February 10th, 2018: I grew up in a small town on the outskirts of a large city. One of those towns where everybody knows everybody and your classmates are the same from kindergarten through high school. I have always been very tall and very skinny, much taller than everybody else, big brown eyes in a tall body that felt so foreign so many times. I was shy, not too talkative but very independent, wanted to learn how to do things by myself as soon as there was a chance. Probably my mother was the instigator of this. She was a working mom and she had little time so she taught us independence and self-sufficiency very soon.
I don’t know where this came from as I wasn’t exposed to this growing up, but I adored math, physics and science and I was really good in school without trying. I’d look at a math problem and solve it just looking at it. One of those kids that are called nerds. A tall, skinny nerd. I felt awkward and like I didn’t belong most of the times. I surely wasn’t part of the cool girls club and I wasn’t someone the boys would be interested in.
Back then the word bullying wasn’t too popular, but bullying existed. No matter the grade I was in, there was always a small group of kids that did the bullying. I was often the target. I remember vividly an instance in which the whole class laughed at me for what I was wearing. But most of the other times the bullying was about how well I did in school. In retrospect, it was probably jealousy but back then I didn’t know. I never talked about it and simply grew up and tried to adjust, as other classmates that were also a target of bullying did.
As I got older and started to recognize the signs of bullying and how they may have affected me, I had two choices: try to change myself to conform to what a “cool” kid should look or act like, or embrace who I was and develop that so I could build on my strengths. I chose the second, probably because it was the only thing I knew how.
My self-esteem had been impacted by what I had experienced in school, but somehow I had the instinct that I could work on it by setting goals for myself and challenging myself to learn new things. It wasn’t a conscious decision, somehow that instinct was in me. Perhaps again my mom takes the credit for this. As the years went by I threw myself into new challenges, committed myself 100% to them and achieved goals. These weren’t big goals, just small ones. For example, at one point I decided that I was going to become a better swimmer and took swimming lessons. Water isn’t too comfortable for me still to this day, but I did become a better swimmer. Through the years I learned that I can do things that I set my mind to and that I can trust myself.
I am an adult now and I have a job I love, a job I am good at and that is rewarding. This job relies on my strengths, those character traits I was bullied for. Sometimes, it saddens me to think that some of the bullies in my school weren’t this lucky. I wish they could have used their energy in positivity instead of bullying their classmates. I am glad that bullying is more recognized now and that schools are doing something about it. No child should live through that and children’s uniqueness should be valued and cultivated so all of us can reach our potential.
A Charitable Direction 