From Passive To Violent...My Last Straw...

I'll never forget the day that I became someone I no longer recognized. It was after the school trip to the Police Station that we had while I was still in Junior High. They had our entire classroom ride in the back of their 'paddy-wagon'. It was very small, with a bench on either side. There were no seats left, so I was stuck in the aisle. The vehicle turned a corner and I fell. I spent the rest of the ride being kicked and stomped by the other kids, with an occasional hand reaching out as if to assist me, only to be pulled back when I reached for it. More fibers began to snap apart and unravel. Once we got back to the school, it was time for Home Ec.

There was a gang of girls that nobody messed with in our school. Three of them were Karen, Kim and Rebecca. I walked into class, and Rebecca fatefully decided that she was going to bully me. She picked the wrong time. We had these god-awful molded plastic chairs with metal legs that were stackable that came in such appealing colors as Harvest Gold, Avocado Green and Terra Cotta; the colors of that particular era that remind me of assorted baby barf stains on a towel. Kim was at a sewing machine when Rebecca grabbed hold of one of these chairs and whipped it across the floor into my legs. Before I even knew what was happening, I seized that chair, lifted it high over my head and hurled it at her with murder in my eyes.

Her eyes flew open wide with shock. She ducked; the chair whizzed past her head, so close that a breeze tousled her hair. Kim stared between the two of us. I stood, fists balled at my sides, waiting. The gauntlet had been thrown at last, and Rebecca knew it. I so desperately wanted her to be stupid one more time so that I would have an excuse to break her fucking neck. Unfortunately for me, she chose to back down. They never bothered me again. Word started to get around that I was no longer an easy target. Some kids didn't listen.

One day while standing in line at the door of our classroom, the boy behind me decided to shove me. I wheeled around and slammed him into the door so hard I cracked the wall. "Don't you ever touch me again" I warned. He didn't. The fibers were snapping faster now, unraveling at an alarming rate. I did not like this person that I was becoming, but god help me I could not stop it, and people started to back off and give me the space I'd always wanted.

I remember bursting into a stream of obscenities in the hallway over something that upset me. A girl I knew named Pam stared at me, mouth agape. "What happened to the little girl I used to know who would never say a word like that?" she asked me. The words 'she's finally dead' exploded through my mind and echoed behind my lips, just waiting to be said. I felt sick with shame. "She grew up" I offered lamely. Pam shook her head and clucked her tongue at me as she walked away.

I had always felt this inner peace despite all of the turmoil. I had still managed to hang on to a good deal of innocence despite the events in my life that attempted to murder it outright. The peace had flown, leaving a disturbing, sinister hollow feeling in it's place. I was losing the fight to be a good person. I was losing me.