TO THIS DAY (A Gift OfTorment), Or Why The Word SLUT Makes Me Wig Out...

I watched the video about bullying entitled To This Day. It made me cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY&sns=em

I have C·PTSD from bullying & parochial school sexual abuses. The memories don't really gp away. still linger on the perimeters, shadowy threats, ethereal, but just tangible enough to make me nauseous and achy with a surprise external trigger, of which there are many.  They pop out of nowhere.

I was tormented for my appearance (seemingly) in grade 9. I was 13, very naive, bookish, nerdy, painfully shy, and socially awkward. I was, at that time, a devout Catholic, and had even thought about becoming a nun. I said my Rosary daily, I'd only learned about the Santa, The Easter Bunny & the Birds-&-Bees 8 months prior, and I was terribly excited to begin high school. I was (and am still) tall, & at that point I could have easily passed for 18. I was also aesthetically lovely, & told so frequently (as if I'd done anything in utero to influence my facial symmetry).

The first week was scary and exciting! I loved my classes, my teachers, my locker, and even my uniform. I received excessive & unexpected social attentions from males and females alike, and since my Catholic, primarily immigrant-Italian elementary school had responded to my English surname (a gift from a half-Italian/half-English dad) with disdain and shunning, I was a little overwhelmed...

By the following week I was labelled a Whore, a Slut, a Tramp, & the rumours flew. I'd SUPPOSEDLY found time to sleep with every football team in the region, steal away numerous boyfriends, and work as a prostitute.

I was Beaten, shoved, groped, chanted at, & a group of maybe 40 - 60 girls waited outside as one of them attempted 2 drag me outside to stab me, shave my head (kill me?).

The defacing of my locker was gruesome, and the janitor grew very annoyed with me because of my attracting such vile graffiti for him to clean (he stopped scrubbing by October).

I complained about the groping, at least, to the vilest administrator alive - SISTER BARBARA - and was assured that she knew these boys' families and they were all GOOD BOYS. I should take another route to class (yes, Even if it made me late for class), or to, better yet, curb my extracurricular "behaviours", as everyone knows that where there's smoke, there's fire, and she felt I was smoking up the school with my (purported) laciviousness.

My family home was invaded through the violating use of daily and nightly obscene and threatening phone calls, the ring causing my blood to freeze, my stomach to knot. I became jumpy and terrified. I never felt safe anymore. I lost interest in everything I'd once loved. I began to hate myself.

My attempt to run for student council had me up for two straight nights designing painstaking and gorgeous flyposts. I went in early to hang them, and by noon they were graphically and pervertedly defaced.

My parents lost some business in their hair salon (located in the front of our home) as some of the clients were also parents.  My mum spent that nightmarish 5 & 1/2 months in fear of the phone ringing during the day. "Amber's been in a fight/scuffle/detention all day," was common, and could have easily been replaced by "Amber's in hospital/been killed,".

My little brother got in fights cos of my "rep", 2 girls tried to push me down Steep cement stairs, older male students exposed' themselves to Me, & older male & female students yelled filthy things at Me, phrases I had never heard but soon became all to familiar with; their vile and taunting cries, their hurtful and hate-filled name calling - in the halls, on the school bus - I was kicked off the bus because the driver couldn't get them to stop it.

My mother had to pick me up directly from the door because there was always some gaggle of girls trying to trick me or lure me outside for a beating.

My grades slipped, I started binge eating, & then vomiting, and though it's Now commonly known of, I believed I had discovered a new technique to assuage my pain - cutting my arms. First with a disassembled Bic Shaver, and later with a mid-sized, sharpened safety pin, knowing that it's assuring presence in my hand meant an endorphin rush and a release from my everlasting present horror.

I sort-of dated one boy (more for a bodyguard than anything else) who broke up with me publicly the day after I ate dinner at his house (2 days into our dating) because his sister told his mother about me. He said he'd only wanted sex anyhow.

I got a horrible & 100% UN-deserved reputation as a "slut", I hid out in fields frequently during classes (by the end of the  first half of my first-&-only semester at That school - After which I changed schools entirely - I'd missed 84 individual classes), eventually taking my final exams separately (escorted there and back by my beloved Mother, my Rock through all this), nearly flunking them.

Upon switching schools & realising the reputation had followed me there too, I was forced to fight big groups of girls that I didn't even know but who surely seemed to know and despise me... I still have a scar on my eyebrow. Thank goodness my father, early on in this "situation", had taught me how to Box, and equipped me with some knowledge on making homemade weapons-Just In Case. Mind you, I'd been a pacifist 'til then, but when your actual Life is Endangered, turning the other cheek can prove to be impossible.

THESE TYPES of insecure, bullying, hate-filled, lost, & bitter souls who inspired the creating of the video TO THIS DAY, who inspired me to write THIS Blog - the angry, red-faced rabble of tormenting mobsters, always STILL ready to hurt me every time I go to sleep -They Had / Have yet to develop Empathy, & the ability to truly enjoy life, people, & the true beauty in the world (the sort that time CANNOT erase because it's an integral part of one' s psyche).

I can Never be without empathy nor sit idly by whilst a brother or sister is in pain.

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Amber Amber

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