Trigger warnings: Suicidal thoughts, sexual assault, and middle school cringiness.
PART ONE: The Prologue
In the fall of 2010, I was a eighth grader in Boulder, Colorado. I had just started at a new private school. It was my third middle school in my third state. But I was excited for a new start.
Alexander Dawson School, a k-12 school, didn’t have uniforms, and it was at the top of tiny hill, and the theater classes were at the bottom of the hill. It was only about 20 minutes from my house, and they had Mac computers everywhere. The elementary school students were experimenting with iPads. The buildings had distance like a college campus. It seemed so mature, at the time.
My old school, Waterford School in Sandy, Utah, was one of the most advanced schools I’ve ever attended. They really set a high standard in terms of education and administrative responses to bullying. When I first came to Dawson, it was clear I was ahead of my peers academically. So I was placed in two high school classes, Spanish 2, and Geometry. Those classes became my saving graces, which is a weird thing for me to say about math.
In 2010, the bullying landscape seemed to be evolving from the 80s things I’d seen in movies. Mean Girls was more relevant that Sixteen Candles, and more reflective of the culture. Bullying wasn’t done by tossing nerds in trash cans or punching them for lunch money. Kids were realizing they could anonymous with their hatred on Facebook. They didn’t even need to do that stuff in person. It could all be online.
This was years before the ubiquitousness of Instagram and Snapchat, and the dangers those could be utilized for. This was three weeks before the suicide of Tyler Clementi, because someone was cyberbullying him for being gay.
I was not cyberbullied. I was sexually assaulted.
The first three weeks at Dawson were aggravating. There were only about fifty or so students in the grade, and I can say with certainty only about four of them liked me. The others were indifferent or outright cruel.
Okay, I say aggravating, but it wasn’t all bad. I had a really great history teacher, and a really great theater teacher, Mr. Denning. I also really liked the aforementioned high school classes, mostly because they made me feel smart. Look at me go, I’d think to myself, I’m kind of jumping a grade.
Denning let me talk to him during lunch before drama class when I got there early, and we talked about movies and musicals. He gave me great acting advice.
He also lead us in the craziest improv and acting warm-ups. It was easily one of the most fun times I’d had in school.
But each of the girls that would eventually assault me were in that class, and it was hard to express yourself when you saw people judging you at every turn.
It’s hard to explain the kind of fish bowl effect there is with such a small school when there’s gossip about you. A rumor isn’t just a rumor. It has power because of the increased echoes in the chamber. It’s infinitely more harmful. Things spread fast, it was like a small town.
At the end of the day, no matter of the typical MUSTANG (every day got a corresponding letter) schedule that rotated the classes, there was gym. I was a fat kid, and I hated changing in front of everybody, but I wasn’t going to be one of those kids who changed in the stalls. That felt worse.
I don’t remember anyone ever shoving me into lockers, or actually calling me fat to my face. But I felt their judgment. It sounds paranoid, but I feel like other fat people will understand: you can tell when someone thinks you’re lesser because you’re bigger, or because you have stretch marks and they don’t.
I was one of three new kids, the others being a girl named Kamryn and a girl named Brittany. As someone who’d been a new kid six times before, I knew was it was like and tried to befriend them.
Kamryn easily fell into a clique lead by two girls, one named Summer the other named Nina. But Brittany and I were on the volleyball team, so we almost fell in line for friendship.
I was easily one of the best players on the team, mostly because I was the only one who knew how to serve. The school was so small no one had to make the team, they just had to show up to gym and bam! Welcome to the team. But that was just me being a decent-sized fish in a small pond.
The other decent player was a girl named Ari. Ari always seemed to have it out for me. I knew she had to be frustrated, it had to be hard to be the only black kid in the grade, potentially the middle school, when Boulder, CO is already excessively white. But I make a good scapegoat, and I became a target for her.
One day in gym, our volleyball teacher wasn’t there. So of course, we went haywire. There were two courts in the P.E. building, so a bunch of the girls decided to sneak in through the side door. I, being a wet blanket, told them that we weren’t allowed to do that. I was told to stop being a bitch.
I followed them into the smaller gym through the side hallway with all the gym supplies. One of the girls brought out the cart of volleyballs, and we all started hitting them around.
It was dark in the gym, and it was all chaos as the girls were running around and playing. The next thing I knew, a ball was heading for my face. I shot up my hand and it smacked perfectly into my left ring finger. It hurt like hell, and I screamed. I’m pretty sure some of the other girls laughed.
(A/N: I am telling this story with as much honesty as I can. But I’m only human. And my brain has forgotten most of the specifics in order to protect me. I’ll do my best.)
I exited the room to find someone who could get me ice, and I came across the nurse. I told her what had happened, and she came into the room, and told us all to go back to the main gym and await our teacher. The animosity toward me grew as I ruined their fun and got singled out as a narc.
Two girls had it out for me especially, Alannah and Libby. They spread rumors that I had a crush on a boy named James, and he stopped talking to me because of it. They said I was a crazy Mormon because I was from Utah. I’m sure there were more that people didn’t have the balls to say to my face. If they could make it up, it was disseminated throughout the school.
Then it got worse.
PART TWO: The Incident
One day, September 21st I think, it all came to a head. It started at lunch.
There were always long lines, so I waited there early with a book when Ari and the other girls on my team crowded around me. They told me, arms crossed in sync, that I better not screw up the game. I told them it wasn’t me they had to worry about.
It seemed dramatic at the time. It ended when they told me that I “better be fucking ready” before leaving me be.
I hadn’t really stood up for myself to them before. I had usually taken the high road, which meant I just ignored them. Telling them off made me feel powerful.
Before the bus ride to the game, Coach Sarah told us that the seventh grade coach had to bail on the seventh grade game. So she would take over as the coach for both games, meaning we had to stay for an extra hour. We all groaned, and probably said something akin to “Fuckin’ sevvies.”
The bus ride to Denver was uneventful. I had my Nook and an iPod Touch. I was set to ignore all my teammates.
The eighth graders played first. We lost, fairly epically. I think 7-21. Then the ten of us had to wait around. Only one teammate, another decent athlete named Meaghan, left early, her parents picking her up.
The gym was set up in an odd way. It was huge, and the bleachers were flush against the volleyball court right in the middle of the gym. It created this barrier to the other half, and in this free half, the eighth graders sat.
I settled myself up against the wall, with my e-Reader and music. All I remember is looking up, and seeing my other teammates staring at me with mischievous glints in their eyes, sharing glances with each other.
I’ve told this story before. Countless times. It always tears me apart to do it, but keeping it silent hurts more. I want everyone to know what happened to me.
The specifics are blurry. As the years go by, the less I remember. But there are details that I will probably always carry with me.
There were eight of them: Ari, Alannah, Elise, Libby, Annie, Brittany, Sam and Morgan. They were in a semi-circle across from me, and they kept trying to get my attention. They took my Nook, but I got it back. All I wanted to do was read.
I feel like things had to escalate, but I don’t remember how it started. The first round of questions were pretty normal. Who did I have a crush on? And Had I even been kissed? They coerced me into saying who I would have a crush on if I did. They asked which girl would I have a crush on if I did. They said something about the underworld, and goats, and boys from California having big dicks.
Then they got into the gritty stuff.
Have you ever been molested? Have you ever molested anybody? Have you ever been raped? Have you ever raped anybody? I rape people, it’s okay.
Ari said that last sentence. I will never forget the manic way she said it, eyes wide and grin like a cartoon villain. It was the most fucked up thing I’ve ever seen.
They accused me of sleeping with the drama teacher, because I was his favorite (I shouldn’t have to say this but of course I didn’t sleep with him those sick, sick girls). They told me that they knew what hell was and had I ever been? And that they’d known of a girl who slept with one of the boys in the grade on the Boulder Country Club golf course and regretted it so much she told everybody she lost her virginity to a pen.
A few more questions, a few more answers. I don’t remember much of these details.
This entire time (twenty minutes? thirty minutes? who knows) the Coach did not check on us. Every once in a while, I’d hear cheers from the bleachers. It reminded me there was still a whole game happening while this was occurring.
Then they left me alone. I don’t remember what they parted with, but it was fairly unassuming And I’d felt oddly relieved. They went off to the nearby doorway on the far side of the gym. I went to grab my iPod to listen to music and tune this all out, but it was gone.
I checked around everywhere, and it wasn’t there. I instantly knew they’d taken it.
I stomped over to where they were standing. “Give me back my iPod,” I demanded.
“What iPod?” They playfully grabbed at themselves in the blue and white Dawson uniforms, “proving” that they didn’t have it. I don’t even want to think about where they stashed it.
I rolled my eyes and left, but I hung around the corner so I could eavesdrop. I heard them murmur in frustration as they bitched about the fact I had a passcode on the device. I shudder to think about what they would have done with it had they been able to open it.
I heard one of them whisper, “Shit, just give it back” and then Brittany rounded the corner and nearly bumped into me from where I was standing. I did not cower at being caught, because I had caught them in the act.
Because Brittany was holding my iPod Touch, with the transparent green case.
“This was kicked over here,” She lied, not looking me in the eye.
Me, in my infinite wittiness, said, “Sure” and went back to my spot against the wall. I thought it was over, but the next time I looked up they had sat around me again.
It was like a cage. I spent the next few years wondering what I should’ve done. What would have gone differently if I had screamed. If I had tried to break through. I know it’s pointless to ask these questions, but it consumed me for about a year. What could I have done to save myself?
The questions this “round” got worse, and more graphic, and I got more and more uncomfortable. Especially since Brittany had gotten ahold of the team’s water bottles, and would squirt water at me every once in a while. (I told her to stop repeatedly, but she would just giggle this creepy little heheheheh and then keep going. I gave up trying to stop. It was just water, but it was dehumanizing.)
The one question that shakes me up to this day is the question, “Have you ever been fingered?”
I was 13-years-old. I had no idea what that meant. Admitting that felt like social death. But I was good at inferring things, and I assumed it meant getting flipped off.
So I said, “Of course.”
Of all that happened to me at this time, this is the only part that makes me laugh with the gift of hindsight. Jesus, can you imagine a freshly teenage girl saying she’d of course been fingered?
The looks they gave me were of astonishment, and some were impressed. That was honestly kind of cool, I didn’t inspire that reaction much.
“Really?” Ari said. “Who did it?”
I recalled a specific time someone had given me the bird, “Someone at summer camp.”
The girls shimmied their shoulders and oohed in a chorus. “I don’t get what the big deal, hasn’t it happened to everybody?”
To Sam, it clicked. “Wait. What do you think fingering is?”
“Isn’t it this?” I showed them my middle finger.
The awe turned to cackling condescension. One of them, Alannah I think, laughed and said something like, “No you idiot, it’s this.”
And then she did the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life:
She cupped her hand, turned over so the palm faced the floor. She took her fingers of her other hand, and aggressively swiped them up and down the surface repeatedly.
The visual kicked in, and I reacted instinctively.
“Eugh!” I cried out, nearly gagging, pressing myself as far against the wall as I could as they laughed at me. “That’s what that is?” They laughed at me some more, and they moved on. More questions, more Brittany squirting me with water.
They took pictures of me, and some I even posed for. They kept telling me to make faces. I did. I didn’t refuse to answer a single question they asked me.
By the end of it, one side of my hair was dripping wet, the other dry. Finally, Coach Sarah came to collect us. The seventh graders either won or lost their game. Fuckin’ sevvies.
“Did you girls have fun?” She asked.
I don’t remember what I said.
“Sit with us on the bus ride back,” They told me as we all grabbed our stuff.
The thing I have no memory of is the bus ride back to Dawson’s campus. All I remember is how pathetic it felt, even at the time, to want them to like me, to have the proof of them inviting me to sit in the back of the bus with them.
It felt like a good step. Of all the decisions I made over the course of my eighth grade there, this is the one I regret the most. I was so stupidly eager.
They talked about rumors that weren’t about me, and weird superstitions. There were no questions. It felt like I’d survived a hazing ritual, and I’d survived.
Or had I? (Dramatic chord).
PART THREE: The Aftermath
I always thought the I feel dirty thing after an assault was a cliche. But after the game, I truly felt slimy. I felt like someone had doused me with oil I couldn’t get off, when all I had been covered with was water.
Even more shocking, I was quiet. This is a major red flag. I’m usually always ready to talk. But when my mom picked me up from the school, I barely said anything.
She asked me about the game, because she likes hearing about my day. I didn’t tell her everything, just some of the stuff that was said, and not even the worse. It was enough to set her off. The following morning, she told me she’d make an appointment to talk to Dawson’s head of the eighth grade school after classes that day. I didn’t see the big deal, but I agreed.
I was walking to my Spanish 2 class, one of my respites from the other kids in my grade, when all the girls who’d assaulted me came up to me. Ari even went for a hug, her arms spread wide, as she jogged up towards me.
I jolted backwards, and I’m sure my eyes were bugged out in fear. They’d never touched me before, why were they doing it now? Had I passed some hazing? Did they know I was about to get them in trouble?
Ari didn’t touch me after seeing my reaction, she just awkwardly dropped her hands. They all tried to get me to go along with something, but I don’t remember what. I told them no. I went to class.
After class, instead of going to gym, I reported to the main office. It was time for my tell-all moment. (Well, pre this one.)
There were three adults there beside my mother. There was Mr. Hansen, my homeroom adviser and history teacher. He was really cool and manic, it was always a jolt to have him in class. I still remember his lessons, even when I don’t remember any other facets of my academics from that year.
There was the school counselor, a woman’s whose name I don’t remember. She was useless.
Then there was Mrs. Hess (I think?) the head of the eighth grade. There was, not in that meeting, Mr. Johnson, the head of the middle school. But just Hess was there.
It was oddly reminiscent of what I had just gone through. I sat on the sofa in the counselor’s office, my mother on the other side of the sofa. On her left was Mr. Hansen in his own chair. On his left was Mrs. Hess in her own chair. On her left was the guidance counselor at her desk, hands folded over a sheet of paper to take notes. On her left was me.
I was once again locked in a semicircle.
“Tell them everything,” My mom told me.
So I did. Back then, I obviously remembered everything. I spared no detail. Everything and more of what you’ve already read, I spoke to those four people.
It didn’t occur to me that this wasn’t normal until I saw their reactions. Hess looked terrified, as if she saw the future lawsuits. The counselor looked appalled. Hansen looked like he had the wind knocked out of him.
The worst reaction was seeing my mother’s reaction. I had never seen her cry before, and she burst into tears as I got into what happened the previous night at the volleyball game (after including everything as early as the first week of school). I stopped and kept apologizing, “Mom, I’m so sorry.” All I wanted was for her to stop crying.
Her tears turned to fury as she looked to the members of the Dawson faculty. “You have to fix this, this isn’t okay,” She snapped at them.
Hansen gave her tissues, and my mom cleaned herself up. “We demand action be taken,”
“We can assure you that there will be consequences,” Hess reassured placidly. “We just can’t tell you what they will be.”
“Excuse me?”
“We must protect them too,” Hess said. “It’s not fair if you know the disciplinary action taken against them, it violates their rights.”
WHAT ABOUT MY RIGHTS? I wanted to scream. But I didn’t.
“Why?” My mom demanded, and I don’t remember their answer.
All they assured us then was that the girls were going to get punished, but that we couldn’t know how. I don’t remember if Coach Sarah ever suffered a reprimand for leaving fifteen school girls unattended in Denver. I wouldn’t be surprised if not.
We went out to dinner, and I kept apologizing to my mom, and she kept hugging me. I called my dad, who worked out of state, what happened. He told me he hoped I was okay, and that he was thinking of me.
The next day wasn’t that different. It was the calm before the storm.
Apparently, the administrative process that day went like this: they brought in all the girls I accused. In the meeting I had with the same four people the following day, they said that my bullies admitted easily that they’d done what I’d accused.
“Isn’t that great?” The counselor had asked after she told us the news.
“No,” My mom said obviously, sitting so close to me she was practically glued. “You don’t need that to punish them, my daughter’s testimony is enough.”
“You’re right,” Mr. Hansen said. “But it does make things easier.”
I couldn’t agree.
I didn’t know this at the time, but they had also brought in every girl in the eighth grade and told them the entirety of my report. Soon, it felt like the entire middle school knew what had happened with me at the volleyball game.
When this came out, my mom was furious. She demanded why. Apparently, they needed to confirm the story that I was being bullied, and they needed to check if any other girls were involved and in what capacity.
Sometimes, it doesn’t hit me how much of my assault was planned. At least by the lunchtime of that day, the girls knew they wanted to mess with me after that game. How much did they plan? Why put so much effort there?
The next day, during break, all of the bullies went up to me. They did not look pleased to see me, and the feeling was mutual. Once again, I jolted backwards at their approach.
“We’re sorry for the game,” They all said at once, most of them rolling their eyes.
“Thanks,” I said. I did not accept any apology, because I make it a creedance to not accept bullshit apologies. They walked away, and I could tell they felt absolved.
The weirdest thing, oddly enough, was Meaghan’s subsequent reaction. Meaghan, if you remember, had left the game after. She never bullied or assaulted me.
After the forced apology by my bullies, Meaghan led me aside, and she said, “I am so sorry.”
I said, “What for?” But mostly I was shocked by the genuine apology.
“I knew they were going to do something,” She said. My eyes went wide, and she was quick to explain, “I didn’t know what but they kept saying they were going to do something to you after the game.”
“It’s okay,” I told her, even though it wasn’t. Her eyes had started to water. “I forgive you, it’s not your fault.” That, I believed, because it was true.
I don’t think the conversation ended there, but it was nice to hear someone take responsibility for what happened to me, even though it was misplaced.
It should have been over.
PART FOUR: The Survival
There’s a BoJack Horseman quote that I like nowadays, when I start to struggle.
It gets easier. Every day, it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier
And this is true. But it’s also true that you can’t heal in the same place that broke you. I had to go to school every day with the same people that assaulted me.
Because of Dawson’s stellar detective skills, they all knew every detail of what happened. There was no secret: I was the narc. I was a walking target.
My parents and I considered taking me to another school. The only one close by was a public school, and instead of taking 9th grade classes, they were going to insist that I take 7th grade classes, because I had not taken U.S. Geography. (Fun Fact: if you move around a lot, and go to three schools in three years, you learn that all have wildly different requirements for your education, and you will be both vastly under and over qualified for everything.) Plus, it was the first week of October, and it’s such an awful time to transfer schools.
I don’t remember it really being a discussion of the fact I’d finish the year at Dawson. I didn’t want the embarrassment of taking seventh grade classes, though now I kind of wish I’d bitten that bullet instead of staying at Dawson, with the option of me switching to the other middle school for the spring semester if necessary.
I knew I’d attend a different high school. My parents and I decided I could survive the year at Dawson.
We weren’t wrong, but it certainly wasn’t easy.
I started becoming suicidal. Not in the way I actually wanted to die, I just wanted to stop going to school. I wanted to stop going to Dawson. If killing myself was the only way to do it, I considered it. But I never ever got close.
That year, the book 13 Reasons Why was popular. Unrelated to my suicidal ideation, I started to read it. One of the teachers reported me to the counselor, and she basically coerced it out of me that I was suicidal, but tried to shift it so I was feeling it at my last school and therefore not Dawson’s fault. She called my mother in, and I made my mother cry again with this news. I started going to therapy, which was useless and not worth repeating, but it was nice to just have someone listen to me without judgment every week for a few months.
The month of October was the hardest, because what had happened to me was the latest gossip. The new girl had caused eight students to get suspended. What a bitch.
Even though I wasn’t supposed to know their punishment, each of the girls would circle up outside of the classes we had together and talk about it, loud enough to make sure I’d hear. I learned early on that each of them had been suspended for one day, and that it rotated each week. For example, let’s pretend the first week Ari got suspended, then the next week, it was Alannah. None of them were suspended at the same time. I also believe they each got a week’s detention, but I’m not sure.
My drama teacher, that I’d so admired, stopped talking to me because of the rumor the girls spread about us sleeping together. I was devastated, because that class was the only one I could actually enjoy, since it didn’t have homework. I ended up transferring to art instead, and that was fine, but I missed acting.
I woke up every day and begged my mother to let me skip. I would cry, Please don’t make me go. I think even once, I called her a bad mom for making me go. I came home crying every day. I gained maybe ten pounds in depression weight, eating my feelings until I was blessedly numb.
To my mom’s credit, she never let me ditch. She said I had to get through it. That I couldn’t let the bastards get me down. She made the right call, because it would have reflected poorly on me if I had an awful attendance record when I went to my new school. Because if I had ditched one day, I wouldn’t have been able to go back.
I found ways to cope.
I dressed in all black every day, like an angsty bitch, and I did my homework. I went to my classes. I did nothing but read, book after book, at lunch, in homeroom, during other classes. I found little ways to survive. I listened to Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony on repeat. I watched a lot of teen dramas, Dawson’s Creek being one of my favorites to this day. I watched a lot of 70s kid TVshows, like Brady Bunch. I made myself get excited for little things.
There were some positives. People stopped talking to me directly. I’m sure there were rumors, but they never even reached me. Even though they surrounded me, every day I cared less and less about them.
But they still found ways to try to belittle me.
Their favorite method was when I had to give speeches. In the back, they’d laugh at me as I tried to speak. I have a bit of a lisp, and when I gave these speeches I’d um and uh and stammer my through it, watching as they laughed at me and the faculty did nothing. Morgan, especially, would cackle in the back of every room. For years, I couldn’t speak in public without a panic attack.
There’s a specific memory that sometimes rears its ugly head. In the theater class, we played a game where we stood in a line on the stage. One person was selected to stand apart, and then the lights would turn off. I don’t remember the rules, but the selected person had to successfully find someone in the dark, and if they grabbed them, they had to make animal noises and run around. If they grabbed a person already making animal noises, they had to switch to a different animal. I think. I don’t recall this very well, but touching was a very key element.
One, sometime after my assault, we played it. I don’t even remember who played it as the selected person, or their gender even.
All I remember is someone grabbing my chest, the only word apt enough to describe the action was a “honk”. I think I snapped an indignant “Hey!” and their hand fell away. I’d like to hope they were reaching for my shoulder, but you don’t honk a shoulder.
Obviously, Dawson had systemic issues with boundaries and sexual harassment. I hope they don’t play that there anymore.
The entire year of eighth grade, we had anti-bullying seminars every week. As a segue, I hate anti-bullying programs. They’re so shallow, they don’t do anything to attack the root causes of bullying. It’s all cosmetic nonsense so the school can pretend it did something. Especially the way Dawson did them.
One of my sister’s friends’ mom on the PTA decided to make me her cause célèbre, because she liked pretending she was a good person. She organized all these events every week to draw attention to the fact that bullying was wrong. All it ever did was give these sociopathic kids another thing to mock and get me more negative attention. Everyone knew the reason they had to sit through this dumbass things was because of me. So thanks a lot, PTA Board.
Again, it’s hard to be mean. I know they truly meant well. But if you ask any survivor of bullying, they will tell you that anti-bullying assemblies are more detrimental than helpful.
Especially since, like I mentioned at the beginning, it was 2010-2011. The focus was on cyberbullying, because we were seeing the real life consequences that the victims were suffering. No one knew how to handle my assault, and they didn’t try. It wasn’t online, there was no proof.
The fish bowl effect of Dawson was very encompassing of my entire Colorado experience at first. The only people I knew in Colorado were the people who had assaulted me or were complicit in my assault. I had no other options.
I joined the school’s weight lifting class instead of taking a sport. It was the smallest class because it didn’t have a team, and there were only four of us. I loved it. I was the only girl, so I didn’t have to see my classmates.
But then Ari joined the class, and I was stuck with her again.
I wouldn’t call myself a violent person, but I’d never wanted someone to see someone hurt so much before. I would fantasize about her dropping a weight on her foot, so she had to stop going to class and then she could leave me alone. I never wanted to hurt her, I just wanted her away from me.
But then I just got tired. It’s so exhausting being hateful, I don’t know how people do it. I gave up being resentful, and we got to talking. It wasn’t friendship, or even being allies, it was just two gym buddies.
It got easier in tinier ways.
I became friends with the high schoolers in my classes. I never knew if they knew about my “scandal” but they seemed to like me. They were nice. But it was only during those classes, I was on my own in the middle school building.
Meaghan would always team up with me for science projects. That was the only class we’d have where she’d work with me. Mostly, she politely ignored me, which I understood. I felt no need to drag her down with me.
Fiona, the only other eighth grader in my Spanish 2 class, basically told me that she could only be friends with me in the class. That was fine with me too. I was that desperate for interaction. Plus, I understood. She was in Summer and Nina’s clique. Ari’s clique was crumbling at the seams, but theirs was getting stronger. Nina hated me for reasons that escape me, so I didn’t blame Fiona.
Sometimes, the boys in the class would talk to me. But they were “dating” (I use quotes because middle school relationships don’t count as anything) most of the girls who bullied me, so they stayed away. They were the ultimate, douchey lacrosse boys, so nothing lost there.
Seriously, I can’t stress that enough. Of the 25 or so boys in the grade, ten of them were named Alex. It was so preppy we had to call them all by their last names. Even I wasn’t desperate enough to talk to them more than I had to.
Somewhat regrettably, I became friends with James, Brittany and Ari. It was a weird friendship that only existed on school grounds. I never felt safe, or welcome, but it was good to talk to people. For so long, I’d been treated like scum. I wanted people to be my friends, and I had no other options for friendship. It was a dilemma: be friends with awful people or be friends with no one. I’m not sure I made the right decision.
I kept on surviving, through the little things. I celebrated my 14th birthday at that school. I don’t remember a single thing about it.
It was finally getting better.
Then of course came the Winterim.
PART FIVE: The Winterim
Put simply, an Alexander Dawson School Winterim is the epitome of white, upper-middle-class bullshit. The week before Spring Break, students entered a lottery system in order to pick a great travel opportunity to “help” a poorer country.
That year, the best option for middle schoolers was the choice to go to Costa Rica. I had been to Belize the year before, and I loved Central America. I was so excited to go back. But not with my bullies.
I’ll admit this: the lottery was after the incident. As perhaps (in hindsight) a point of bribery, the school gifted me with #2 option of the whole eighth grade for picking my country. Without hesitation, I chose Costa Rica.
I had hoped by causing such a disciplinary issue, the girls wouldn’t be allowed to go.
But they were.
I could’ve opted out of the trip, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to go to Costa Rica. I wanted to go white water rafting. I wanted to plant trees, and go on a night walk, and all the other stuff on the itinerary. For me, it seemed the obvious solution was to ban my bullies from attending, but the school just couldn’t bear losing that money. So they were going.
I acknowledge this is very much a privileged problem. The money could have been better spent, but I wanted to go to Costa Rica, and I wasn’t as politically conscious as I keep working to be now. So let’s consider the point acknowledged, but if there’s an issue, comment below.
Ari was the only one of my bullies who wasn’t going. Even though we were the closest of the bullies, which is odd to admit even now, I was relieved. But I still had the others to contend with.
The weeks leading up to the trip, the spring semester, were uneventful. I kept up my other survival methods, I turned 14, and I kept my mouth shut.
There 14 of us with two chaperones on a weeklong trip in a foreign country. My mom, who went to bat for me when she found out they were still allowed to attend the trip, insisted that I wouldn’t have to share a room with them.
My mom had told me that one of the women at the Country Club was the mother of this girl, Grace. Grace’s mom had the nerve to tell my mother that her daughter had become “the new (me).” Grace was being bullied now because they couldn’t make fun of me anymore.
I probably should have had more sympathy for Grace. But when my mom told me what Grace’s mother said, I was pissed.
Grace hadn’t been sexually assaulted. Grace hadn’t been ostracized. Grace hadn’t become a pariah. Grace wasn’t so scared to attend school that she would vomit, once to the point of blood.
But looking back, there was something almost worse about what she was going through. Obviously not as bad, but it can’t be fun to have your friends suddenly turn on you. I didn’t know the girls when they showed their true colors. It hurt, but it wasn’t a betrayal.
I don’t recall much of the trip. Mostly, honestly, I tried not to let them ruin it and to have fun. It was beautiful, Costa Rica is a stunning place.
I remember after our flight landed, we heard the news about the tsunami in Japan. The high schooler’s most popular Winterim to Tokyo was derailed to Disney World, which we knew because that’s where Libby’s older sister was going. No one on the Dawson side was hurt.
I remember planting trees, and playing soccer (“football”) with locals. One of the kids, two years younger than us, could do the most amazing bicycle kick. It was fun.
There was a night walk, and I only remember the mosquito bites.
I remember ziplining through the trees. I got teamed up with one of the company’s official guides, and he kept spinning me. It was pure exhilaration, and I never wanted to stop.
I know I had to go white water rafting, since it was one the itinerary. I think I fell in the water. Even though it’s one of my favorite activities I don’t do enough, I don’t remember it at all.
I remember the second day, seeing Brittany crying by the hotel’s phones because she couldn’t reach her family. All the other people were making fun of her for being “such a pussy.” I went to her side and said she could call them later that night. She said she was homesick now. I gave her some tips on beating homesickness. I thought we’d get closer, but mostly I felt utilized.
But it wasn’t all good.
I had to share the same room with my bullies two out of the three hotels where I was supposed to never have that happen. Shows what a Dawson promise is worth.
Each night we shared a room, I was afraid they’d touch me, I feared it was the next step, as I slept. I didn’t care about the rumors, I could survive that. But being touched was something I wasn’t sure I could handle.
To this day, I don’t know if they did. Which is terrifying. But the worst it ever actually got was them spreading rumors I talked in my sleep. (I just leaned into it, and kept referencing it until it stopped being funny to them.) The fact it’s a possibility is fucked up.
I remember the last night before our flight, we were in a nice hotel room. It was huge, which meant they shoved all of us together. I got an air mattress on the floor. Three girls shared the bed. Two slept on cots, and one just slept on sofa, and one slept on the floor. I think, the logistics escape me.
I was afraid to fall asleep as they all gossiped for ages. They talked about cute boys. I tilted into the conversation, because I pathetically wanted to be involved.
And I was afraid if I fell asleep too early, I would commit the sin of the “slumber party” and I didn’t want to know what these girls would do to me.
The flight back to the U.S. we all had three rows to ourselves to sit however we’d like. Grace was sitting in the window seat, alone in a row,and I remember the other girls saying “Ugh, I would hate to sit next to her” and giggling.
I sat next to her, and we played the easiest card game, War. We talked about nothing memorable, and we laughed because we couldn’t sleep on planes.
For the first time, I became hopeful for a friendship with one of these people. That she might be willing to team up. If she was really the “new me”, then she got it. We could band against it and not be alone.
It was late at night when I got back to my house from the airport, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But my family had something important to show me. It was Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” It had just gone viral. I sat through the whole thing, and then I went to bed.
The week after spring break, everything was exactly the same. Just as bad as it was before.
PART SIX: The Homestretch.
I don’t know if it was the depression or the adversity skills I was building up, but things stopped phasing me. Suddenly, it was April. Only one more month of school.
The eighth graders had a camping trip on the last week of classes. I refused to go, citing “finals” which was true, because my high school classes had final exams. I spent the break (when I didn’t have the exams) at home watching TV with my mom and my dog, since my sister was in class and my dad was at work. It was like being sick, but actually being free. It was a little taste of my life Post-Dawson, and it was the perfect thing to get me through the home stretch.
One day, during weightlifting near the end of the semester, I asked Ari why she assaulted me. We were jogging up the school’s hill. Looking back, she was so much more athletic than me, and she kept pace with me to talk to me. It was an odd gesture, as we talked about something so viscerally polarizing between us.
Everyone knew she orchestrated the whole thing, and she didn’t deny it then. She said she’d been bullied before, and wanted to make sure it happened to someone who wasn’t her. I asked her why bully me in the first place, since she knew how it felt.
And you want to know the craziest thing?
I don’t remember her answer.
Because it doesn’t matter.
Her reasoning for destroying my trust, and for giving me PTSD and for assaulting me doesn’t fucking matter. She has no depth. She has no sympathy. She’s a cruel human being, all of them are. I hope nothing but awful things happen to them for the rest of their meaningless lives. Is that cruel of me to wish? Probably. Is it as cruel as what they’d done to me? Not even close.
The end of the year, I felt so much relief. I’d passed all my classes, and I hadn’t killed myself. It felt like a victory.
Alannah and Libby demanded my signatures in yearbook one day during the end of the year pep rally.
Sometimes, I wish I had smacked the book in their faces, kind of like in Moonlight. I wish I had told them to go fuck themselves.
I did nothing like that. I signed their books. I think I said “HAGS.” Without the periods, so they could infer it was an insult and not an acronym.
There was no epic throwdown between me or any of the girls. There was no catfight. There was no moment when some boy took me in his arms and told me I was beautiful the way I was. No one who wasn’t my family ever said that I didn’t deserve to go through that. There was no beautiful moment. I had to keep surviving anyway.
PART SEVEN: The Reunion
Before I get to the ending-ending, I’ve run into four people from Dawson in the almost ten years since I’d left the school. The first was my teacher, the one who quit on my behalf. I know she did this, because she told my mother at the last parent-teacher conference.
I thought it was a nice gesture, but she’d only been teaching there that year. She wasn’t a pillar of the faculty. And I couldn’t recall a single time she’d tried to offer me support as I struggled and clawed my way through surviving that year. She just quit a toxic school for her own sake and pretending it was political.
I ran into her the next year, my freshman year of high school. My best friend at the time was a ballet dancer, and her daughter was in the same performance. I felt so awkward, because no one likes seeing teachers outside of school. And also because it was the first time, so close after (only six months after the school year had ended), the wound was raw. I was speechless.
It was awkward. I don’t remember what she said. It was polite. I don’t remember what I said. But overall, it was harmless. It felt like a victory. I did it.
This wasn’t a visual sight, but around this time, I heard from my mom that one of my bullies, Annie, had been “sent to boarding school across the country.” When I didn’t seem enthused at this news, my mom clarified for me that that’s code for “rehab.” I know it’s petty to revel in someone’s misfortune, and addiction is truly awful, but I did a little happy dance at the time. It was good to know she was suffering, like I had been forced to suffer.
The second was at my place of work, and this one hurt the most. I got a job at a bookstore two years later and when I was about to do my work in one of the shopping areas, I saw one of the girls from my grade then, Lulu.
Lulu wasn’t even directly antagonistic to me. She just treated me like I didn’t exist, she didn’t even talk shit about me ever (to my knowledge). But seeing her sucked the breath out of me.
I bolted to the office where I worked, and nearly begged my manager if I could wait ten minutes instead of doing the assignment then. My manager, an ever understanding ray of light, easily agreed, but I could tell she didn’t understand why I’d started shaking.
I waited until she was gone, and then I did my work. I haven’t seen her since, but I remember that visceral slice of shock. I honestly didn’t think any of those girls could read.
The next was the homeroom adviser, Mr. Hansen, at a Target. I was seventeen, and had just been accepted to the college of my dreams. I had been walking on air, and seeing him felt like the cloud 9 had popped. But then he beamed when he saw me.
Unlike the other teacher, I always felt like he was in my corner. I think it helped to have him hear my story. I remember the way he had sort of manspread in his chair, and his head was hung. Like he was weighed down knowing what had happened to me at the school. If I had ever asked to not give a presentation, he let me, knowing that people made fun of me. When I didn’t speak in class, he didn’t force me to participate. If I wanted to sit in the classroom instead of the lunchroom, he let me. He treated me with a bit more care, but not like I was damaged.
This was honestly a good moment, even if it drudged up some stuff, because he genuinely looked so happy to see me doing well, and to hear about my college prospects.
The most recent was the most insane. I was 20, it was seven years after the assault, and out to pizza with my close group of friends in Fort Collins. There was a girl working the counter, and she looked so familiar.
The summer after Dawson, I went to a volleyball camp, and I thought she was from there. I asked her if we knew each other, because she looked familiar. “Is your name” And then I got her name wrong. “Did we got to volleyball camp together? 2011?” I asked.
She looked very uncomfortable, her smile tight-lipped. “Um. No.”
I couldn’t place her, and turned to my friends, laughing. Then she said, “Actually, I went to Dawson.”
And it clicked. There was Libby.
And I felt my heart stop, and my face fell.
My friends didn’t know why I had stopped talking, but I pulled myself to order. We all sat down in a far corner, and I told them she was one of the girls who’d assaulted me. (I had told them two years prior.)
Sara, one of my dear friends, glared in her direction. “What a bitch!” She rarely swore, so this was a delight.
Katie asked me if I was okay. I insisted I was, but I asked if they could pick up my pizza so I wouldn’t have to go back up there. They said of course, and Lei and Shauna worked hard to distract me. And soon, I fell back into the groove with my friends. The thought of her didn’t bother me for the rest of the night.
When we were walking back, I called my mom and told her what had happened. And she told me I’d won that little reunion. Because I didn’t remember her, and she’d remembered me. It was like one of those moments in TV shows or movies where someone returns to their school reunion, and they get to be the winner.
It was nice to win.
(As I was writing this, I googled Ari and Alannah’s full names out of morbid curiosity. Alannah’s twitter is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, and it gave me a bit of pause, but I moved on. I then found Ari in an article about Black Lives Matter at her school. I know I said earlier that she’s not redeemable, and she isn’t, but it’s nice to see she’s doing good for once. I am pleased to report that looking at her didn’t cause me pain.)
PART EIGHT: The Ending
Eight years after the incident, I’m in my last year of college. I’ve come very far. Every September, I get “anniversary flashbacks” and everything comes rearing back. I got officially diagnosed with PTSD my sophomore year of college, and that’s been a nice label to have honestly, to know I’m not alone. I’m working through it. I get panic attacks when I’m in a group of women, which isn’t very fun because who doesn’t love girls? Thanks to my college’s speech class, I got over my fear of public speaking. Things are good.
I don’t think of Colorado as “the place where I was assaulted.” I think of the mountains. I think of my family. I think of my dog. I think of my friends, the things I learned, the people I met, the opportunities I earned, the food I’ve eaten, the jokes I’ve laughed at, the dumb shit I did. But I do also think of my assault. It’s not always perfect.
I still carry it with me. I wish I don’t. I wish I knew how to stop. Every September, I get depressed, then every October I get better.
It took me a long time to decide the nomenclature of the incident. For a while, years actually, I called it being “verbally sexually assaulted” and when people gasped, I always rushed to explain I hadn’t been touched. There’s no need to clarify it: I was sexually assaulted. I still don’t know the words to describe what the act of going through eighth grade was. It was systemic bullying every day.
My family considered suing the school, but decided against it because legal battles are always worse than what you’re suing people over (in our opinion). I never had to sign an NDA regarding this, so I’m allowed to say whatever I want.
I was looking through Boulder’s newspaper Boulder Daily Camera on Dawson. I can’t see any evidence of this incident being there, but I wonder if we should have reached out to them.
I wonder if anyone else at the school went through something like I did, and they didn’t speak up. Or if Dawson learned from their mistakes, and things are better there now. I hope for the latter.
I feel like these stories always end with a look at all the change that the school implemented after the incident. The only thing that changed was the new rule in the student conduct book stated that if students committed a disciplinary infraction, they waived their right to the lottery system for the Winterim. Doesn’t that just solve everything she wrote sarcastically.
Two teachers quit on my behalf. The head of the eighth grade, who sat in on my post-incident meeting, and the head of the middle school, Mr. Johnson who didn’t, were fired. (The article does not mention why, but you can be certain that it was because the school Massively Fucked Up the circumstances leading to my assault, and everything that happened after.)
The girls who bullied me suffered no consequences, other than a weak suspension and a week detention.
But I will say, living in the #MeToo Movememnt and Time's Up, I've felt so much hope for the future of sexual assault survivors. There will be justice. There will be consequences. I wish more people understood what it was like to speak up against such a personal, terrifying thing.
I wish this story had a moral. “Sometimes, awful things happen to you. And the people that cause those things don’t have any retributions.” Is that good enough? (I will say this, if you’re being bullied, tell someone at the school. They have to document it, and the worse it gets, it creates a precedent, and then you’re more likely to get protected. Be the narc. Never stop screaming.)
I also must acknowledge that I wrote this for the very selfish reason of I needed to do it. I hope that by writing this, and getting this out there on my terms, the pain hurts a little less and I don’t carry it as much. If you got this far, maybe you understand that.
I want to end this with somebody else’s words, because they resonate with me. And they help me when I struggle with my PTSD and my anxiety because of this year.
My mom told me this quote, as it became more and more of a constant battle to go to school each day. She said, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
Sometimes, that quote is the only thing that gets me through a day, because you can never let the bastards win. Through sheer pettiness if you have to, you cannot let anyone beat you down.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
Comments
Post a Comment