Bullying (Personal Testament)/Bareing Of My Soul · 8:43am Mar 1st, 2013
So here I was chilling on a good ole Thursday evening turned Friday morning. I check my FIMFic to see if there's anything new and wouldn't ya know it, there was. In this case it was a blog by Follower entitled Guys, I want to spread awareness. So I open it and read it and watch the video and now here we are. I recommend you take a look as well. Now on to the part wear I bear my very soul.
I was born and raised in Mississippi. I used to live in a suburb/rural area outside of the Capitol near Brandon. My parents had two other children other than myself. I have an elder brother who is 4 years older than I and a sister who is my twin, but is 7 or 17 minutes older than I am. Now usually that would mean that I'm the youngest and that I'd be highly spoiled. However that's wrong. Due to my sister being, well, a she, I essentially became the middle child. During my younger years, my mother didn't work, although she did have a business degree, and as such she had the time to educate my sister and I from Kindergarten to 1st grade. The existence of my life was being educated by my mother at the house, living at the house, with church being a Sunday and Wednesday event. Church was the only other time I interacted with people my own age. Of course even in the small neighborhood I was in, there were kids that we played with, but not often.
I forget what age I was, but mom decided to go back to work and so my sister and I ended up being put into the public school system in 2nd grade. Now I could be off base, but many of you could be thinking, 'Oh noes, this is where stuff goes bottom up'. Actually no. The elementary school that I was placed in was actually a rather new school building. It was a bright cheerful place from what I remember. I loved my teachers and loved going to school. When I had taken the entrance test to get into the elementary school I had scored very highly and while attending I did fantastically. I even turned out a bit like Twilight where I especially loved to visit the library and check out books. I've always loved reading. Even today I read. I could even venture to say that I made a few friends, however I was never part of an "it" crowd cause second graders don't think about things like that. My sister has always been a social butterfly and still is. She made friends with at least 3 other girls that I remember. Especially one that we'll call "W", mostly for her safety as well as I don't remember her last name. My sister and W were good friends. Now this is where I hit a bump. This bump was the result of some kid from another class messing with my sister and W. Of course this incident happened on the playground during recess period and only happened this one time. From what I remember, the playground was about an acre in size and I was in the area of the soccer fields at one corner of the playground. My sister and W were on the other corner farthest away from me. I was playing with some of the other kids on the soccer field, when my sister comes up to me and says she and her friend are being messed with by some other kids, who were a pack of about 5-6 guys. Now at the time I'm really young and think I can take on the world, even though I'm not very big. So I get angry and stomp over to where I see W being harassed by this pack. So I say something and the ringleader responds. You should always know that when you confront a group, the leader will be the first one to open his mouth while the others will defer to him. So now that the leader made himself known, I decided on a show of force. So I tackled him and pinned him to the ground. Naturally the pack tried to defend him by attempting to pull me off of him, but only succeeded in knocking my fist off of its intended target of his forehead. Now you have to remember, I'm young and don't know squat about anatomy and how a fist to the forehead ain't gonna do much. However for him, my misdirected fist landed in his left eye. Once I struck him I backed off and he and his groupies went to where the teachers sat. I meanwhile ran and hid back amongst the soccer players. I never saw any repercussions from that incident. However I was not the kind of person to dish out blows. One morning I was on the buss and the route was nearing its end. This bus carried students for the elementary, middle, and high schools and so had students on it from all grades. On this particular morning the bus picked up a female middle school student and continued on the last leg of trip. She was going on and on about something negative regarding her brother and I said something to which she started hitting me. I don't think the blows hurt though as it seemed she was going more for slapping and I was blocking with my arms. The bus driver stopped it and when we reached the school I was the last one off and I was taken to a side room where the principal, who was a woman, sat me down and talked to me. The details are lost to time, but I do remember that it was the first and last time I ever got in trouble there and even then it wasn't really serious.
However as always is the case, all good things must come to an end. In my case we moved further south to an area outside Brookhaven Mississippi and lived across from our grandparents on my dad's side. We called em Granny and Papa. When school came around that year the decision was made that we would be put in the school system there. My Granny worked at this school as an assistant educator and had been there for a long time and was our transportation to and from the school. My sister and I were placed in separate classes in third grade. This is where things went bottoms up. In a rural environment, if you were not raised there or grew up along side those that would become your classmates, you were essentially an outcast. It did not help that I was also very intelligent. I read books that were for students in the 6th-7th grade area even though I was in 3rd grade. The bullying started here, several male an female students would harsh me day after day, I never tried to do anything about it as I figured there was nothing that could be done and I'd have been right. I got in trouble once in the third grade when a teacher assigned a test that she never took up and I assumed was meant as a take home. I never cared much for this teacher anyways. Soon 3rd grade was over and done with
Fourth grade rolled around and my elder brother started rebelling and acting out and hung out with the wrong crowd. This year he was in the 9th grade, but he never passed. However that is not the end of his story and it turns out good in the end for him. He's now a Specialist in the US Army and spent 6 years as a helicopter mechanic and is now an MP. Anywho, back to the past, as a result of homework being hard to keep up with my parents decided to keep us in the same class rotation so we'd have every class together. As a result of my brother's behavior during this time period my sister and I determined to do the best we could and not give our parents any further grief. Lucky for us that we good teachers and we had each other. You never have a closer friend that a sibling who is your twin and is going through the same path as you. I look back at it now and see that it is my sister who kept me going and kept me sane those 6 horrific years from 4th to 7th grade. There was only one teacher that neither of us cared for during this grade period and luck for us we only saw her for one class. We didn't like her cause she played favorites. The other teacher was a joy to be under, the elder, African-american woman, was the type of lady that you'd want as your grandmother, she could make you laugh just as good as any joke book. Naturally the students who terrorized me, followed and the general opinion was that they were passed up the grade just to get them out of their class. I forgot to mention that I made a friend in 3rd grade, I call him Chris. The guy was bigger than I was, but was kind and I was glad to have a friend. My sister, the ever-socialite, had at least 2 friends that I remember. They followed us into this grade as well.
Well 5th grade rolled around and the terrors still followed. Even then this was what I considered to be the golden year. This was the year that I gained a new friend and 2 new teachers, one was 20 something and the other was maybe 50 something, but both were great. It was now me, my sister, Chris, my new friend Glynn (Glen), and my sister's friends. My favorite time during those years would be when we would play chase on the playground. I was always the second fastest runner, the fastest being a guy named Chance. The golden year passed and another year rolled.
Sixth grade came. This year was like a recession. The year of plenty during my 5th grade year ended and the year of famine came on the 6th grade. The horrors of being picked on physically and verbal abuse went to all time highs. I saw new students come and friends go, with the new students getting pulled into established cliques or getting rejected. That year was only the precursor to the next year. Now that I look back, I see that this was when people where finding themselves, carving their names in the stone. It became clear that you either became the person that everyone either avoided or the person who became ignored and abused. Though I was never physically harmed, I did come close a time or two.
Seventh grade rolled around and another round of being picked on and bullied commenced. Have I mentioned that I love reading? Now I was reading books that 12th graders read. I even took a study hall to help in the library to check in and out books. Perhaps even then I was avoiding be near to people, fearing being further ridiculed. I bared through that year and was extremely happy when I no longer had to attend there.
What changed? We moved. South. Far enough south that we lived in a bowl. A literal and metaphorical bowl. However I get ahead of myself. I forget to mention that during my seventh grade year, my father decided to become a pastor of baptist churches. His first church was a small country church that had maybe 20 members or 5 family groups. There was one lady that I remember fondly, an elderly lady somewhere in her 70s I believe, she became an adopted grandmother to me, my sister, and my brother. However that's the only light in what would become the worst experience in my past. Here at this church was evil in all its wickedness. I know some of you may not believe in that stuff, but I assure you that if you had felt what my family and I felt, you would believe it. Here we faced evil and the people it infected. We left that place scarred and battered for such are encounters with raw evil. Now I can finally continue. When we moved south to New Orleans it was to get on the seminary campus where my dad would learn stuff and get a degree. The reasons are mute points, but it was good we went there. Even though we now lived on the only white spot in the 9th ward around Gentily Boulevard, it was peaceful. the reason being that we moved there after Hurricane Katrina and most of the surrounding neighborhood was abandoned. There my sister and I made many friends, all of them those of the female gender, although there were some younger guys that I'd hang out with occasionally. Here I learned maturity and I can only thank them for that. My parents decided to homeschool us, since the schools of New Orleans were not ideal places to send your children. That means I no longer had to face terrors, which I was more than happy I wouldn't have to deal with. Here I stayed for 4 years.
The emotional scars that I have from my past received have left me damaged to the extent that I no longer cry at sad movies, I no longer cry when I read a sad story. I have surrounded myself in a shield of numbness which I am still trying to get past. I have avoided making close friends, not because I'm unsociable, far from it. I'm a nice person. I like cracking a joke or two and I like hanging with people. The reason I don't have friends, other than the internet, is that:
1. In the case that I move, there will no longer be contact and as such I would lose any closeness with them.
2. Your real friends are the ones that have their own lives already, but will be there for you anyways.
I also don't trust. I know that's a horrible problem to have and I wish I could trust again, but when everyone around you fails to protect you, when the system setup to keep bad things from happening doesn't work, then you learn that the only one you can trust is yourself. It is a heavy burden, one I wish I did not have to carry, but it is my burden and one I will carry with me to my grave. I also feel alone sometimes. When all the ghost of my past come to haunt me, they remind me that I am the only one who understands myself, that I am the only one who knows myself, that if I tried to find someone to help me that I would only leave confusion and misunderstanding. Oh, how I wish I had someone to lean on, how I wish I didn't have to carry the burden alone, how I wish that someone would tell me that they love me even when I mess up badly, how I wish that I was not damaged to the point where I can no longer cry at sad things.
Here's the end. Well over 2,500 words of my past, the baring of my very being. The truth behind the real me. I'm not Demichev, I'm not DarkGueri11a, I'm not any other name for all those are merely cover names. For my real name is special, the name I was given when I first breathed life, The name given to me by the parents who loved and love me. What is my name? Well if you must know: Look here, it's my first name.
That was touching.
Thanks for sharing.
It's sad to think that other people feel the need to harrass others to feel good about themselves. It's sad that we cannot live in a world without bullying, or pain.
However, I wish you the best in all of your accomplishments.
You seem like a smart guy. Always keep your head up, no matter what. And you're lucky you have siblings that look out for you. I have to battle in this world alone as an only child.
My lucky friends Stephanie and Brittany and lucky that they're twins.
878828 It was about time I got that off my chest anyhow. Indeed it is sad that the human race is deemed to destroy itself.
You may not believe what I do, but the one mistake made way back in time by two individuals has resulted in everything that we face in today's world.
Being smart, or educated, is a two edged sword. On one side it allows you to go far and brings forth many more opportunities, however, on the other side it leads to being isolated and or exploited.