The Worst Thing that Ever Happened

Monday evening I came home, changed my clothes, crawled into my bed and pulled the comforter over my head. Thirty minutes later J came home, crawled underneath the covers also and hugged me.

"When will it stop" I asked him. "When will I finally stop feeling bad?"

For years, whenever an acquaintance would ask about my childhood, I would deflect the question, change the subject or tell a story about the family dog. When pressed, I usually found some reason to excuse myself from the conversation.

I did not say that I was first treated for major depression at the age of ten.
I did not say that at the age of fifteen I wanted to die.

I never fit in as a child. Even grade school was a social ordeal. Because I was smart, earned decent grades and behaved myself, the teachers did not notice me very much, except to occasionally chastise me to "toughen up" when they saw me crying. They never investigated the cause of the tears. They just assumed I was a baby.

Grade school turned into middle school, a Catholic school, years of non-stop teasing, taunting, and deliberate exclusion.

My grades were still good. I was still not the type of student to cause trouble. I did all the things a happy student would do. I went through the motions. And every day I lost a little more of the will to continue.

In the fall of my sophomore year, on the way to school in the big yellow bus, I sat and listened as a student named Nathan, a year younger than myself, bullied another kid. Tired of watching the torture, I told him to stop it.

Nathan began screaming at me all the words I felt, but had never heard anyone say. That I needed to "shut the hell up." That "no one cared about what I had to say." That I was "nothing" and would always "be nothing." I was "worthless" and "stupid" and "an ugly bitch." When I began to cry, he taunted me for my tears.

The back of the bus fell silent except for my crying. No one told Nathan to stop. No one stood up for me, not even the kid I had been trying to protect. Some because they were too afraid, some because they were too shocked to speak. Not even the bus driver seemed to notice.

I walked off the bus in a daze. I did not know where to go. I wanted to run away, but I knew I would get suspended for cutting school. I was a good kid. I never caused trouble.

I fled to the bathroom near the gym, as far away as I could get from the rest of the student population without actually leaving school grounds. I kept crying. I'm not sure how long I was there. I'm not sure if anyone noticed I was missing from home room.

A junior found me at some point during the morning. When she asked me what was wrong, I told her I wanted to die. I kept repeating over and over again that I wanted to die. When she asked why, I said "I don't know" and started to cry again.

She found a teacher, as it turned out the only teacher I trusted completely. Mrs. K took me to the chapel. She made sure I was excused from my morning classes. She called both my parents. She called a psychiatrist. She and my parents sat and listened as I poured out the misery I had been carrying for over three years.

Late that morning I returned to my classes. The next afternoon I met the psychiatrist and was diagnosed with dysthymia and anxiety disorder. I spent most of the remaining school year in therapy. Slowly I got better. I never fit in with my class, but I learned how to be ok with that fact.

I don't remember if Nathan was disciplined for the incident on the bus. I don't think he was. He never apologized or showed any remorse. He continued to bully those he perceived as weaker than himself.

Why tell this now? Was it the novel I just finished, which suggests that we become the person we want to be by forgetting the person we were through the telling of our life stories?

Was it last night's re-run of Scrubs, in which Dr. Cox tells his sister "I don't like seeing you, because it reminds me of our childhood" and recently seeing all the supporting actors from that period of my life?

Or is just that I'm tired of relieving the pain and have reached the point where I am ready to let go?