Megan Hall - Dear Bully

When they’re done, they stand there smirking at us. What are we supposed to say to that? L. looks up and claps. S. asks if they want to take a bow now so Jesus can see them. W. probably says something reasonable. I don’t say anything because I define detestable in a whole different way.

A few weeks later, it’s the first day of basketball practice. I’m excited because I live for basketball and I’ve been waiting for the season to start. In last period social studies, the classroom phone rings and the teacher answers it and tells me to go down to the office.

When I get there, the 1960s crew-cut principal opens his office door and invites me in with a look of stern disappointment. There is a teacher sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, and she gives me a look like she hates me down to my spine.

“Look,” the principal says. “I’ve heard you’re a lesbian and I don’t have any feelings about that one way or the other. But Mrs. X. and I have a problem and I think you know what it is.”

My face goes red and the white noise starts in my ears. I shake my head to indicate that I have no idea what they’re talking about. So they tell me.

One of the Bible readers’ mothers has called and complained that not only does her daughter have to go to school with lesbians but she also heard that Mrs. X. is a lesbian who once dated my sister.

Crew cut says, “This is a serious problem for Mrs. X. and you need to tell us if you started this horrible rumor.”

I swear adults are the dumbest people alive. I get lied about, groped, and read to from the Bible and nobody blinks a stupid little eyelid. But somebody makes up a story about my long-graduated sister in a fit of hysterical homophobia and now it’s my problem. I have no idea what to say. They’re just sitting here looking at me and I am deaf from the pounding explosions in my head. Too many things wrong with this to compute. Too many things. I wish I could disappear. Run away. Start over. My emotion center goes completely cold so I don’t cry—and once I’m safe inside my bomb shelter, I finally speak.

I tell them yes, it’s common knowledge my sister is a lesbian. I tell them I’m not a lesbian, but even if I was, why would I spread a rumor about my own sister? I tell them the only people who pass rumors like this one are cowardly lying jerks. Like the boy. The boy who won’t leave me alone.

I don’t tell them about him, though.

Why would I?

break my heart

by Megan Kelley Hall

Middle school. Watching as the other girls picked on those they felt were different. The ones they thought didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to be me. I was quiet. I didn’t draw attention. I looked but didn’t speak.

I watched, safe and high up from the library windows, as they pushed, they taunted, they mocked one another at recess. Every day they’d pick someone new. It wasn’t going to be me. My heart beating so fast I could feel it trying to explode inside. “You have a big heart,” my mother said to me. “That’s why you feel so much when others are mean.”

High school. My heart found a new purpose. To love, to be open, to have crushes. I guarded mine. Boys were reckless with my friends’ hearts. Girls, the ones who are supposed to be your friends, your defenders against these evil boys—the ones we all secretly loved and wanted to love us back—could cut you down so fast that you didn’t even see it coming. Again, I watched as girls fought over these boys. Fought so that they could be loved back. Tricked one another, rolled their eyes, mocked, belittled, bullied their own friends. All because of their love for the boys—the ones who promised them the world for a night alone by the beach. The girls just wanted to be loved. The boys wanted something else. Jealous girls found a way to use this as ammunition in the high school battlefield. Rumors swirled. She’s a slut . She’s desperate. She’s a lesbian. She had an abortion. He’s using her. She was with two guys last night. That wasn’t going to be me. I was quiet. I watched. I was silent. If I could have disappeared into the walls of the high school, I would have. Every day, someone’s heart would be ripped out and put on display, mocked, tormented, destroyed. I guarded mine. I learned that while boys could break hearts, girls could cut them open.

College. Finally my guard was down. Everyone here wanted to be part of the same group. No cliques. No hierarchy. No wishing you’d get invited to the party, but your heart silently breaks because no one invited you. Every day was a party. We lived together, ate together, became one giant family. All the pettiness, the drama, the meanness of high school put behind us all. I started to open up and let people in. I knew what had transpired before: the cruelty, the lies, the backstabbing among friends. But we were older now. Eighteen . . . nineteen . . . pretty much grown up. People stop bullying when they are that old, right?

Best friend. Roommate. Each day I’d tell her my crush. Each day she’d end up in his room. “You didn’t really like him that much, did you?” I did, and each time my emotions were a little more raw. Not because of that boy, but because a friend could chip away at my trust.

Finally, the one boy we both secretly “loved,” even though we didn’t know what real love was, wanted to kiss me. Not anything serious, not as a girlfriend. Just one night. To kiss and that’s all. That’s all I ever did, no matter what anyone else said. I knew that nothing happened. So did he. We weren’t going to let my friend know. But it felt like a betrayal not to tell her. But I was naive and she was dating someone else. She wouldn’t care, right? She was my friend.

Wrong.

Isolation. People talking about me. I could not control what they said. Lies, rumors, God knows what else. Never wanted to be that girl. The one people whispered about. The one who got people’s attention for all the wrong reasons. Just because I didn’t look like an innocent blond-haired, blue-eyed baby-faced girl didn’t mean that I had done anything wrong.

I yearned for the day that my heart would stop hurting. I cursed the churning, the angst, the pain in my chest that never went away. My world seemed to spin off its axis. Drowning in painful torrents of emotion. How could I make this pain stop? Destructive thoughts. I smoked cigarettes, I drank, I stayed out nights at bars with friends until morning. I would toughen myself up so that I could never be hurt. Never again. I felt alone. Did I want to die? No. Did I want the pain inside of me to stop? Yes.

My former roommate discovered my weak spot. She saw me at my lowest; she knew right where to cut that made it hurt the most. The girl who I was supposed to live with the following year in a house full of other girls—mutual friends—saw me at my moment of weakness and it was all over. Still angry about the boy we both liked. The one we both kissed. This was her ammunition. This was payback.

Rumors spread like wildfire. What I had so carefully avoided all of my teenage and preteen years was finally happening. I was the one being mocked, ignored, whispered about, bullied. Moving into our junior housing the next year, I was told by my roommate that I was not welcome. Can’t we move past this? We were friends. Friends can overcome anything, right? After driving four hours to school with all of my belongings, I entered the house to see that she had taken my room. The big one. The one we had all drawn straws for. I could have the shoe box room—if I wanted to stay, that is. That was what she thought I deserved. The other girls didn’t want to get involved, they said. But they were involved. Just not on my side. They didn’t even know my side.

I moved into the big room—the one that I got fair and square. She moved into the small one. No one came into my room and piled on my bed like they did in hers. I didn’t know what she told them. That I was crazy? Maybe. That I was a slut? Perhaps. All of them lies? Definitely. Night after night, I heard them whispering in one another’s rooms. Laughing at jokes I was not included in, maybe at my expense. I’d come home to big dinners planned without me. Parties thrown without my knowledge. A crayon-colored heart on the wall penned by my old roommate with the six other people who lived in our house. Guess she forgot to include the seventh girl. Me.