Community in the Darkness

As a child, I planned elaborate parties for every birthday, with themes like bakery, rock star, and Rapunzel. I prepared for months before, carefully selecting dresses, activities, and frosting flavors. I helped my parents create a makeshift cupcakery, karaoke bar, and princess castle in our home. I loved getting presents from my friends and seeing the smiles on their faces when I brought gifts to their parties. 

I shared several of these parties with my friend Gracie, whose birthday is two days after mine. We threw a joint party in my basement one year and hers the next. We performed an original song I wrote as a duet one year and wore matching Belle princess dresses the next. Up through age 12, February 20 was an oasis of friendship, generosity, and creativity. 

Outside that oasis, it wasn’t as peaceful. I was bullied and picked on throughout elementary and middle school. As a young girl, I was made fun of in ways my protective mind won’t let me fully remember. I only remember flashes of misery: crying in the tent inside my 3rd grade classroom, which was set up with a camping theme. For a chunk of 5th grade, the anxiety of facing my bullies kept me home for days.

I was laughed at for my geeky hobbies: rocks and minerals, collecting stuffed animals, and reading long fantasy novels. I was body-shamed for being too short, and then too tall; too flat, and too skinny. A boy once nicknamed my friend and me “Thick and Thin.” 

But I was untouchable on my birthday, and 2/20/2020, my 13th, began perfectly. My parents gave me a box of donuts, my favorite treat. I put on my favorite sweatshirt, a bright teal zip-up I then considered the height of fashion, and got on the bus smiling from ear to ear. 

I arrived at my forest-green locker, unlocked like all the others. The school administration said our Jewish yeshiva school was like a family, and family members would never even consider stealing from one another, so no locks were allowed. The metal door was decorated with confetti and birthday wishes, and inside was the largest pack of Twizzlers I had ever seen, from my friend Noa. Mia had left me a candle shaped like an alpaca, my favorite animal at the time. Gracie had made a beautiful card embellished with a pink bow. This is how a birthday is supposed to go, I recall thinking as I went to class, still smiling. 

I was a star student; the quiet girl who got good grades and never disrupted the class. But today, with a substitute standing at the front of the room unable to control the class and Gracie and Mia eager to talk, I gave in to the temptation and joined their conversation. 

For the first time since a misunderstanding in 3rd grade, I was sent out of class to calm down in the hallway. “Go outside and don’t come back until you can pay attention,” the sub said. I was the only one sent out; Gracie and Mia remained at their desks. “But it’s her birthday,” my friends shouted. 

The teacher didn’t budge, and I exited the room with my head down, already on the verge of tears. Was this going to go on my permanent record? 

A Mockery of What I Loved

Outside were two boys who had bullied me in the past, Isaac and Jack. They had been sent out of class a few minutes earlier. They giggled when they saw me and walked toward me. “You’re so hot,” Isaac said in a sarcastically suave voice. 

“Shut up,” I said confidently. He kept getting closer though, and when he tried to touch me, my temper broke. I shoved him away and ran down the hall to the bathroom to cry alone. I didn’t tell anyone, and I stayed in the bathroom until my next class.

Later, I was sitting in the lunchroom with friends when a girl I didn’t know well ran up to my table. “A group of boys are by your locker. You should come quick,” she told me. My heart sank. She and I walked toward the row of lockers. I tried to remain composed. 

In front of my locker were Isaac and Jack, along with two other boys, Dylan and Jason, who had been terrorizing my friends and me for years. I heard laughter, but I could not comprehend what I saw. I recall feeling like I was standing alone in some sort of fever dream. The boys moved down the hall, saying, “Happy Birthday!” in the most condescending tone I have ever heard. 

I assessed the damage. The beautiful cards my friends had left me were torn up on the floor in front of my locker. Half of the butterfly magnets that decorated my locker door were missing, and the others were bent. The candy was gone. Yet what felt most painful was the letter the bullies had left. All it said was “Happy Birthday,” scrawled in purple marker next to a drawing of a balloon on a piece of college-ruled paper ripped out of a notebook. But it felt like a mockery of everything I loved about birthdays.   

I started to cry. Who does this on someone’s birthday? The illusion that only good things can happen on your birthday was shattered along with my childhood. For the rest of the day, that same group of boys taunted me. They followed me around, praising me satirically and throwing erasers and crumpled-up papers at me, making me miserable.

Standing Up for Me

But I wasn’t alone. 

My friends were witnesses—and more. Five girls in particular stood up amongst a sea of bystanders. Once they saw Isaac throw erasers at me in the lobby, they did not leave my side for the rest of the day. 

I continued to surround myself with people who stick by and defend each other.

Together we walked through the lobby to the huge prayer room. We sat on the girls’ side, prayer books in hand, and I collapsed into sobs again. Emma and Daisy held me, blocking the view of the laughing boys in the other section. 

Once we went back into the lobby, Noa and Daisy held me back when I, allegedly, lunged at Isaac, who had become a sort of ringleader for the birthday-ruiner squad. I have no memory of that, but according to multiple bystanders, it did in fact happen. I vaguely remember screaming at him, furious and bewildered at why someone would do this to another person. A vice principal saw it too, and took Isaac to her office. She sent me to the other vice principal, where I told the story, still sobbing.  

My friend Noa came to the office with me and backed up my claims. Mia and Daisy covered for me when I was missing from class for the next two periods. My teachers and other classmates thought I had gone home, which was fine with me. Nobody needed to know I was crying in the vice principal’s office. 

I cried on the bus home. I cried as I crawled into bed and ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream. My mom came in to check on me, and I cried some more as I told her I’d had a bad day, leaving out most of the details so she wouldn’t worry about me.

Looking back, the birthday that made me a teenager forced me to grow up. The school didn’t do much to help me or punish the bullies. The boys were told to apologize to me, which they did, reluctantly and sarcastically, over text. 

Bullies often go unpunished and life can be unfair, but that wasn’t my main takeaway.

What stuck with me the most was that my friends stood by me, and how much that matters. The bullying did not stop with the apology texts, but I had people to turn to. 

We continued to show up for each other. A month after my birthday, Covid lockdown began. When one friend’s grandfather died in the spring of 2020, the others mailed me gifts for her that I assembled into a box and dropped off at her house. Caring for each other helped us all through the pandemic.

I am still close with many of those friends, and when I entered high school, after lockdown, I continued to surround myself with people who stick by and defend each other. I was lucky to have such great people with me on that terrible birthday. In the face of darkness, I was able to turn to my community.