Where Did Malenie Come From?

By the time I was in 6th grade, I kinda didn’t want to go to school every day. By the time I was in 9th grade, I really didn’t want to go, and by the time I was in 12th grade, I dreaded going.

The problem was bullying.

In 6th grade I was awkward and was shy and read SFF when that was totally completely really uncool. I remember reading the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey and a boy telling me, You have to read that nothing book because you’re nothing, too.

By 9th grade, the insults were more pointed, the isolation sharper.

Sometime after that the threat of violence and actual violence started. Mostly, I was the collateral damage, like when my best friend was punched in the face or the skinheaded boy threatened us with a baseball bat, but that didn’t lessen the fear or the feeling of vulnerability. I was pushed into a locker or two. Followed down empty high school corridors.

It still makes my stomach hurt to write about these things.

Malenie jumped into my head, fully formed, defiant and raging, like me. Ready to fight back, unlike me. Surrounded by adults who didn’t see what was happening under their noses, like me. Finally finding her true friends (like me) and adults who did see and would help (unlike me). I had to become an adult to help myself, but Malenie helps herself, gloriously, as a girl.

A lot has changed since I was in school. There’s wasn’t as much awareness of bullying. The internet didn’t exist. And I didn’t tell anyone I was being bullied.

If you’re being bullied at school or at work (yes, it happens to adults at work too), ask for help. There are so many resources out there on the internet and people who are willing to help. It might be parents, but it might be an older friend, a teacher, a counselor, a coach, a priest/minister/rabbi/imam, a friend’s parent.