"How has the queen of the bitches been doing?"
a reflection on my experience being bullied in high school
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“well hello merry sunshine, how has the queen of the bitches been doing?”
On a warm Sunday morning when I was sixteen, I checked my Hotmail account on the enormous Dell computer that was placed in my mom’s living room. I had four new emails. One from Misti, one from Gemma, one from Sadie, and one from all of them together. These three girls were my heart. We did everything together. We played in a band. We watched “Fear.” We went to playgrounds on blue-lit summer nights and laughed.
The email below is the one from all of them. I’ve saved it all these years because I knew I would want to come back to it. I knew I would put it in my eventual memoir someday. They sent this the night prior while they were all at a party that I didn’t go to. Sometimes I wonder if it would have happened at all had I just gone to that damn party.
well hello merry sunshine, how has the queen of the bitches been doing? Gemma, Misti, and Sadie have all realized that we have been double-crossed. we all know that you have been talking shit about us behind our backs, and too each other for god sakes! well we are fucking fed up just to let you know, all this time you have been trying to make us mad at each other, and we have finally figured out that the person we should be mad at is you. what do you do lachrista? call Misti up to bitch about Gemma, then call Sadie to bitch about Misti, and then call Gemma up to bitch about Sadie?? do something with yourself, your never going to keep friends if you constantly act like there is some popularity contest you just need to win. you are such a hypocrite! you say ppl are too conserned with popularity, and you say you hate it when ppl talk about each other behind their backs "that was such a [name of our middle school] thing guys." you seem to find pleasure in making fun of others, can you take 5 mins out of the day when you aren't bitching about us?? sit and think for a moment lachrista, think about every bad thing you have ever said about us, can you even rememer half of it?? we all know we've said shit about each other, but when it comes down to it, you're the one that can't get over it. so it looks like your going to have to find new ppl to bitch to about us, because we are done with it, and we're done with you. we're not going to talk about you to other ppl, lets hope your big enough to do the same. Sincerely your former best friends.
In one of their other emails they explicitly told me to not sit with them at lunch anymore, which led me to then eating lunch in the girls’ gym locker room.
When I read the first email, which was the one from all of them, I thought it was a joke. I laughed audibly at being called “queen of the bitches.” It wasn’t until I read further that I realized it was not a joke. I was accused of “talking shit” about each of them to each other. Perhaps it was my neurodivergence, but I didn’t understand the way of girls. We all would vent about each other to each other. There was no malice. Everything I said privately, I would have said to each of them. In one instance, I talked with Sadie about how worried I was about Misti. When we would have band practice, Misti would sometimes just stop playing, set her bass down, and sit quietly. I would ask, “What’s wrong?” She would go mute. Then suddenly her dad would be at my dad’s place to pick her up. She would leave without saying anything. I was frustrated by her behavior, but more so worried. That is an example of me “talking shit.”
I’m not saying I was perfect. I’m sure I probably said some shitty things behind people’s backs, but so did everyone at that age! So did my three best friends! I didn’t understand why I was singled out. I didn’t understand the rules of girlhood.
I wrote about all of this in my book, so you can read in much more detail, but essentially, this fracture, this bullying, led me to becoming an entirely new and different person. At the time, I couldn’t emotionally feel what was happening, so it affected me physically. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. My stomach started to hurt every time I ate. Nobody knew what was wrong with me. Nobody thought: “Oh, she just suffered a major adolescent trauma!”
Why am I thinking about this now? Because I’m realizing I could never feel what happened to me until just recently. I couldn’t feel the bullying emotionally, which is why it showed up physically—as severe stomach pain. I’m just now, at almost 40, feeling safe enough to go back there—to feel it. This trauma is like folliculitis—it’s red and pimply and pus-filled and ugly and annoying. It continues to creep up more than other traumas I’ve experienced. It completely upended my life at the tender age of sixteen.
I have other traumas. My parents divorced when I was four. My mom dated an abusive butch lesbian cop that I had to live with for 4-6 years. I’ve been sexually assaulted four times. While all of these traumas are big and live within me, the bullying is the trauma I feel most isolated in. I have found a lot of kinship with other survivors of assault. There is a similarity in our experiences and the way our bodies (and minds) reacted. But with the bullying, I have yet to find anyone else who reacted the way I did and who still can’t seem to shift how it has affected their life to this day.
Because of this bullying, my relationship to food is fucked. I used to be afraid to eat, now I’m afraid not to eat. I’m always concerned with eating “enough” because I didn’t eat at all back then (and I knew that was bad). This looks like bingeing. It looks like over-eating. It looks like fighting with my brain who is telling me, “You need to stuff yourself even if you feel uncomfortably full!” I’m not necessarily craving food—I’m craving stability and safety. Things I didn’t have when my three best friends bullied and ostracized me from high school society.
This was the trauma that directly contributed to my fear of sensations, or at least amplified it. I had to stop going to school for three months because every time I walked through the doors, I felt like I was going to pass out. This was the impetus for being put on Zoloft. I couldn’t function. If you can’t function in capitalist society in the way that everyone expects, then you are deemed worthless and irreparable. Medication (and therapy) were my only options at the time.
I have now been on Zoloft for nearly twenty-five years and I’m not sure it’s working. I could increase, but I don’t know if I want to. I would like to be able to feel things without perseverating on certain sensations for days, months on end. If my heart rate goes too low for my liking, I panic. If I feel dizzy or lightheaded, I won’t stop thinking about it even after it passes. I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to sensations I don’t like. The perseveration persists until the next “scary” sensation. I have lived like this, in some capacity, since I was sixteen/seventeen, but also slightly from the age of 4 due to recurrent UTIs and ear infections. I was never the kid who could get sick and move on. I was the kid crying to my parents asking when will it come for me again—when will my life be uprooted again.
The effects of bullying never really disappear. You just learn to live with it—like all trauma. It’s like glitter—you find it all over and can never fully get rid of it. I’m pissed that I’ve had to live with it. I’m pissed that I don’t feel “normal” even though I don’t believe in “normal.” Life would be easier if I was “normal.”
I’ll turn 40 in December and I would love to live the next decade (or however long I have) in a way that feels freeing, less anchored by fear. I would love to finally figure out what it is I need to rewire how my brain perceives sensations.
I would love for sensations to not scare me at all. I would love to accept them; invite them in for tea, nap with them until they are ready to leave. I would like to be able to say to them: “Hi, love. You’re here and it’s okay. I’m okay.”
Lauren Aliza Green on Multigenerational Friendships -
As the Waters Rise: or: revolution as preparedness -
People are in motion, everywhere. -
Heat Waves, Wet Bulb Temps and Wildfires -
Lessons on the posture of giving a shit - Niko Stratis
Decades Behind: The Shameful Neglect of Endometriosis Research -
Social Media Replaced Zines. Now Zines Are Taking the Power Back - C. Brandon Ogbunu
This song:
Thank you for writing this. The bullying of young girls still haunts me to this day as being some of the cruelest things I’ve ever experienced.