I was bullied throughout most of middle and high school, like almost everyone going through the rigors of young social life. Not only was I awkward, but submissive and quiet as well, a perfect combination for those in school with pent up frustration and needing an easy target. I typically sat alone at lunch, ran from class to class, and had nervous breakdowns due to test anxiety. You couldn’t get much better bully fodder than that.

And yet, it was pretty manageable for the most part, with other students trying mainly to embarrass me more than they thought I already did. I remember one time at my locker, two girls sidled up, and asked me what my favorite part of the female body was. I swear on my life that’s actually what they asked. I didn’t know how to respond–– I was in fifth grade! The men’s locker room for gym, meanwhile, offered its own challenges. There was one day where, sick of people watching me while I dressed, I instead went into the bathroom stall to do it. I’m sitting to use the toilet when there’s this peal of laughter, and I see a face under the door slide away.

“Beau pees sitting down, everybody! He pees sitting down! How gay is that?"

That struck me. This kid had gone through the effort of bending down just to capture me at my most vulnerable, just in case I did something out of the ordinary so he could tease me to the rest of the locker room. We had an All-Star Bullying Team. In the moment, my mind did mental exercises to try and explain this revelation to my peers: Well, I’m a nervous person, I hate the urinals; I was just changing, I wasn’t using the restroom; wait, why did it matter, who cares!? I think the most confusing thing for me at the time was the ‘gay’ statement–– was he not the one that had tried to spy on another male student using the restroom? This, I realize now, was just making assumptions I didn’t know about the LGBTQ community. But at the very least, his invasion of my privacy made me feel better, and for the next week I walked through an impermeable fog, ignoring the snickers and calls of other students.

High school left those bullies behind for the most part, but there were some adamant ones. I was undergoing a transformation myself, in learning that I had Asperger's: I started figuring out who my friends at school were, how I could act appropriately around others, and the difference between bullying and teasing. My confidence in myself grew, and so did a sense of self-identity. Middle school had made me feel different and isolated from my classmates, and now there was a confirmation that I was different; but that was actually emboldening, causing me to want to join friend groups, talk to people, and get involved in clubs and extracurriculars. But the bullying, for a while, followed me, and some were much bolder than those at the middle school lockers. At one point in gym class, we were playing lacrosse, and in a surge of competitiveness, I dived with my stick at the ball, accidentally crossing another guy, seven-foot and beefy, and slamming him in the shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I squeaked out, before he turned on me and started wailing on me with his lacrosse stick. I stumbled over and held mine out, and for a second I saw how angry the student was, eyes flashing, teeth gritted. Eventually, a few students pulled him off and the coach separated us. Lacrosse was officially over for the day.

In the gymnasium later, the class was milling around, waiting on the coach to drop off equipment, when I nervously approached the student, apologies at the ready (I was a pretty apologetic kid). The other student is watching me, narrow-eyed, and when I approach, before I say anything, he starts cursing me out, loud, angry, and with slurs ‘aplenty’. I was caught off-guard, and this time, I started to tear up, slipping into the locker room. It really just didn’t feel fair–– all this progress in my social life, and yet because I’d accidentally hit him, he found it necessary to chew me up and out. Had nothing changed from middle school? Had I?

Every few days, I’d see the other student in the hallways, and he’d make some kind of vague and empty threat on my life that, at the time, I took seriously. I’d peer around corners, check behind my at my locker or at the water fountain, and try to never be alone. After about a week of this, I broke down and told my parents. I’d been bullied before, but those were usually incidents in isolation. I know some people, possibly even readers, are fans of the ‘handle-it-yourself’ mentality, but I was getting to the point where paranoia took over. I needed outside intervention. When I told them what was going on, my parents paled. They were worried for me, of course, but they probably remembered their own experiences being tortured in youth. One of my parents came from household of bullies, a father and a brother that made fun of them and constantly made them feel less than the rest of the family. How sad was it to see their son bullied as well?

The school was called, and a conference was set up. The other student and I met with staff members who asked me questions and assured me that actions would be taken. That felt good. Justice felt good. There was a sense of inner peace that this person would face consequences for what he was doing to me. But as soon as we left the office, and resumed classes, he came over, and whispered, menacingly, “Ok, after school, I’m pummeling you.” And he wheeled off to join his friends, as the bell rang and students flooded into the halls. I couldn’t believe it; all that, and he was still after me. What had they told him in the office, why hadn’t any talking worked? I started to panic? In retrospect, I understand the guy–– the school was going to punish him, and he felt upset, and trapped, and lashed out at me even more. I went through the rest of my classes in a state of shock, that oddly even subsided by the last period into a kind of calm. “Ok,” I thought, “You’ll take whatever is coming. You’re in the right on this one.” It was a sense of inner peace I, as a person with anxiety, rarely felt when younger. But no matter what, he wasn’t going to break me.

After school, I waited for throngs of students to leave, looking around. No sign of the kid, but my heart was pumping. As the last student left the hallway, I grabbed my backpack and lunchbox, and, turning back, saw the other student, at the other side of the school, closing the gap. We were alone, and he was tall, and a jerk, but afterwards it felt quite funny, him approaching me like we were in some Wild West standoff. A few feet away, he stopped, glaring at me. Waiting for me to bolt. Waiting for me to fly at him with fists.

I said, “No. I don’t need to take this,” and walked to the door to the staircase. The other student didn’t follow.

I think back on this later, and that was one of the boldest yet most innocent maneuvers I could’ve taken. I had already felt guilty, for hitting this guy with a lacrosse stick in the first place, but then he beat me up, threatened me, and singled me out. This lingering guilt was significant when, a few days later, I found out the other student had been suspended, then expelled. My stomach lurched–– I didn’t want to get this guy thrown out of the school, just feel bad for a while. I carried this with me through the end of high school, and, obviously, I still think about it now, at the end of college. Did I do the right thing?

“Yes, and he got what he deserved,” I think. Then- “You should have hit him, just once, before you left.” And finally, I think, “I just wish people didn’t bully one another.” That’s a foolhardy wish, I know. Bullying won’t stop, in the same way aggression and violence and war will not stop, and I have to make peace with that. But, if we hope to improve, we need to take stock that children are so susceptible to influences when they’re young. It’s then that we make assumptions, form ideologies, and start constructing our identities. And if our identity rests on feeling like we deserve to be hit or talked down to for being shy, or on us feeling like beating up on someone else psychologically or physically is all right, we need to stop and reconsider what is going on. Yes, maybe boys will be boys, and girls will be girls, but we’ll all be humans interacting with each other at the end of the day.

We have a President in the White House who, no matter your political affiliation, you could probably classify as a bully. “Good!” some say, “The United States should bully other countries to get keep its power. And we need to bully terrorists, and thus immigrants who could be terrorists. We need to bully the government into responding to the working man’s issues.” I understand that, in the same way I understand that student who wanted to knock me out. He was angry, he felt trapped, and he wanted to do something. Our President wants to do a whole lot of things, but that doesn’t make him right, nor does it mean he represents what’s best for our country. They call the President’s power to influence the ‘bully pulpit’, and it’s being taken as seriously as it can. When POTUS wants to create a massive wall to keep immigrants out, and deport a lot of good American immigrants, it might be time to look at our bullying policy. And when the President calls major news networks ‘fake news’, but has a right-hand man who ran a far-right news agency like Breitbart, it might be time to think about what messages are being sent. And when Donald Trump, our President, seeks to belittle people, just because they oppose him, or try to ignore protection for transgender students, or elect a Secretary of Education who would pump millions into charter schools at the expense of others, then it’s time to consider what we’re teaching children about the way the world works. Talk to your children. Tell them: the world can be cruel if you make it; there are people out there who you’ll disagree with, and find different, and you’ll have to interact and cohabitate with them. Make the best and most positive of decisions. Help break down a bully-or-be-bullied culture. And for the people out there who will bully no matter what, resist not by fists or anger, but by turning the other cheek and saying–– “Bully for you.”