I am so excited to share with you a post that my dear friend, Sarah, wrote on her own LiveJournal blog. Sarah is someone I’ve known now for almost 6 years. Like Emma, she has Optic Nerve Hypoplasia, as well as a few other diagnoses. Sarah is my age, and is living completely independent. She has just recently gone back to school (mind you, she has a Master’s in agriculture) to get a degree in psychology. I really got to know Sarah better when I met her in person 1 ½ years ago when the American Council of the Blind hosted it’s convention in Phoenix. I had the privilege of picking Sarah and Fargo (her adorable guide dog) up at the airport, eating lunch out, and taking her to the hotel. I admire Sarah for so many reasons. Her strength is unbelievable. She’s funny. She’s completely honest, and she doesn’t mince words. She is the complete inspiration for me and how I raise Emma. Sarah’s mom did a fantastic job. And Sarah is doing a remarkable job as well, given her disabilities and the obstacles she faces.
Her latest post is about bullying…a topic near and dear to my heart. Please read her story and absorb it all in. Her words are powerful.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
Blind baby.
Bat.
Four eyes.
Retard.
Blind bitch.
Freak of nature.
Freak.
Freak.
The words echo in my head. Memories of the past, like flags flapping in the wind which I can hear, and which serve as reminders of various occasions. I am scarred deeply from the taunts of other children. I learned to fight back, to scream, to strike out, to tell adults, but none of it ever did any good. I was just a freak anyway. I couldn’t see where the kids were coming from half the time, but I tried to face them, and yell taunts back, telling them they were ignorant and using words far too complex for my tiny self.
The teasing started when I was three-years-old. It’s how I learned I was different from other kids. Before pre-school I had no idea that I wasn’t like other people. I learned fast. I was different and it was not a good difference.
Taunting continued through my years of school. My mother would try to soothe my worries each night, giving me ammunition to spit back at the bullies. My brother would threaten to beat the other kids up if he ever heard them teasing me, or saw them picking on me.
By junior high the teasing was so bad that every morning before school I was physically ill. My stomach would cramp violently and I would be sick. I was so different from the other kids from my blindness to my as yet undiagnosed aspergers’ syndrome. I remember running into our backyard and clamping my hands onto one of our raised flower beds, as I sat upon it, tears streaming down my face, my words pleas to stay home.
Even the teachers weren’t always nice to me. I have this perseverative behavior of tapping something on my face. I would commonly use a pen or pencil because they were available. This was calming and I would do it when I was thinking. A teacher once called me before the class and demonstrated what I did and told me it looked stupid and she better not see me do it again. I tried to keep such behavior to myself at home, where my parents allowed me to do it alone, and not in public, but sometimes I would become overwhelmed and out the behavior would come. Teachers always pointed out the dark spots on my nose from trying to write close to my face with a dark pen, or soft leaded artists pencil as well. It just added to the kids who made fun of me for basically kissing my books as I tried to hold the large print editions near my face for close inspection.
By high school I was using a long white cane for mobility. Most kids started to shun me because of it. My closest friends even acted awkward around it at first, not knowing what to expect, but they overcame it quickly and treated me normally. Only one friend never changed in how she viewed me.
High school was just more of the same though. I had few friends and the school was larger which increased the amount of bullies. I would cut class and go to the agricultural area of the campus and play with the animals, or to the library to read audio books, or just chill. I felt alone, and I began to realize that I really was a freak because I wasn’t like the other kids. When they hid my cane one day while I was busy cleaning out rabbit cages in the school’s barn, I finally cried when I went to go to my next class, unable to find my way there. I groped through the spider webs in the barn’s corners, and tripped over pieces of equipment, but I finally did find my cane, and boy was I ever mad, even through my sorrow for being a freak. I wanted to get even, but knew I couldn’t.
It was the first time in my life that I just really wanted to die. Depression over came me, but I told no one and went about my days. I didn’t reach out to anyone, because I didn’t want adults to worry, and wasn’t sure what my friends would say. I stopped going to school when I fell ill because of a kidney infection. I was very weak. When I recovered it was easier just to stay home. School was a living hell. My mother knew that I wasn’t thriving with the other kids torturing me, so she seldom forced me to go to school.
As a result, one day the truant officer came to our house. She was a neighbor of ours. My mother greeted her warmly and offered her a cup of tea. She was all serious though, and informed us that she was visiting on business. Basically everything was laid out on the line. I either had to return to school or they were going to kick me out. I didn’t care. Let them kick me out, I thought, happily.
It was decided that I would transfer to the alternative high school. It was known for having gang bangers, teen mothers, drug addicts, and kids who were in trouble with the law. I didn’t know how I’d hold up against all of them, but I did know that it was fewer hours every day, and it had an unstructured format, so I could work at my own pace and help plan some of my studies. That part of it was right up my alley.
On my first day I was terrified. My mother dropped me off and I felt like I was back at pre-school with my mom leaving me for the first time. After a few hours I started to relax. The teachers were addressed by their first names. We had time cards we had to have stamped to prove we were in class, and it was up to us to show up. Homework was a privilege we could only earn by participating in class. The more work we got done the sooner we could graduate.
The best part, was from the moment I set foot on campus the other kids were welcoming. They didn’t ask questions about my blindness. It was a given that I couldn’t see. It was just another difference, like they had differences, and I was respected for it. The other kids talked to me about other subjects, normal subjects, and I felt like I was part of the whole.
A year after I had been at the alternative high school a new student started attending classes. He stepped in front of me one day, my cane making contact with him. He opened his mouth and started to chastise me for hitting him with my cane, even though he had purposefully stepped in front of me, and in a flash he was surrounded by a group of guys. They told him that no one made fun of me. They laid it down like a rule and threatened to mess him up if he tried it again. He got really scared, and started spouting apologies.
That was the only teasing I ever faced at that school.
I made friends with pot heads, teen mothers, kids who were on probation, a guy who was openly gay and sometimes cross dressed, and kids who were in a gang outside of school. Who would have thought I would have earned respect from a bunch of misfits. Who would have thought the teasing had ended. I felt less and less like a freak.
I went on to graduate first in my class, and went to college. I never would have done it without the support from those teachers and students. At the same time, I’d not be who I am today without the bullying. All of it combined has made me the person I am today.
While sticks and stones won’t break my bones, names will certainly hurt me. I have deep scars from being called horrible things in my formative years. It was hard to develop a sense of self in my teen years when I was so conflicted between what I knew what was true of myself, and what others were calling me. Now that I know who I am, I just look back on it like another chapter in my life. I am stronger for what I was made to endure.
