Amy on the Inside; or, Labels Part... uh... at least Three

[rockinlibrarian]

Apparently, according to the community bullying_begone that is being spotlighted on the LiveJournal home page this month, October is National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month. It's a topic I like talking about. It's a topic I come back to frequently. Maybe not in those exact terms, but it's something that has grown out of my own experiences with bullying to become an overarching theme in my writing, to the point where I decided I'd do a commencement speech on the subject. And yes, I posted that in June, and this is already the second time I've linked back to it. BUT THAT'S HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO ME THAT THIS MESSAGE GETS OUT. Not that "bullying is bad." That's been done. But that EVERYONE IS MORE THAN THEY SEEM.

When I was a middle school librarian, I read a new book in our collection, James Howe's The Misfits. I'd loved Howe's Bunnicula books growing up, but this was something different: an utterly honest, dead-on realistic (except for that bit about a middle-schooler working in a department store. That HAPPENS? Really? Where?) exploration of the middle school social experience, "everything that is great about middle schoolers, everything that sucks about middle school," as I said in an earlier review-- although to be honest, it's everything that SUCKS about middle schoolers, too (and everything that's great about middle school? I'm sorry, even as a former middle school teacher, I can't make that phrase make sense). In it, a group of, well, misfits bands together in the class elections on a No Name-Calling platform. The book launched its own anti-bullying campaign at www.nonamecallingweek.org (the week is in January, not October, but I'm not waiting until then to talk about it). Anyway, there's a companion book out now, a little different-- well, very different: it's written in verse from inside the head of one of the original misfits a little after the events of the first book-- Addie on the Inside. I've just finished it, and it gets me back to the subject I keep coming back to anyway.

In the introduction, which is also in verse, Howe writes:
When they tell you,
This is who you are,
do you say yes or no?

Who do you see
when you look at them?
You know the ones I mean:

the others, the olders,
the youngers, the ones
who are not you, not

like you or your friends,
who wear the labels
you give them until

they give them back,
saying, I believe these
belong to you.

Inside Addie was a familiar place for me, even though our outsides are a bit different (she would NOT be voted shyest in her class). The constant wondering who everyone is, the wishing people would see the whole you and not just a piece, a label, the longing to both belong and yet remain completely yourself-- maybe we're all like this on the inside.

I read another book about bullying this year that impressed me with its treatment of the subject: Warp Speed by the ever remarkable lisayee, which is about a constantly tormented middle school Star Trek geek. What most impressed me was the way she got the point across that People Are More Than Their Labels without ever saying it directly-- just showing it, brilliantly and beautifully. Our hero Marley truly is a Star Trek geek, truly obsessed and truly GEEKY and truly deserving of the label. But he's also a history buff. He also loves running. He also lives in a historic theater and helps his dad run old movies there. He also has a truly loving family life, and did we mention his mom happens to be blind? Something else you didn't know about him, isn't it? He is clearly not JUST a Star Trek geek, and the rest of the characters are all more than they seem at first as well.

I always wanted to be seen for the whole me, as I've written about before (and yes, this is yet another post about labels). I felt so trapped in middle/high school because I knew I WASN'T. It probably wouldn't be a surprise to anyone I graduated with that I grew up to be a librarian. But it probably would have been a bit more of a surprise had they, just a year after we left school, tuned into my college radio station and heard my classic rock show. To me? Two inevitabilities. Hence the username. But to the outside observer, who knew?

I read this article and smiled at the familiarity: http://life.salon.com/2011/10/03/interview_with_my_bully_the_courage_to_remember/ Something similar happened to me on Facebook a couple years ago. There was a group page-- one of those informal things they had before the more formal types of Groups and Fan Pages and Whatnot they have now-- for people who'd grown up in my hometown (which, for those who don't know, is a very small town centered around one traffic light off a highway. And by "highway" I mean "sometimes four lanes, usually three, and sometimes the third is just for turning." Granted, somehow this town was split into three different school districts, depending where in the town you lived-- but the people who lived where I did, in the proper "Downtown" (ie, three streets) of town, went to my school, an at-least-fifteen-minute drive away). Anyway, a fellow a couple years older than me posted asking if there was anyone there actually in HIS generation, as most of the people posting seemed to be fresh out of college. I didn't recognize the name, but I posted back saying he might have remembered one of my best friends, Carrie, who was older than me and probably in his class. "Oh! Yes! Now that you mention it, I remember a girl who used to tag along with Carrie." And from the way he said it, though I can't remember it word for word to tell you here, it was clear to me that it definitely WAS me that he remembered. And then he added-- and I could hear the sheepishness through the Internet-- "Sorry for any of the stupid things I said or did to you. We could be real jerks back then."

It kind of amused me. I didn't remember this guy at all, and I barely remember anything specific any of the older kids in town had ever done to me. I DID remember the general feeling of having been regularly bullied by the older kids in town, but it was just kind of a drop in the pond now, of the whole experience of being a misfit kid. And before I could think how to respond, others-- more people from Carrie's class, mostly-- had joined in the conversation. A girl I knew to have been friends with Carrie spoke up, saying she'd always been bothered by people picking on me, and had wanted to speak up, but had been too shy herself. Huh, I thought. Who knew this older girl had given me any thought at all? Let alone was unsure of her own self: surely, I'd always thought, everyone older than me always had it all together.

You might ask, what is the point of this story? Am I implying that the bullying wasn't such a big deal after all, if I can shrug it off and not remember the details now? No. The bullying did have its effect, in this case mostly in me developing a timidity around older peers, feeling like the dumb little one of any group. It's just not about specific grudges. It's about perception: of oneself and of others. Everyone in that conversation saw the same bullying take place, but everyone came out of it with different memories of who was involved, how they were involved, and who any of these people ACTUALLY WERE.

Some of the comments on the article I posted above say things like, "So, the bullies weren't truly evil, and everyone gets bullied, it's just how kids are, so, what?" But that's why I think the solution to bullying is not so much cracking down on bullying DIRECTLY, but encouraging people to view themselves and others as complex and unique and worthy of respect. Understanding that you, yourself, are more than just whatever-it-is-they-call-you helps you weather the inevitable bullying that you're going to face. Understanding that OTHERS are more than the first thing YOU see helps you learn to treat everyone a little more carefully, a little more lovingly, a little more respectfully-- and not become a bully yourself.

I bawled for a little while after I finished Addie last night, thinking about the wonderful people I have known who have been ripped down by bullies, thinking of all the people I DON'T know, thinking of the people who couldn't weather it, who couldn't come out the other side, who took their own lives or destroyed them with reckless behavior in effort to escape it. It's my life goal, in my writing and as a person, to celebrate people for being complex, for being more than they seem, to make sure everyone is treated with respect.

Comments

[sal_amanda]

Interesting story about the guy on Facebook. Reminds me again of some of John's experiences. I'll have to look into the Misfits.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

And Warp Speed-- that one I think you'll especially appreciate for all the geeky references (not just Star Trek)!

[elouise82.livejournal.com]

This is one of those times when I really want to leave a coherent, well-thought response, but can't muster anything more than: "Hear, hear."

And well said.

And thank you.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Coherency is not necessary. Thank you for saying Thank You! (No, thank YOU! NO, thank... oh never mind).