by Adven James
No point in sugar-coating it: junior high was a miserable experience. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but it is for this sci-fi reading, ferret-owning, RPG-playing, computer-loving, lame-at-sports, awkward-around-girls, acne-faced lump who is trying at all costs to avoid being noticed. There’s a guy like that in every class. And I am that guy — in every class.
Socially speaking, I have no illusions about myself. I know what I look like and how inept I am at everything. Kids in junior high get very creative with their labels. Sometimes their creativity impressed me, just before the sting of feeling like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I never got used to it. Not really ever.
“All I have to do is make it to high school,” I kept telling myself. The hope of a new beginning — free of torment and social isolation — made the summer after my 8th grade year one of the happiest of my life. I started running a little bit and liked it. Things were going to be different. I was sure of it…until…
Two weeks before school started I opened my e-mail and found an invitation to a Facebook page. I was too excited even to notice whose page it was…turns out it was mine. On the screen was my profile — only I didn’t make it. The page changed one letter in my name, but it was me. Someone had gotten a hold of some of the worst photos of me I had ever seen.
The wall already had a bunch of comments from kids at the high school I was heading to in days — people I hadn’t even met yet — that seemed to be pulled right out of my junior high hallways. I stopped reading after I got to, “I’m going to beat this kid senseless.” Even if I had wanted to keep reading, I couldn’t. My eyes had filled with tears. The next four years were going to be like the past three.
I kept my head down the first day of high school. I didn’t recognize anyone and hoped no one would recognize me. “Head down. Just get to class.” That was my mantra. I hoped for safety in math class. I’m good at math. There had to be people in math that liked the subject as much as I did.
The guy next to me seemed pretty into math and even more into his calculator app on his iPhone. I leaned over and told him about a skinnable calulator app that I had found earlier that month. He was impressed! Not only that, but he introduced himself to me. I told him about the small school I hailed from and how miserable it was. He said he knew exactly what I was talking about. For the first time — ever — someone understood me.
We decided to sit together at lunch. He said he would introduce me to a few of his friends. Friends! He had friends! This was the networking highlight of my young life. Until…I didn’t mean to sneak up on my new friend in the lunch room. I had just gotten good at being invisible. He was bragging to his friends about meeting me, the kid he made the joke Facebook page about. I overheard “…beat him senseless” as I slunk away.
He never did beat me senseless — at least not physically. Emotionally, mentally, socially — he beat me to a bloody pulp. He expanded the Facebook site to Twitter, Tumblr, and every other social media site where he could spread nicknames, insults, photoshopped pictures, and rumors as quickly and widespread as possible — name it, he did it. He was ruining what little life I had. He always greeted me with a smile in math class. I thought about making a big deal out of it — getting the authorities involved or something. But I felt too defeated to try. Everything was going to be exactly the same as junior high.
I got used to being alone. I embraced all the things I loved. Of course, these are the same things like being good at math and computers that put the bullseye on my head. I did my best to tune out the bullying.
Strangely enough, the more I let myself enjoy the things I loved, the more I started to meet people, who liked weird pets, sci-fi and RPGs, and building websites and computers. I met people who thought I was interesting — even funny. People who wanted to eat lunch together and hang out after school. People that helped me realize that maybe the public perception of me was lame and not the other way around.
I didn’t have a lot of friends. But they were good friends. I didn’t win any popularity contests or get pictured much in the year book, but I got something better. I got to enjoy who I was.