Lady Reader's Bookstuff: My Bully by Amy Reed + Giveaway

Monday, October 29, 2012

My Bully by Amy Reed + Giveaway

8:57 AM | Posted by lady reader |

Amy Reed shares her story about Bullying. Amy has also donated two of her novels to giveaway. Much thanks to Amy!

MY BULLY:

By Amy Reed

If you have read my first YA novel Beautiful, you already know a little about my bullying story. The book is fiction, but many events were inspired by my own experiences. In seventh grade, I had a friend very much like the character Alex. I had moved from a small, sheltered town to a much larger suburb of Seattle. I started Junior High knowing absolutely no one. I was very shy and very scared, so when this girl began to aggressively befriend me, I was nothing but grateful. She was “alternative,” which I had always secretly aspired to be, and she seemed to know everyone, including the intimidating and beautiful ninth-grade boys.

For the next couple of months, we were inseparable. Everything was so new and terrifying, but the only thing I cared about was impressing her. So I did everything she told me, even when I knew it was dangerous. All I cared about was her approval. I became very dependent on her, unable to think for myself or make my own decisions. I would panic if I thought she was mad at me. In retrospect, it’s obvious that it was an emotionally abusive relationship, but at the time I was just grateful to have a friend.

But things began to slowly change. As I became more comfortable at the new school, I began to spend time with people besides her. I made plans without consulting her first. I don’t remember being conscious of this shift. Maybe subconsciously I just started gravitating towards people who were more like me and who treated me better. But this was not okay with her. The strange thing is she never once confronted me about it, never once tried to talk to me to see what was going on. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, something just shifted--she made up her mind, and she decided to destroy me.

When I try to remember the chain of events that followed, it’s all a blur. It happened so fast and so little of it makes any sense. This used to bother me a great deal. I wanted desperately to understand what was going through my bully’s head, what motivated her to do the things she did. But in time, I have learned to let this go. I will never know what inspired such cruelty. And maybe I don’t want to.

Within what seemed like days, I went from being one of the most popular girls in school to having to hide in classrooms at lunch time because I was afraid for my life. My bully was relentless in spreading rumors about me, and it still amazes me how effective she was in those days before social media. She created a series of elaborate lies, each one specialized for a specific social group in school. These are the ones I figured out: she told the good students I was in honors classes with that I was a druggie and a slut; she told my boyfriend that I cheated on him; she told a girl who had been turning into my new best friend that I was using her; she told the gangster girls I was talking trash about them. She figured out the perfect things to tell people to make them hate me. By the end of the week, not a single person in school would talk to me. My boyfriend changed the combination on the locker we shared and piled my books on the hallway floor. Laughter and taunts followed me in the halls. Kids tripped me as I walked by. Classmates refused to sit by me in class. The gangster girls followed me around for days until they were able to corner me outside of school, where they choked me and threatened me with worse.

I was too ashamed to ask for help, so I endured the torment. I remember feeling so alone, so hopeless. What finally changed things was when my bully crossed the line and started harassing me at home. One night she started calling my house and threatening me, so naturally I stopped answering the phone. When my mom answered and informed her that I didn’t want to talk, my bully told her I was going to die. Mom hung up, terrified, and asked me what was going on. So I finally told her everything. She called the cops. An officer came by and I told him my story. He said he knew the family, knew exactly where they lived, and had had problems with them before. He said he would talk to them.

My mom didn't make me go back to that school after that. Over the next few days, she fought with the administration, begging them to do something. They refused, basically telling her that I needed to toughen up, that kids will be kids. Only when she threatened making noise higher up the chain did they agree to let me transfer to a new school next semester. She couldn’t change anything, but at least she could make sure I was safe. I finished the semester by completing assignments my mom drove to school to pick up. For months afterwards, when I was in town with her or my dad, I’d be paranoid and anxious, afraid of running into my bully. A few times, I thought I saw her, and I hid until I was sure she was gone. The fear remained for a very long time, even after I changed schools and developed a new set of friends. I didn’t truly feel safe until I moved out of that town to Seattle where I could invent myself anew again.

Over the years, I’ve gone through many different feelings about this period in my life—denial, fear, PTSD, anger, anxiety, depression, you name it. Luckily, I’ve finally found a place of acceptance and forgiveness, and I’m even able to feel compassion for my bully. I don’t believe many people are born mean. In the short time we were friends, I met her family and came to realize that she came from a whole family of bullies. It is obvious she learned cruelty and narcissism from them. She had no choice. From the time she was born, that was all she knew.

Now, two decades later, I am pregnant with my first child. Things like this take on a whole new level of meaning as I contemplate what kind of person I will bring into this world. I want my son or daughter to be both kind and brave. I want him or her to be the kind of person who sticks up for the kid who’s getting bullied, who will lead by example and inspire other kids to do the same. Peer pressure works both ways—we too often forget what a powerful tool it can be for positive change.

I also know that my husband’s and my behavior is essential to who our kid becomes. From the day he or she is born, our child will be studying us, will be looking to us for clues on how to navigate the world. My husband and I must be vigilant about our integrity; we must behave in a way we feel is good and right. Our child will learn how to treat others from observing the way we treat each other, the way we talk to strangers, the way we treat people who are less (or more) fortunate than we are, the way we talk about politics, the way we talk about people we disagree with, even the way we cheer at baseball games. This may seem like a daunting task, and it is, but I think we are up to it. As parents, it will be our job to model the behavior we want to see in our child. And, if we do it right, we get to become better people in the process.

Amy Reed is the author of the edgy YA novels Beautiful, Clean, and Crazy.

Her next novel, Over You, is coming out summer 2013.

She lives in Oakland, CA.

Find out more at www.amyreedfiction.com.