The World Against One

Adapted from my essay that won the 2009 Newspaper Guild of America David S. Barr Journalism Award for best piece of writing by a high school student | Revised in May 2011

My brother is a victim.

He is a victim of a disease, a disease more contagious than the flu, more painful than cancer, more unpredictable than epilepsy and as without answers as Alzheimer’s. He is a victim to a rampant disease that can attack anybody anywhere at any time.

He is a victim of bullying.

Fortunately, unlike victims of other diseases, he’s not dying. But he fights a battle every day. Some days, he’s David, overcoming the Goliath of the bullies. Some days, he’s a martyr, sacrificing himself for a fellow victim. And some days, he’s a nobody, cast alone in a dark, dark world.

Why Mark? On paper, he’s a cookie-cutter model of a normal 17-year-old boy. He’s a camp counselor, a twin brother, a photographer, a son and a wrestler. He’s a fighter. He’s witty, thoughtful and handsome. Yet at times, he’s vulnerable, mercurial and defeated.

Not even an adult, he has gone through more rejection, instability and pain than you or I will deal with in a lifetime.

It all started in the 5th grade at soccer practice. Mark, small for his age, was the designated target for the alpha males, self-righteous and inevitably in charge because they were already growing leg hair. “Shrimpy,” as he would soon be known to them, was inferior. Therefore, he deserved to be ridiculed. Sadly enough, he would take it.

Up until this point, Mark was unaware that the bad guys in Superman and Batman actually existed in real life, unaware that they would continue to haunt him to the present day.

Word spread like wildfire that Mark was an easy target, and the bullying slowly permeated into the halls of middle school. If he arrived to school early and waited idly by his locker, he was kicked in the shins. If he ate his lunch in a place where the flush of a toilet wasn’t audible, he was spit on. And if he even dared to enter the Commons, the bullies’ turf, he was pursued and beat until he was limp. He became the leper of Hinsdale Middle School; nobody wanted to be associated with the outcast.

As the bullying progressed from name-calling and physical abuse to death threats, Mark became depressed and anxious. Physically, his hollow-eyed sockets only hinted at the lack of sleep he was getting, and his shrinking figure only began to suggest his complete loss of appetite.

The monster known as fear took over his life. Mark was afraid to go to school, afraid to walk home, afraid to go to soccer practice and even afraid to go to sleep, a place where the bullies took on hallucinogenic forms. Dreams — nightmares — saturated his reality. His only escape was to be numb.

Hundreds of psychologist sessions, orchestrated by the infamous “Dr. Connelly,” ineffective depression and anxiety medication, days of tears and an irreversible heartbreak felt by my entire family, Mark slowly — and painfully — entered his teen years. He developed an external locus of control and started to believe what the bullies said, that yes, the world truly would be a better place without him.

“For my 13th birthday, I want to die,” he said.

As my parents exchanged uneasy looks and my grandma muttered a “Hail Mary,” stifling back tears, Mark closed his eyes and blew out the candles on this monumental day that marked his transition from boy to teen.

The lowest point came shortly after this day. I still feel sick to my stomach when I walked into my kitchen to see my brother with a knife held to his throat, tears streaming down his face, screaming at my mom, “Dare me, just do it, I swear!” before she lunged at him and embraced him into a hug so tight and so overwhelmed with love.

I want to believe that he wouldn’t have done it. I want to believe that he didn’t feel powerless, that he didn’t hate his life so much that he wanted to end it. But I also want to believe that he wouldn’t have been in this situation if he was never taunted that one ominous day in 5th grade, way back when.

I’m sure Mark wonders the same thing. Unfortunately, to deal with this specific disease, one cannot have an external locus of control. It isn’t as easy an escape to play an “if, then” game. To even begin to fight the dragon of this crippling force, it requires the victim to want to fight it.

About a year ago, amazingly and even quite randomly, Mark chose to fight the demons, to love and embrace himself.  With the guidance of a counselor, the immersion of his life into activities he is passionate about and the profound support system my family provided him, Mark made a one-eighty with his life. To him, what used to instill fear and pain became a wabi-sabi sort of beauty, a flawed perfection and a part of his past.

Now a senior in high school, my brother is still thrown down the stairs. He is familiar with himself as “pussy” and “pregnant bitch” more than he is familiar with himself as “Mark.” He is accustomed to going to the water fountains only during class periods, when nobody else is around, because he knows that during passing periods, at any given point, he will have his face bashed into the faucet. He is hunted — and haunted — by the demons of his damaged and self-destructive past.

However, Mark is a changed boy. Through his toils and experiences, through his bruises and cuts — once open and exposed, but now healed over into scars, reminders — he has developed an enormous sense of empathy and acceptance.

He is about to get what might be as fresh of a start as he will ever get. Next year he will attend the prestigious Kelly School of Business at Indiana University and I am confident he will make the elusive transition from self-perceived ugly duckling to swan. He’ll walk to class each day, receiving a “hey, man” and “what’s up?” on the way. He’ll attend fraternity parties and initiate conversation with the cute girl who lives two doors down. He’ll voice his opinion in marketing class. He’ll do all of these things confident he won’t be immediately rejected for breathing, ridiculed for speaking and punished for, well, simply being.

He’ll do the normal things normal teenagers do in their normal lives for the first time.

For now, he’s managed to beat the bullies, despite the fact that they still try to beat him. Everyday is a constant struggle, a fight. And although my brother may be victorious in some battles, he most definitely has not won the war. The disease known as bullying will continue to attack him, continue to test him each and every day. But, with the help of his newfound understanding, his empathy, I have faith in him — faith that he will emerge the winner.