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Haircuts & Harassment – Surviving the Bullies who Throw Rocks

Guest Writer Diana דִּינָה Lang October 4;

I live in California now, this beautiful, liberal open place. But I didn’t always live here. I grew up in the South, mainly Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Polar opposite of who I am, an artsy, strange, progressive girl. It started when I was in pre-school. The taunts. The questions. “Are you a boy or a girl?” the question would come from confused children, as I traversed the playgrounds. “Girl,” I would say. Over the years, it got annoying. My mum cut my hair short, as it was easier for both of us to manage. Utilitarian. I didn’t like to wear dresses. I wore jeans and shirts, just like my friends, who were mainly boys. That’s all it was. But that was enough for the rumors to start…

Right before the 7th grade, I went in for a haircut at a local salon, and they cut it much shorter than my mom ever had, even shaving the back of my neck. I had a best friend at the time, and she wore her hair short, too. We looked so much alike that even through high school, people would call us by the wrong name. We hung out together constantly. I didn’t have many friends growing up, and we grew so close over the years, that her parents had put in an extra bed in her room, so that I wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor. We were inseparable. And then it started…

My first day of junior high is one that I would love to forget, but unfortunately I never will. I walked into this building. Its enormous walls surrounded me, devoured my sense of normality, and spit me out into three years of utter torment by my peers. I had left the environment where one is treated equally as all other students and been thrust forth into the land of popularity contests; the land where if you do not act and look as everybody else, you are more popular than a stain on your favorite article of clothing.

I was dubbed “he-she,” “boy-girl,” all the slurs and curse words that they could cook up. I was slammed against lockers, had rocks thrown at me on a daily basis every morning for months on end, all because they assumed something was going on between my best friend and I. I dreaded riding the bus. Kids threw gum and half-eaten suckers at us, we were shoved into our seats in the bus, we were shoved up against the bus as we entered, and one kid would follow often me home, saying, “You’re going to die, b—-h.”

I was filled to the brim with classmates’ insults, and driven into insecurity. I felt utterly and totally miserable and alone, totally insane with my pain, worthless, and every night when returning home from school cried half with relief that I was home, and half with a fear of never wishing to return to school again. I told my parents, begging them, to pull me out of this school. They’d done it once before, pulling me out of a dreadful elementary school at 6 years old. But no such luck. There is the Midwestern mental attitude of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” Bullying was considered “normal.” My parents said they’d been bullied, and learned how to fight back. Just gotta “tough it out”. Crying wasn’t an option. So I bottled it up, pushed it down inside and like vinegar, it fermented, occasionally bubbling up to the surface in the form of neurotic social behavior, a crippling shyness that continues to haunt me.

I never had the guts to ask these kids why they treated me as they did, why I was the target for their physical and verbal abuse, nor why they hated me so much. I did not fight back. I suffered their abuse for acting, in their opinion, too masculine, so what would they do if I had followed my dad’s advice, and punched my tormentors? Was that “lady-like?” Violence just wasn’t the answer. How about ignoring them? Can you really ignore someone who is in your face every day, being physically violent towards you? I didn’t like the advice I received, and didn’t have the skills to cope or defend myself otherwise, so I did nothing. I shut down inside, allowing myself to be devoured by the torture, and believing there was something wrong with me.

Where were you? I don’t recall a teacher ever stepping in. I wish my parents had gone to bat for me. I wish a teacher had stopped the rocks, the shoving, the slurs, the demeaning questions. I wish someone had been there for me. I wish someone had walked home with me, or fought on my behalf. I wished, oh, so many things, good and bad. But most of all, I wished it would stop. Eventually, it did. They stopped caring, but the damage was done. Mountains of neurosis—thank God for therapists, Years later, having finally a respite from this adolescent hell, also compassion and empathy has flooded my soul. No one should be hated for having loved.

The funny thing was, that at 12, I didn’t really have any attractions to anyone, male or female. The only love I knew was that of family and friends. How could I be gay or straight or anything? Some kids have it figured out by then, but at 12, sex or romance was the farthest from my mind. I just wanted to listen to music and have fun. And if they had been right, why did it matter who I loved? How I dressed? Who I friended?

We need to find an answer to this epidemic of kid-on-kid violence. We need to end this cycle of hate that gets passed down as a hateful distortion of religions whose core message is love. Childhood is supposed to be fun and carefree, full of fantasy and discovery. It should not be the hell that it so often can be. There was no reason for me and my friend to be bullied in this way, nor should any human being to have to face this. Life is hard enough. Choose love. Choose peace. Choose life. Stand up for your friends, your family, yourself. Most of all, get help, if you need it. You may not feel it, in the dark vacuum of torment that these bullies create, but people love you, and the bullies go away and the pain ultimately goes.

Guest Writer:- Diana Lang is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. She has self published a poetry book entitled “Tea & Sprockets,” is a long time artist, and award-winning filmmaker. She lives in Marin County, California with her husband, where they enjoy copious amounts of Judaism, nature, and indie music.

(Posted by Melanie Nathan, nathan@privatecourts.com for Guest Diana Lang)

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