Dear Young Person:
I'm sorry some mean bully-type person found your journal.
I'm sorry they chased you around with it and read it out loud.
I'm sorry you were humiliated, watching your innermost thoughts and drawings be ripped out and
thrown into the wind.
I'm sorry that you feel like your life is over and you can never go back to school.
I know it feels like nothing is secret or safe, but it will be again, someday.
I know it doesn't help now, but eventually everyone will forget that you like Kyle.
I know it hurts, but eventually you will not think of it again until one day when you are 30, and you find some little girl's journal in the park and you remember how it felt.
If it makes you feel better, in the 5th grade, the Morin twins (Megan and Becky) tricked me on the playground; one of them picked me up over their shoulder and the other pulled my skirt over my head.
It is important that you "chin up" about this and know that you are a strong person. You must be; only strong people keep journals. Weak people just remember fun times and reminisce about them well into their adulthood, living in the past.
Most of those bullies will peak in highschool, and you will peak much later, for much longer.
Big picture, here, young person. In the long run, this will be a blip that you remember with some hurt, but you cannot let it define you or change who you are right now. Not all people are as horrible as elementary school kids.
Whatever they did to you, they did because they wanted to feel better about themselves by pushing you down; only you can let them make you feel bad. Be stronger than they.
Start a new journal; eviscerate them. Maybe keep it at home. Only you need to know about it.
Do not seek public revenge; that only makes you stoop to their level. Also, the likelihood that you will get in trouble rather than them is good.
Today's song of the day is for you. Actually, you get a playlist, little girl. You go.
PS: The butterfly song at the end might make you cry. It's good for you :)
I love the song of the day thing. Ever since you first put up "The Cave" it has been stuck in my head. That is a fabulous song.
ReplyDeleteAs always, I relished your blog tonight. I read the two most recent posts twice. You are unusually gifted; thank you for sharing with us.
It's been weeks and it's still in my head :) Their show on Memorial day weekend has been sold out forever...some other time :)
ReplyDeleteElle,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy what and how you write. Great wisdom for a little girl who's struggling with a long-term perspective when life sucks in the moment.
Rod
Great wisdom and writing. I am so sorry you were treated that way by the Morin twins. There are so many things you never told me (us)of things as you went through them and you suffered in silence, alone trying to make sense of things and doingit with your adolecent mind. I wish you had let us in onmore. In spite of it all, you have grown up and have learned a lot the hard way adn you now share your wisdom with others. I beleive things come into our lives and we have the choice to use them for good and to help other people. Love you!
ReplyDelete"And you snap ou of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not as long as there are plums to eat and somebody--anybody--who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens on pinches, only rolling abundance. That's how you acquire the resolution for survival that the upcoming years are about to demand. You don't give it. You earn it."
ReplyDelete— Mary Karr (Cherry: A Memoir)