When I was in my second year of junior high school I would tip my desk chair until I felt the rail touch the wall, rock back and forth, and then reset the desk chair onto the classroom floor. I would do this in full view of my educators, who never offered to discipline me for this action, so I kept on tipping my chair back until the front two legs were suspended a few feet into the air.
One afternoon in social studies class, while rocking my chair back and forth, I finally lost my balance. My arms and legs flailed as I tried to grab onto the nearby radiator to regain control, but the momentum pulling me toward the floor was too great. Thunk was the sound my head made as it smashed against the wall, and everything went black.
My teacher and a few of my fellow students were looking down at me with concern as I was shaking off the cobwebs. “Oh thank god,” said Mrs. Martin, her eyes wide and alarmed. “Are you doing all right?”
“Was I out?” I asked.
“You looked like you were out for a while,” said Mrs. Martin. “How are you feeling? Are you groggy?”
I performed a quick self-assessment. The back of my head was throbbing, so I rubbed my hand against the exact spot, and was relieved to find that there was no blood seeping from a swollen, bulbous knot. My face was flush though, from shattered pride and embarrassment.
“Let’s get you up,” Miss Martin said.
Sheepishly I said, “Thank you Mrs. Martin.
Mrs. Martin reached down to grab my hand, and as she pulled, I untangled myself from the desk chair.
Twenty years after that disaster, my mother proffered a theory. “I think that the fall you had in school contributed to you developing your mental illness,” she’d said.
I, of course, have a different theory. I became sick partly because I kept listening.
***
The last minutes before the start of junior high school were the most fraught for me. Hundreds of preteen and teenage children, their hormones raging, would spill down the steps of the large yellow buses to congregate on the school lawn. As we waited for the school bell to ring, students would assemble into various cliques, where the like-minded could harass kids with no group to call their own.
I was one of those singular kids for a while.
I was not part of any clique. So instead of congregating on a spot in the grass with a group of students, I sort of stood apart from everyone while constantly looking toward those double doors, as I tried with all of my might to force the front doors to open with my mind.
I knew that some of the other kids were talking and spreading rumors about me. Some would furtively stare in my direction, giggle, and then turn away when our eyes met. Others didn’t care if I caught them gawking directly at me; they’d just point their fingers and laugh harder. I’d respond to the ridicule by bowing my head forward and slinking away from their immediate purview.
I wasn’t crazy or brave enough to confront those kids back then because I wasn’t a fighter, but I realized that I needed to find some way to counteract the bullying. So I decided that I was going move in the direction of trouble, perk my ears up, and start listening to the voices of my detractors.
David was a frenemy in middle school. He had been able to accurately pronounce my name, would sometimes offer me a warm greeting, and we were able to co-exist when working together on school projects — we were both members of the gifted and talented cohort of students. But when he became absorbed in his pack, he became a dog, barking and snapping.
I was standing a few feet away from David’s pack when I heard him utter my name. Instead of slinking away from David and his crew, I took a step in his direction and listened.
David’s friends were arranged in a semicircle. He took a step outside the formation, fixed me with a sideways glance and said, “Watch what he does when I ask him if he is ready for school. He’ll says yes after I ask him. The nerd that he is.”
I braced myself for the question, spinning potential retorts to the question inside of my mind. He wasn’t going to get me today.
“Hey Eze,” said David. “Are you ready for school today?”
I turned to face David, shrugged my shoulders and said, “I don’t know. Actually, I don’t really care one way or the other.”
David raised his chin in the air, smiled wickedly and said, “You know you’re lying Eze. You know that you’re always ready for school. You love school. Tell the truth now.”
I sighed at David’s bitter hypocrisy. Because he participated in the same gifted and talented program as I had, received similar grades to me too, and I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been absent from school that year. He was as much of a “nerd” as I was, and yet, he was still willing to antagonize instead of empathize with me. We should have had a more functional relationship, but he was a self-hating punk.
“I am telling you the truth,” I said expressing annoyance. “I really have no opinion either way about school. I just come here because my parents say that I have too.”
“Oh. Okay, Eze,” said David. His eyes widened in surprise as he retreated to his group of friends.
I kept a wary side eye on David, because I knew that he would offer a report to his group, so I kept on listening for any part of David’s report that I could grab onto and use to put forward a retort to the inevitable counter-attack. My heart was beating hard against my chest and my forehead was perspiring, signals of onrushing anxiety.
“I’m surprised,” said David. “I was sure that he was going say that he loved this place. Maybe I was wrong about him.”
David hadn’t been wrong about me. Apart from being accosted by bullies and fake friends, I enjoyed school. I liked learning about new things, developing relationships with my teachers, and preferred having a place outside of home to go to each day — summers in between school were boring. It was too bad that some of the other kids made going to school a difficult experience.
Anyway, I learned some valuable lessons in handling these types of confrontations. My instincts, anxiety inducing as they may be, were on point when it came to protecting myself from individuals who heckle and antagonize from a distance. I would need to trust that my instincts were correct, listen intently to the voices of these aggressors, and use what I hear to wrest control away from them.
***
During the first month of my first semester of high school, when I would walk past a group of seniors on my way to geometry class, I would hear a voice cry out, “Get some new gear dude!” By that time, hundreds of kids had flooded the hallways, so I couldn’t be sure that this individual was directing his ire at me initially. But as more days flew by I became more sure that I was indeed the object of this bully’s derisive comments. For I’d discovered that “gear” referred to the clothes that someone wore, and I was well aware of my lack of an impressive wardrobe. As a child of a frugal mother and father, I would cycle through the same five pant-shirt combinations — these were my newest clothes — each week.
On the day that I’d finally had enough and heard enough, I decided that I was going to confirm my suspicions of this enemy. Bring. Bring. The school bell rang, signaling the end of class. I girded myself for what I was certain to come as I walked down the hallway. When I spotted the dreadlocked sartorial bully, sitting amongst his obnoxious friends, dressed in the trendiest clothes, I nearly tripped over my two feet. Get it over with Eze, I thought as I sidled up closer until I was only a few feet away.
My bully spotted me, shook his head from side to side, and said, “There he goes again, wearing the same thing this Tuesday as he did last Tuesday. This dude is just asking for it.”
The bully was correct in this instance. By edging closer to him as I walked by, I was asking for it because I wanted to know if I was truly the object of his ridicule. Still, it ripped my heart open to know, that within a sea of hundreds of young teenagers, I was able to standout for all of the wrong reasons. I took an alternate route to math class the next day, as I was petrified of what could happen to my soul if I heard that young man’s voice again.
***
Listening to voices served me well until I got to New York City, where I became paranoid after threatening to sue the pharmaceutical company that I’d been working for. I was in my mid-twenties, still young and callow, believing that I had any agency right then to bend the world to my way of thinking.
In the letter that I’d emailed to my immediate manger, a woman in her early fifties, I’d asked if she could keep the contents of what I’d written between she and I. By the next afternoon, my head was like a spinning top, with every employee — many with whom I’d been friendly with in the past — fixing me with withering stares, making me feel as if I was being squeezed.
Two weeks later, the manger arranged a gathering of departmental — we were data entry operators — employees at a nearby restaurant. My co-workers had insisted that I sit directly across the table from the manager. She was well dressed in a crème white sweater and beige slacks. The other employees talked amongst each other, while seeming to shun me on purpose.
An employee leaned toward the manager’s ear and whispered something. The manger nodded her assent before balefully glaring in my direction, and I started to realize that a plot of some kind had been hatched. The employee who’d whispered in the manager’s ear grinned, looked down the table at me, and said, “There goes the big man. The king.” I knew from her intonation of her voice that she intended for her comment to be an insult.
That was the cue for the manager to pull a camera out of her purse, raise it before her face, focus the camera lens, and then shoot my picture. The cacophony of voices swelled, becoming louder and more discordant with each passing second. The manager mouthed some words that I could not hear, but I didn’t really need to hear words emanate from a mouth that was twisted with venom and hate. I knew right then that I was no longer safe amongst these people. So without a word I just stood up and fled from the restaurant, and then things began to fall apart.
“Just put your hands inside of your pockets,” said the man, as he approached. He shoved his two hands into his pockets in order to demonstrate, as if I needed some sort of instruction. I was hit with a blast of wind.
It was a chilly winter afternoon in New York City, with most everyone on the sidewalk donning a cap of some kind, and gloves. Perhaps the man, noticing my hands and head exposed to the unforgiving elements, was looking out for my well-being.
“It’s cold out here young man,” said the man. “You don’t want your hands to freeze, do you?”
I heard him, but I deliberately kept my hands pinned against my sides as I stepped past the stranger. For he was a part of the conspiracy, an adult sized David who’d sought out to manipulate me psychologically. And just like junior high school David, this grown up David was trying get me act in a way that would be pleasing to him and his people. He wanted to be amused, wanted to point and cackle at me as I was being hauled away by the police. He wanted me to be guilty. Well, I wasn’t going to fall for it.
Everyone seemed to pointing their fingers at me and gossiping the next day. I’d enter a place, feel dozens of pairs eyes burrow holes into all parts of my body. At night, I went into an eatery to order a coffee. “For here or to go?” asked the clerk.
“He’s going to have that coffee to go,” said the voice.
I didn’t feel welcome anywhere.
I went home, slid down my bedroom wall as I collapsed onto the floor. My world became smaller because I didn’t want to hear anyone’s voice any more. Voices became walls.
***
On a warm night inside a Portland motel room, the walls were animated by ghosts, voices seemed to rain down upon me from nowhere, pelting my psyche like rocks on a car’s windshield. They called me names. “Nigger,” said one voice. “Sambo” said another. Some were even laughing at me as I paced the room, a blanket draped over my two shoulders to keep the cold fear from enveloping me entirely. The voices harassed and harangued me until the cops smashed the door open, their weapons drawn. One of the cops stepped to the forefront and said, “Put your hands up! Put you your hands in the fucking air!”
The cops quickly converged and took me down. Fearful as I was at potentially being shot in the back by the police, I was also relieved because the voices were forced into retreat by reality.
***
I am healthy and stable now in almost all facets of my life, haven’t had a disruptive psychological episode since January 2015, and I am starting to actually enjoy a typical mundane life experience. Occasionally I’ll flinch when I hear someone in my vicinity say something coarse, because I remain scarred by memories of those voices, real and imagined, speaking out in an effort to lash and belittle me. Whenever I hear my name mentioned in passing, my stomach turns, because in my experience, nothing good ever comes when you hear your name mentioned in passing. Still, I’m forty-four now, secure in who I am as a human being, a productive contributor to the world. I’m on a path now, and will not be dissuaded from that path by any kind of negative voice.
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