Zander's Inside Voice

It’s snowing here today. It’s not much and it won’t last long, but it’s kinda pretty today. I do like snow and winter. I don’t love driving in it, but I like playing in it. I am hoping we get enough to be able to cross country ski somewhere. I haven’t done that since I was in middle school. There was an after school club and there were only like 5 of us. There were some trails behind our school and we would go back there and ski for awhile. It was nice because my mom would take me to school with my skis and then pick me up. Usually I had to walk to school.

I only remember going out a couple times. I’m not sure why I didn’t do it more. I don’t even remember if it was 7th or 8th grade, but I do remember there being a kid that lived in my neighborhood that also cross country skied. We were friends for the year I was in 7th grade, so it must’ve definitely been that year. Then he went off to high school and I didn’t see him much around the neighborhood until I moved up to the high school.

We were on the same bus. There were tons of kids in our neighborhood that rode the bus. Something changed once I moved up to the high school and all the kids in the neighborhood treated me badly. The kid from cross country skiing and a bunch of kids on his street used to follow me home from the bus, yelling mean things at me the whole time. I don’t know what I ever did to them, other than moving to their stupid town. My dad taught in the high school though, and he was an asshole of a teacher if you weren’t there to learn. Maybe it was that. Or maybe it was because I was so different from everyone else. I will never know so I try not to think about it too much.

I wish I could understand what made everyone bully me like that. Some older kids ripped open my locker one day after school and threw my stuff everywhere. They ripped up everything I had taped in there and I lost homework, notes, and important paperwork. It was shitty. I feel sad just thinking about how defeated I felt when that happened. Between the kids on the bus, the kids in a couple of my classes, and now my locker being trashed, I was ready to give up. Eventually I just started riding to and from school with my dad. I couldn’t stand to be on the bus anymore. I don’t think I ever rode it again. In 10th grade I walked to and from school, although it was over a mile.

I think about that time in my life often because that’s when I started cutting. It was so painful being everyone’s punching bag. My mom wasn’t working, so she had too much time to be all up in my business. I was harsh to her because I just needed space. I wasn’t able to tell her how horrible the bullying was because hers was always worse. Always. I felt like I should be grateful it wasn’t so bad for me, although she never knew how bad it was for me. I don’t think bullying is something that should be compared. It’s bad no matter how much better or worse it was for someone else. It felt very invalidating to be told it really couldn’t be that bad.

Weird place for my brain to go when I was just looking outside, admiring the snow. I can’t dwell here too long, it’ll hurt too much.