Too Smart for my Own Good

Author’s Note:

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Here’s a monologue for you.  It’s something I think people should understand, and change.  It’s my attempt at non-sci-fi fiction.  The meaning behind it and the pain present for the character is what gives it a PG-13 rating. 

            I have gone to public school for twelve years.    I have plans for college and I love to read.  I’m not that abnormal, but for a very average looking girl, not very pretty, nor very ugly, I might surprise you.  No, don’t worry it’s not going to be one of those “and then I got cancer” or “I’m an anorexic” or even “I had to conquer drugs.”  I’ve never even been offered drugs, and I’ve never even kissed a boy.

            That may be strange, but it’s just because I’m shy.  There’s nothing wrong with that is there?  So what’s my particular curse?  It’s simple; I’m smart, a geek, a nerd, the ‘encyclopedia.’  Now the point is that everyday people are what make people like me who we are.  And believe me, I don’t exactly thank you for it. 

            Because I was the kid who got A’s on the tests and knew the answer I was and am a freak and all of you made my life a living hell for committing this crime of being too smart for my own good. 

            It wasn’t bad until third grade, nine year olds are cute little kids, unless your one of them.  The little angels my teachers loved so much were nothing more than animals when it came to how they dealt with me.  Now people on their own aren’t too bad, they’re nice, polite and know the difference between right and wrong.  Things change though when they get together in a group.  When they operate under this ‘mass mind’ they have no consciousness after all they didn’t do it, the group did. 

            For me the bullying and ‘learning how to deal with real life’ got a little excessive.  I spent third grade and onwards alone.  Now I don’t mean for just a day or a week, but years.  Being pushed down or hit or taunted just once or twice isn’t bad, but when it goes on and on without end it becomes a torment, it becomes abuse.  And for kids who are ‘too smart’ the abuse happens again and again and again.  The pain never ends. 

            Can you imagine being nine years old and wishing with all your heart that you wouldn’t wake up the next morning because it hurts that much simply to be alive?  I’m not suicidal, don’t worry, I’m much too stubborn to do that, but I will never, never forget that pain.  It’s always with me in the back of my mind, like a poison that seeps out if I’m not careful. 

            The other argument is that it wasn’t that bad, after all if it was the teachers would stop it.  At least that’s what we’d like to think.  This is why I say that everyone had a part in destroying me.  The teachers were once those kids who did the hurting, normal kids, who were even nice on their own, but felt that they had to put those geeks in their place.  After all since they were smart they had to pay the price for it.  It was only fair. 

            I can’t trust people anymore.  I don’t have any close friends.  I panic if I’m in a situation where I have to deal with a larger group of people for more than an hour.  These are survival skills, my whole personality adapted itself to fighting on a daily basis.  I don’t see social events as fun; I plan strategies on how to keep them from gaining any holds that they can use to hurt me.  What you did was reduce my life to a weighing of pain.  How much am I willing to accept? 

            I don’t have an identity.  That was destroyed way back when I was nine.  After all if you have something as precious as that they will beat you, taunt you, hurt you until it dies.  The way I felt when I entered fourth grade was as if I was holding the pieces of what had been my soul in my hands.  My innocence, my belief in ‘happily ever after’ died that day.  They stole it from me.  My classmates took it even though they hadn’t ever lost their own.  I died that day. 

            So what’s left?  In my opinion not much.  I put mind back together as best I could, but no one’s that good.  My personality, my identity is a paradox.  I’m a child and an old woman at the same time.  I want to trust people, believe the best like my parents taught me, but I have to be paranoid, I know the darkness of humanity, I know what it’s capable of.  I don’t have a favorite music; I don’t share what makes me who I am, why give your enemies the tools with which to hurt you? 

            I build a wall; I build a mask for all of you.  The quiet girl, who is smart, but doesn’t tell anyone, who likes science fiction.  You see, you can attack the one part of me that is an identity, the fact that I love books, and you won’t dig deeper to the part of me that’s still raw with pain.  It’s a level of pain I can take and it keeps the real pain away. 

            I cry inside nearly every day.  I still cry myself to sleep at night.  It’s been a while since I’ve been physically abused by my classmates.  I think the last was on the bus.  I hate buses, there’s no way out.  The radio wasn’t working so my classmates were bored.  The first piece of melted candy thrown at me missed, the others didn’t.  Afterwards they surrounded mocking me, pushing me, hurting me for forty five minutes.  I’ve never been so glad to get off a bus. 

            The taunting though, the mental pain never ends, I doubt it ever will.  That would be assuming too much of people.  They simply don’t have that much decency in them.  Whether it’s the arrogant kid who sits behind me in band who kicks my chair, and asks me why I don’t stop him, when he knows full well I can’t, the band director doesn’t care, and calls me names or whether it’s the kids in my math class who take my test and show everyone the one that I got wrong so they can all laugh at the ‘smart kid.’  It never stops.  They’re childish aren’t they, but there are 900 of them and one of me, that’s long odds. 

            I hate what they’ve done to me.  But I have to ask, why didn’t anyone help me?  Why treat me as if I were some sort of leper?  Why didn’t anyone let me be in their group in Phy Ed?  Why wasn’t there ever any room for me to sit by you at lunch?  There are no good Samaritans in real life.  Kirsten, Erin, Brad, Andy, Kim, Stephanie, Greg, Luke, and Rachel, the list is longer, much longer.  They names don’t mean anything, they all sound normal don’t they, but these are kids who were willing to break a little girl, to destroy another human being, laugh at the pain they caused simply because it wasn’t their fault, wasn’t their problem.  But it was and is, all of you have done things like that that bring that little guilty feeling you get, but ignore.  Next time think about it, because not everyone can take it.  People like you, people like Kirsten, Erin, and Brad who thought it was funny.  I will live with my pain and my hate; I will have that poison in the back of my mind, always ready to seep over for the rest of my life.  You do the same thing to those who are too smart for their own good everyday.  It is abuse, physical and mental.  It’s time to look at the blood on your hands take responsibility and change.