Fight or Flight

Wouldn't it be awesome if we were able to fly free into the sky like a bird? No matter what was happening in our lives at that moment, to be able to just take off and soar above the clouds...I know that there are a lot of people who believe in reincarnation. I stand on mutual ground with this belief as I am not sure if I quite believe in it; however, I suppose it could be possible. I have thought about this concept a lot over the years and I thought that if this could be possible, then I would want to be reincarnated as a bird after I pass on from this wonderful world. To be able to just take off and soar through the sky, feeling ever so free and taking in all the beauty of the world around me. Yeah, if reincarnation exists and I believed it to be true, this is what my reincarnation would be...

I was faced with the choice of Fight or Flight. Starting high school at a completely separate school from the middle school girls was the best reassurance I had walking into the first day of my 9th grade year. At 14yrs old, you do not have much of a concept of why things happen in life, and why people do the things they do. For this 14yr old Freshmen, I tried desperately to understand all of what happened over the last two years but I kept coming back to the same conclusion...There was something wrong with these girls, not me.

My first day of high school was terrifying not because of potential bullies as I "knew" that they were all at a different high school and not here with me. I got lost probably 50 times the first day in my high school because it was so huge. Two buildings connected by two sky ways and each building had 3 floors of classrooms. Each hallway looked like the other and I could not find my way to my homeroom. I was a nervous wreck, who was beginning to have a panic attack as I was so overwhelmed and worked up over being in such a big place and getting lost was inevitable.

I soon learned my way around this huge school and became quite comfortable with it's size and having to go from the top floor of one building to the top/bottom floor of the other for classes and having only 6 mins of passing time between classes. I'm here to tell you that school should really invest in escalators; as you get a calf and butt busting workout from merely treading stairs all day. :)

During my four years of high school, I did not have a car or a license, so I could not drive myself to school. My sister Miranda was a Sophomore and had just gotten her license and a car. She gave me a ride to school the first day of 9th grade, but aside from a couple other times, she drove herself to school and usually picked up friends for rides to school or brought them home after school. Essentially there was no room for me to ride with her when I did see her in school, otherwise she was basically MIA (missing in action) as I rarely saw her after school. Since I could not drive and I lived on the North side of town, I did not get bussed to school. I had to take the Metro Bus to and from school each day. The closest stop to my high school was 2 1/2 blocks from the school, so I would walk those blocks to and from school each day throughout those 4 years.

It was probably around October of my Freshmen year when this final incident occurred. It was the end of the school day and instead of making my two block journey to the bus stop, I was told by my sister that she was going to bring me home that day and to not ride the bus...I stood for about fifteen minutes on the front steps in front of the school waiting for Miranda to come pick me up...She left for school that morning when I left the house, so I knew she was at school (at least I thought she was). She had been at school but forgot to pick me up as I think she gave a few friends a ride home instead. Kids still did not have cell phones yet, although they were just hitting the market stream as the new accessory to have. After waiting those 15 minutes, I realized that she was not coming, so I made my trek to the bus stop hoping I could still make my normal bus and not get home later by having to wait for the next one.

As I began to walk, I saw two people walking slightly behind me. This was out of my peripheral vision, but I could still see two people walking with me, but I did not see who they were...I noticed they were keeping the same pace as I was and each time I sped up or stopped to do something, they would stop as well. They followed me for the first block, but when I hit the second block, I began to get curious as to who was following me? I looked over my shoulder and to my surprise there were two of the same middle school girls who helped torment me! How they got to the school and what they were there for, I have no idea as they did not attend my school but the one I did not want to go to.

I immediately turned away from them and bolted it towards the bus stop, thinking I could outrun them...I did for half of that last block, but they caught up to me. They caught me in the parking lot of the downtown Bremer Bank. It was the middle of the week and the parking lot still had quite a few cars in it. They made me walk in between two cars and proceeded to ask me all these random questions. My mind was racing, and answering irrelevant questions was the last thing I had the  energy to focus on answering at the moment...

I still never understood what I did to these other two girls who were a part of Sasha's groupie friends. These two girls did minor things to me in middle school, so as soon as I recognized who they were, I knew what they wanted...Me. Anyways, I don't remember the questions I was asked as my mind was a million miles away wishing I could get away from them. But one of the girls got upset with what I gave for an answer to her question as I think I said I didn't care about whatever she asked me or I was uninterested or something like that...Anyways, these girls Amy and Kayla started shoving me around between the two of them. After a few minutes of shoving me around, I asked them exactly what did I do for them to hate me so much and for them to pick on me so bad? They gave the usual answers like because I was ugly, I didn't have any friends, my clothes we cheap...You know things like that. They never did answer my question as to what I did to them that was so horrible to cause them to bully me.

Amy told me to do something or give her something, I think it was my money to ride the bus home? I told her no, that I needed it to get home with and I did not have any other money on me; just the $.75 it cost to ride the bus home. Both Amy and Kayla got mad at me for refusing to give up my bus money to them; so they proceeded to start slapping me. A slap across the face, a kick to the stomach and a shove and I was on the ground. Kayla took her foot and stepped on me, holding me with enough strength so I could not get off of the ground...All the while I am wondering why in the hell has no one from the bank or customers coming and going seen me and what was going on? Maybe someone did, I prayed someone would have seen what was going on but no one saw it, or at least came out to stop it if they had seen it...

I was on the ground, nearly hyperventilating and crying. I could not catch my breath and I started going into major panic mode. Amy told me the only way she would let me go with my bus money was if I would crawl over to her feet and kiss them! I thought, there is no way in hell I was going to do that. I was a person, I had feelings and I did not have to subject myself to that kind of humiliation for the sake of their twisted enjoyment! I told Amy "NO!, I will not kiss your feet, even if you beat the shit out of me, I will not kiss your feet"!

She said okay and proceeded to kick me again in the stomach and I was now curled up in the fetal position. She either slapped me again or scratched my face because I began to bleed a little from the side of my nose. No major bleeding, but it was enough to cause blood to drip from my nose. All the while, Kayla is now almost  sitting on top of me, making sure I don't wiggle loose and start running.

Amy asks me a final time if I want to go home...I look at her and think "No, I would rather let you sit her and kick the crap out of me all night, I just enjoy it!...Of course I want to go home, what kind of question is that? I nod my head and tell her yes. Amy looks at me and says "well, then you know what you need to do then don't you"? I reluctantly nod in agreement that I know I need to kiss her feet if I will have any chance of getting home. So, I tell her I will do it and I proceed to do so...It was the most humiliating thing I have ever had to deal with in my life at that time. Amy and Kayla kept their word about letting me go after I did that, and I ran as fast as I could to put as much distance between me and them as possible...

I did not take the bus home, I half ran, half walked home. I wondered why I never thought to scream to get someone's attention, but I think I was so consumed with fear and figuring out how to get out of this situation, that I was speechless I do believe...

I made it home in record time as I ran through back allies and along multiple side streets to get to my house. By this time; however I had been bleeding for my nose, it had stopped. I looked like I was sweating to death from running home. You could not tell that anything happened aside from my right cheek which was red and inflamed where I had gotten slapped. I did tell my parents what happened that I ran into these girls, but I did not tell them that I ever had to kiss Amy's feet just to get home...I do hope that Amy and Kayla learned that this type of behavior was not okay but I never saw them after that, so I can only hope they would know what they did was wrong, cruel and humiliating. Because it was one of the most humiliating things to have to do in your life as a teen.

I saved this story for last because it was the most vicious and cruel experience of bullying I have ever experienced. I hope these girls know how badly they hurt me and I hope they had some sort of remorse for their actions? This memory of that horrifying day will never go away and I have to carry that memory with me, but that's why I wanted to speak up about this issue and share my story with bullying. Your words and actions can either bless or harm someone. Choose them wisely, for you never know what the affects are on someone else...

Now that I have ran through all of my major experiences with bullying, I want to share a post about what my life is like today, what I have been up to and why I wanted to create this blog after witnessing my niece Chloe being bullied...Remember to comment or share your experiences with others if you want to.

Check back tomorrow for the update on what I am currently up to and what's going on in my life today. Thanks for reading and take care of each other. :)

~Melissa