Empoword

Part One: Description, Narration, and Reflection 123 teachers (who had never seen me out of line before) and escorted to the Principal’s Office. They murmured over my head as if I couldn’t hear them. “What do you think that was about?” “Who started it?” I was tightlipped and frightened, shaking and wringing my hands, rusting with someone else’s blood on them. Who started it? That particular brawl could have arguably been started by me: I jumped at him, I threw the only punches. But words are what started the fight. Words were at the root of my anger. I was the kid who was considered stupid: math, a foreign language my tongue refused to speak. I was pulled up to the front of the classroom by my teachers who thought struggling my way through word problems on the whiteboard would help me grasp the concepts, but all I could ever do was stand there humiliated, red-faced with clenched fists until I was walked through the equation, step by step. I was the one who tripped over my words when I had to read aloud in English, the sentences rearranging themselves on the page until tears blurred my vision. I never spoke in class because I was nervous—“socially anxious” is what the doctors called it. Severe social anxiety with panic disorder. I sat in the back and read. I sat at lunch and read because books were easier to talk to than people my own age. Kids tease; it’s a fact of life. But sometimes kids are downright cruel. They are relentless. When they find an insecurity, they will poke and prod it, an emotional bruise. A scar on my heart. Names like “idiot” and “loser” and “moron” are phrases chanted like a prayer at me in the halls, on the field, in the lunchroom. They are casual bombs tossed at me on the bus and they detonate around my feet, kicking up gravel and stinging my eyes. What is the saying? Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me? Whoever came up with that has quite obviously never been a 12-year-old girl. The principal stared at me as I walked in, his eyes as still as water. He told me my parents had to be called, I had to be suspended the rest of the week, this is a no- tolerance school. Many facts were rattled off. I began to do what I do best—tune him out—when he said something that glowed. It caught my attention, held my focus. “Would you like to tell me your side of the story?” I must have looked shocked because he half-smiled when he said, “I know there are always two sides. I know you wouldn’t just start a fist fight out of nowhere. Did he do something to you?” An avalanche in my throat, the words came crashing out. I explained the bullying, how torturous it was for