One more forgiveness

While others sleep we kept walking on a tightrope, some of us fell– Shane Kayczan [1].

But I didn’t fall.

Maybe your way to hurt you didn’t imply wounds or pain, It was just leaving you disappear until there is no more of you. Maybe when I stop eating I was looking that, get rid of, let go that person I rejected and who couldn’t find a simple sense of permanence.

¿Incite vomiting, cut yourself, pull your hair out…? No, none. I just let me disappear, lost every day a little part of me until nothing has left.

Losing us. To disintegrate until we were only a vague and gray memory. I remember some of the phrases marked on me and for years there attack mi wellness, my relations and my own relation with myself.

Nobody is going to love you.

How you are going to have kids if nobody is going to date you.

Why are you so skinny.

When you fail in a test you are going to kill yourself.

Ugly.

Rare.

I remember I couldn’t even wear a hair clip for school. A hair clip was the end of the world. Any little change that attract attention was the end. It was the beginning of a wave of mockery, insults, laughter and contempt.

That account in a recognized social network that they upload, without my permission, with an unsuspecting photo and which only point was have a new place where shame me and prove the Little control that I have in my life. About myself. If this people laughed using my fake account with my picture and name, who was going to believe they didn’t had power about my self-perception.

One wound after another.

A poster in my place in the classroom full of phrases and jokes, which to this day I do not remember

But I remember the pain. Cutting.

Impotence. Impotence that I only can break that poster in a thousand pieces next to the trash bin. In the background a chorus of laughter and lost voices. Tears escaping when I got into my family is car.

The pain again. And why not asking myself ¿Why they do this to me? ¿What is wrong with me?

And the phrase of my teachers and principal keeps being the same. Cannot change from classroom, you have an excellent performance. ¿Why don’t you defend yourself? As if it was so easy to get out of the cell where I’ve been locked up since elementary school. Every day more locked up with each laugh. How to defend myself when I feel so small and insignificant. When the words don’t come out of my mouth, shaken and sink back into silent. How to defend yourself if you know that with every word that you say it became a new weapon. How to face that one day to another, as if it was easy to break a year’s cycle.

That phrases only served to reaffirm my position of inferiority, loneliness and no way out. For years I carried these memories, afraid that someone would laugh at me.

After years of that moment, a summer day I saw again this people close to the university. As if not even a day of school had passed, I shuddered, closed in on myself again and felt my body tremble with fear again. As if I didn’t heal that old injuries.

That is what you feel: fear. You are afraid to speak, to be yourself, to allow the change, to your body. Afraid to face the problem, to demand equal respect, to don’t let stepped on.

I felt crushed for months.

Locked in this box without scape, without understand how I finished there in the first place.

The body have memory. The eyes have memory. When I see somebody alone in a classroom at university, without a group and friends. When I see a little girl who trying to join to the talk of another two girls and don’t find her place. The effort, the dream of be part and integrate the team. I see myself in that girl.

And I feel that emptiness again. I realized that nothing change. Nothing change.

There is no certain and responsible process to work in this problem. Something who damaged infinitely to children, who keep hurts when they grow up and in unfortunate occasions, ends with people’s life. Doesn’t matter. At the news, after few days, you listen again this news.

7 of 10 children suffers bullying and other ways of escolar violence. Argentina is at the top of countries with more bullying and cyberbullying cases in all the world.

It is a silent enemy that thrives on loneliness, sadness and fear. Cause of more than 200000 deads in all the world [2].

Thrives of loneliness and fear. For that is such a big monster difficult to stop, is an endless cycle. You cannot see the exit, days pass, one after another. Starts to cry. To walk faster to avoid the laughs of children that walk behind you. Because you are afraid of their voice. Their voice intimidates you. You feel the need of run and hide, to become invisible.

But, sadly, you cannot became invisible.

You lower your head, mutter and avoid participating. You are heedful about the movement of others. Observe and prepare. Every day is a new war, where every single gunshot is for you.

More than 10000 boys and girls of the metropolitan area in Buenos Aires (AMBA) are afraid to go to school. [3].

Fear paralyses. You cannot walk or move on. You feel a giant knot inside of your body that don’t let the word get out and just provoke more nerves and exposure.

One year I stopped going to gym classes. In each one I was chosen last for the teams. I was not chosen either, they were forced to take the last option. I felt exposed. I felt exposed my body. My weaknesses. I felt useless. Unsuccessful .Not capable. And I stopped going because that hour tortured me, it made me nervous and I just wanted to leave through the same place where I had entered.

By being discriminated against, he begins to discriminate. Endorsed by viewers. Be an active and constructive observer. Listen when he says he wants to change schools [4].

Listen when she says she wants to change schools: They didn’t listen to me. Their answer was that everything is going to be the same or worst, because I did not know anybody in the new school. They told me to hold on, that it was going to be over soon. That I have great grades. But they didn’t pay attention to the most important, the underlying motive: I want to escape. I want to find a way out. Doesn’t matter if it was better or worse, I just want to have that chance.

It was also found that those who were in the upper tercile of bullying had a higher frequency of suicide risk [5].

Emphasizes the importance of depression as a mediator between bullying and suicidal behavior. Cyberbullying is a new form of expression of this phenomenon, with evidence in the development of depression and suicide, mostly in female adolescents. [6].

My way to hurt myself was different. I hate myself, I hate my hair, my body and my personality. I hate the idea of no match.

I never inflicted bodily injuries. One of my doctors said: Your way to hurt yourself was different, you stop eating, you give yourself permission to disappear, but that doesn’t mean you didn.t get hurt. It is the way. I hurt myself for many years.

I rebuilt my self-esteem from rubble, I built myself in all the pieces that were lying on the ground.

I look for me.

I look for my personality, my tastes, my qualities.

I look for my soul.

And to this day I’m still looking for it.

This essay is one part of that search.

It is one more step.

One more forgiveness.

…

Bibliography

[1] To This Day Project, Shane Koyczan, 02-19-2013.

[2] En Argentina 7 de cada 10 niños sufren bullying y otras formas de violencia escolar, Página 12, 05-02-2022. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/418943-en-argentina-7-de-cada-10-nines-sufren-bullying-y-otras-form

[3] Argentina: uno de los países con más casos de bullying y ciberbullying en el mundo, IP noticias, 07-05-2022. https://ipnoticias.ar/actualidad/17107-argentina-uno-de-los-paises-con-mas-casos-de-bullying-y-ciberbullying-en-el-mundo

[4] Bullying – Mati Cadaveira y Hugo, La Cruda con Migue Granados – Spotify podcast, 09-13-2022.

[5] Riesgo suicida asociado al bullying y depresión en escolares de secundaria, Revista chilena de pediatría SCIELO, 04-06-2018. https://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0370-41062018000200208&script=sci_arttext&tlng=pt

[6] Acoso escolar (bullying) como factor de riesgo de depresión y suicidio, Revista chilena de pediatría SCIELO, 06-2020. https://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0370-41062020000300432&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en