What its like to have kids bully you when you are small

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

A memoir of bullying.

In eighth grade, I stopped crying at night.

I just went to sleep and prayed that God, the devil, anybody would kill those boys. I wanted them gone. I would have given anything for them to be gone.

In ninth grade, the girls started getting involved. The popular, “hot” girls started doing things like asking me out, then laughing in my face before I could answer. They would invite me to come to parties or hang-outs and then laugh some more when they saw that I had hopes that their invitations were sincere. It only took a few of these moments before I believed that any desire, by any girl, to hang out with me would always be a joke. At the end of ninth grade, a “hot” girl approached me in the hallway, and asked me if I wanted to see her breasts. Most teenage boys would be delighted. I just turned and walked away, having been hurt by this girl more times than I could count. She laughed and started yelling down the hall that Dan Pearce was a faggot.

Death. Sweet death. I would have given anything for it to come. To me. To them. It didn’t matter.

On the last day of school that year, some of the bullies on my school bus started pushing me toward the exit and out the doors. I fell backward and landed on my “fat ass”. I remember the laughter that erupted from the school bus windows when I hit the pavement. I remember my peers’ boisterous faces glued to each pane of glass. I remember looking up at the school bus driver as he said, “you guys knock it off and go sit down”. He then looked at me and said, “are you getting on or not?” I shook my head, quickly gathered my things, and ran somewhere. I don’t remember where. Anywhere but there.

I do remember hearing the squeak of the bus doors closing. I do remember the sound of the engine, revving as the bus pulled away. I do remember crying that day.

The school bus driver didn’t help me. In fact, never once did a single person ever help me. Never once did a single kind soul put their arm around me and show me love. Never once did a teacher comfort me when they witnessed it. Never once did a classmate speak up when they heard it. Never once did anybody do anything.

Because that day, the only thing that happened after that was a phone call to my mom to tell her I missed the bus. I’m sure she asked me how my day was. I’m sure I told her “fine”.

And the people who actually did love me, never knew that any of this was going on. Besides that one day in fifth grade when I came home bawling to my mother, I never told my parents. My siblings never knew. My best friend (and only real friend) didn’t even know because when he was around, the bullies left me alone. I wish he could have been around all the time.

Nobody knew that I wanted to die. Nobody knew that I had horrible and constant fantasies of death aimed at others. Nobody knew that I hated every teacher that never did anything. Nobody knew that I hated every classmate who refused to say a kind word to me for fear of becoming targets themselves. Nobody knew any of it.