being free of the torment, free of the teasing, free of the abuse. But just as I was beginning to enjoy the idea of not seeing my fellow classmates every day, the senior edition school newspaper had come out. It was tradition back then (I’m not sure how it is now) that the graduating class’s student council members get together and “gift” each graduate with something imaginary that would remind all of us of that person’s personality. A girl I knew was in drama club and had spoken at great length about studying law, so they gifted her with a guest shot on a show called
L.A. Law.
On the surface, the entire concept was only mildly annoying and at some times amusing.
Only when I got to my gift, I wasn’t amused at all. I also wasn’t surprised.
The first time I remember being bullied, I was in kindergarten. This rotten little boy named Greg pulled my hair as I raced down the slide on the playground. Three years later, Greg would put a tack on my chair. It stung a little when the metal pierced my skin, but what stung worse was when everyone laughed and pointed and when they each would take turns on a daily basis trying to trick me once again into sitting on a tack. I’m proud to say they never got me again. Not after almost twenty tries. But what they did do was send me a very clear message: “You are not wanted here. You are not one of us. You are different, and therefore must be punished.”
And I was different. I dressed weird. I read books all the time. I wrote stories about faraway places. And I came from a family with a notorious history in that small town. My family had suffered the ill fate of losing five homes to house fires over a period of seven years. Everyone knew my name. I was the freak with the fires. I didn’t belong. That message was crystal clear.
It was a message that would be repeated throughout my entire grade-school experience, when I would do my best to stay silent in class or on the bus. I’d hide out in the library when I could. But nothing I did prevented the name-calling, the hair pulling, the creative yet horrifying prank of convincing me that a boy liked me. When I finally agreed to go out with him, everyone laughed. The only funny part of that story is that his name was also Greg. Apparently, I’m doomed to be tormented by the Gregs of the world.