Sudden kindness

BACK THEN, there was only one prayer I recited to God as the day started: Lord, please don’t let them bully me.

It was such a simple request, such a tiny one, but God did not seem to hear it. Thus, then, I often went home from school with the sky pushing me down until I could not breathe, until I felt as if I were one with the ground itself, until all I saw on the walls were my classmates’ every taunt, snicker and insult, seasoned with their facial expressions and tones of voice, which I kept trying to forget but would constantly remember.

I retreated to my bed. As though it were the sea, I tasted only salty tears in its embrace. I remained there, as though drowning, until I could not get up anymore, because there was no way up.

Too, I avoided eye contact and communication with other people—my family even—because who would want to cross a stretch of lonely road often spat on by people, often deserted by those who would try to understand?

I was so melancholy that inside this cradle of frail bones and pinched skin, a tiny spark threatened to ignite into its full glory, prodding me to turn to suicide just to get it over with and to stop bothering God with prayers that would not be answered anyway.

That was how I was as the months went by, until even He must have gotten tired of my constant pleading.

Then suddenly, my classmates were nice to me.

Why? Maybe they finally felt guilty. God must have felt guilty Himself, so He decided that all my classmates would realize that while they had slept soundly all those past nights, I was turning everything they ever told me into wounds, digging my nails into my skin as if they were teeth, writing and rewriting the suicide letters I tried to phrase nicely although everything they told me was cruel.

Suddenly, they were greeting me in the restroom when in the past they would stare at me knowingly, or hide their homework as I passed because “the best writer of our school is here.” Once they even gave me a sanitary napkin I needed…

So I balanced question marks with words of thanksgiving to God. I was both doubtful and appreciative, both angry at the bullies for thinking that I could forgive them that easily and forgiving them even when they never said they were sorry, both loving myself a tad more because they never told me I was worthless anymore and hating myself because it had become such a big deal for me. I asked myself: Why are you so naive?

I was so unused to kindness that I kept crying still.

I think that might be the scariest of all: crying because people were treating me with kindness, the way one should really be treated. It is easy to cry whenever bullies torment you. But when people tell you wonderful things, crying is a rather odd reaction.

There is not just one prayer I recite to God now, but two. One: Lord, thank You because they no longer bully me. And the other: Lord, please do not let someone be so hurt that even the slightest act of kindness makes them cry.

Celle Orbeta, 18, is a communication student at De La Salle Lipa.