Not Alone (a story about being bullied in school)

WARNING: some of the narratives here, especially for those who experienced this with me, may be too telling. If you happen to be here, or feel you are being described in this entry, before you react below on my UNMODERATED comments section, please be reminded that this blog is MY BLOG and therefore it is MY VIEWS and MY RECOLLECTION of ACTUAL EVENTS that took place in MY LIFE (not yours!). So if you feel that you were wrongfully described or that you should sue me for libel, then by all means, go waste your money. There are no names here other than mine and my best friend’s. And I did not name the bullies one by one. You are all collectively evil anyway.

*Back to regular programming*

Let me tell you a story, this won’t be a good one. It is a story full of pain. It is a story full of dark days, of days when I didn’t want to go on, of days when I felt like hiding under my bed, and of days when I wished I could just disappear. 

Long time ago, I went to a nice, tiny school with few classmates and even fewer teachers. The community there was tightly knit, and the people there were so kind and nice. Sadly, there was no high school in that small school and after finishing elementary there, I had to go and move on to a bigger school. A school that I once went to, before I went to the smaller, nicer school.

In this bigger school, I had so much fun. I had many friends, and we used to all eat lunch together on wooden benches near the school gym. Little did I know that all of that was not the same anymore. This big school had a new, big problem: it was infested with bullies. Lots of them, in different shapes and sizes. Some were tall, some were average and some were tiny, but all of them had huge egos that could consume you alive and a mean streak that you could see from a mile away. There was also another problem about these bullies: they were the kids in school that were considered cool. They were the ‘jocks’ and the prom kings and queens. In short: you were in danger of forever socially ostracizing yourself should you even dare to go against these tyrants.

Luckily, I made a small handful of friends and we led a fairly quiet life. That was until the bullies started going full force (on my sophomore year). See, I was invisible for most of my high school life and suddenly, I was the center of all jokes/taunts and this was simply because I spoke English majority of the time. I would love to blame my parents for this, they banned me from watching anything tagalog, but I really just did have a difficult time with my native tongue. My Filipino grammar sucked eggs. And that was where it all began. Other things added onto that, other mistakes that I made, simple things like cutting my hair too short, using shiny lip balm, the list goes on. But it wasn’t always the teasing that made it bad, it was the oppression that made it really bad.

Me and my best friend had a little sanctuary then, called the grace park, and every day we would have our packed lunch there. We didn’t have an allowance, we were the children of cost-cutting parents, so we didn’t have the luxury that bullies had (btw, side note: the bullies in school were rich, too). Now, my family always thought I was so skinny in high school because I got my mom’s genes. Nope. I was so skinny because sometimes, bullies got my lunch and dumped it in the trash as a joke. I was so skinny because I hardly ate lunch in peace because I was always looking around to see if any bully was within the perimeter of my sanctuary.

Now you might think I should have stood up for myself. Believe me, I did try. But here is another thing about bullies: they know the rules. They’ve been suspended enough times to know that they can hit you as long as you are outside school property. I’ve seen a few brave souls stand up to them, and all they got was trouble and torment. The bullies would just wait for dismissal time, and once you are on your way out, they wait outside like a gang of vultures and then they do their dirty work. For some, it was getting pushed across the parking lot, for others it was getting drenched in juice, vinegar, fishball sauce or anything else the bullies got in their hands. Luckily, in the few instances that I stood up for myself, I was going to be fetched from school by my dad. So all I had to do was wait by the gate until my dad comes up, and rush into the car, like a hoodlum on the run.

And you know what the worst part of this was? The only person whom I could confide all this, who understood anything I ever said was my best friend, Alyssa, who had to go through the same shit, day in, day out. I’m sure by now you are thinking: we should have told somebody. Trust me, we did. We told our guidance counselor, we told people in church, we told relatives, we told our parents. None of them offered any long term solution. At best, they gave advice. Adult advice. How is that going to help? Looking back, it is really silly that adults think adult advice works on fucking teenagers. HELLO?! They are not mature! The bullies being dealt with, these kids, they are not mature! Aside from that, I don’t think my parents were able to relate to the situation at all. They were popular and loved in their high school. Not scorned and bullied. Then there was the fact that our parents were all too busy attending to other matters like finances and mortgage.

Rage left behind in that last paragraph, Alyssa and I learned to cope with this bullying, we hung out at the library, had our own little spot near the school steps, and ultimately created our own little bubble, talking about our dreams. It took a while to get to that bright spot, we had our share of wrist slashing, wanting to commit suicide and in my case, trying to overdose on medicine to kill myself. But we found a way, and we held on to each other.  Alyssa and I have been best of friends since year 2000. It was a rocky friendship at first, and I was even friends and an ‘ally’ of one of the cliques that bullied her in our first two quarters together. I am thankful that she forgave me and we became best friends since then. We went to the same college, and bloomed.

Every time I look back at our years of friendship, I remember a moment, very vividly in my mind with her in it. It was our high school graduation and the ceremony had come to a close. And in a very precious moment, we looked at each other, we were surrounded by crying bullies and right then and there, we had no tears but rather a twinkle in each other’s eye. It was over. We were free.

So to all the teenagers out there, if you are being bullied, if you are being made to feel less of yourself, if people in school are treating you badly, let me tell you this one thing: it will be over one day, trust me. I was exactly where you are right now, 13 years ago. But that did not stop me from being who I am today. If you feel you don’t belong where you are right now, look elsewhere. There are other places that will welcome you and make you feel safe. If you can’t join the bully infested glee club in school, go with the choir at church or hang out with musicians in your area. Get in your parents’ face about bullying. Tell them you need more than just advice. Ask them to bring it up during PTAs so that the bully’s parents will find out that their kid is tormenting others and that they all (along with the teachers and school administration) need to find a way to solve this ugly epidemic and make bullying the most uncool thing to do. You can email me too (kamille.tamano@gmail.com) and drop me a line, I would love to be a friend!

And if all that fails, hang in there and don’t lose hope. I am a living testament that bullying will not be the end of you. I have a job I love, a great husband and an awesome little boy, too! And as for Alyssa, she’s even better! She finished college with academic awards, made her first million at the young age of 22 AND She and her husband (who was her boyfriend for seven years btw!) are expecting a son this July. Good things will happen. Always have hope.