“Like?”
“Like reacting by bettering yourself and showing them you’re not inferior, or even better, becoming superior to them. But if you mean physical violence, then before the shooting, I never had the urge. So, zero.”
Her answer hints at one of my other questions. “Have you ever been bullied?”
She pauses for a second and cocks her head to the side. “I want to change my previous answer to one.”
I nod curtly and wait a beat for her to explain.
“When I was in grammar school, the girls always used to pick on me. I was a little heavier set, and they enjoyed rubbing the extra pounds in my face.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Like shit. It lasted for years, but it wasn’t physical. Mostly verbal bullying and emotional.”
“Don’t underestimate verbal abuse. Words hurt. Sometimes, even more than a punch. Words dig into our psyche and create wounds that fester every time we remember them. Sometimes it’s harder to heal from psychological injuries than physical ones.”
“That’s true.” She smacks her hands together and sighs. “Girls are vicious.”
“Did you ever confront your bullies?”
“Like a fight?” She shakes her head. “It never got to that. One time, one of them wanted to start a fight so she could up her new-girl status, and I ran away because I was scared.”
“Were you scared for yourself, or were you afraid of getting in trouble for fighting?”
“Both.” She chuckles and points to her smile. She reaches for the journal on the table and jots the occurrence in her smile log. I had suggested it because smiling involves neuropeptides and neurotransmitters, which can help elevate the mood. Mood-boosting can alter the group she’s classified under in my study if she qualifies, but I care about my subjects.
I see a lot of myself in them. When my mother died, I entered the system and retreated inwardly. My trauma stifled my mind, and I was so scared. The assailant was in every man who crossed my path, which made foster care challenging. I was petrified of myself and the world, just like she is.
She’s scared to see what’s right in front of her.
My ears tune in to her voice, missing some of her confession.
“I used to be super sensitive. I picked up on people’s moods easily. I guess I hated seeing people upset. But I had wished the girls could feel what it was like to have to listen to their mean words all the time. My mom always told me they were jealous, or they had problems of their own and were lashing out because I was stronger than them.”
“Did you believe her?”
She shrugs. “Honestly, every time I came home, I was surrounded with so much love, it didn’t matter. It was hard at school sometimes, though.”
“Being an outcast can be traumatic.”
“I had friends.”
“Did it make you want to treat someone else the same way they treated you?”
She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head with precise movements. “No, that would have made me just like them, and I didn’t want to be that way. Even then, I knew one day they’d grow up and look back at the bad things they did as kids and feel bad for it.”
“That’s a unique perspective on bullying. Did you want an apology?”
“An accepted apology is a burden you take off someone’s shoulders, so if they felt the need to ask, then I guess, that already meant they felt bad for it.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“It doesn’t matter. Because they might have won the battle as children, but I won the war as an adult. Ivy League, valedictorian, popular, and until Tyler, extremely happy. And I did all of that without hurting anyone; that’s something they can’t boast about.”
She’s leaning toward the ‘no revenge’ pile at the moment. Had it not been for the ‘until Tyler’ I would have solidified my assumption in writing. “Have you ever confronted them as an adult?”
“Yes,” she admits with a wide grin.
I point toward her notebook, and she rolls her eyes, jotting down the smile and the reason for it. The idea is to give her an actual list of things worth smiling about. “Would you like to tell me about how the confrontation went?”
“I was a teenager, had lost the weight, and grew into myself. I was in a really good place. Getting away from them and going to high school in a safer environment really helped me become who I am today.”
“Would you say the bullies inspired you to reach your potential?”
“No, I never gave them that kind of power. I followed what I wanted and barely thought about them until I ran into a couple of them. I had graduated summa cum laude from a prestigious school, had a plan, and a full life ahead of me. I had strong faith, a great family, and amazing friends. It felt really fucking good to show them they didn’t impact my life negatively, and that after all the negative things they said to bring me down, it didn’t affect me. As kids, they had power, but only because they didn’t know how to earn it.”
“I’m impressed with how grown-up you are about it. Childhood bullying is something, even as adults, we have a hard time processing.” Though severity and age are also critical, teenage years in high school are particularly scarring for many adolescents. Part of IQ3 assesses bullying at its earliest stages, which later may bring about implementations of stricter no-tolerance policies. No child should have to be afraid to go to school. I speak from personal experience.
“Eh,” she says and shrugs her shoulders. “It helps that I dated some of the guys whom they used to crush on. Guess that makes me vengeful, right?”
“That makes you normal.” And a more interesting candidate. I give her a bully score of three and a confrontation score of two.
“I used to be nice. I believed in justice and upholding the law and treating people with the respect they deserved, but—” she cuts herself off.
I immediately follow up. “Do you think, given recent events, that’s changed?”
She holds my gaze and bites on her lower lip.
“Don’t be afraid to tell me how you feel. If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you. Nothing you say here will be conveyed to anyone else but me, unless you give me the authority to.” Which she already has in her waiver, but I keep this to myself.
She nods and itches her nose. “I’ve considered murdering someone.”
Well, now we’re getting somewhere interesting. “Considered and doing are two very distinct things,” I remind her.
She rebuts with a shake of the head. “No, I’ve pictured it. I’ve dreamt it. I’ve envisioned every minute detail. If I knew who shot me and killed my son, I’d destroy them.”
Now she’s talking my language.
“That makes me a horrible person, doesn’t it?” She shuts her eyes for a second as she comes to terms with the idea of saying her deepest, darkest secret aloud.
“Not necessarily.”
She scoffs and shakes her head, negating my comment. “No… I don’t want to just kill the person, I want to torture them. To make them feel like my son did. Or tie them to a chair and set them on fire, so I can hear them scream and choke on their own melting tongue.”