I remember the gravel digging into my shoulder blades and the coils of blonde hair hanging like snakes on either side of her sallow face. I remember it was hard to breathe with her knees pressed into my chest, her twisted expression, her bared teeth. Other kids gathered around watching as the proverbial slug of spit slid from her lips. I might be making that up; the years have been long and my imagination vivid, but in my memory, I see that play out in slow motion and remember the feeling of being pinned beneath her like a helpless bug.
I was scrappy, defiant and fast, but also the youngest girl in kindergarten and very small for my age. I don’t know what I did to upset her. Perhaps I didn’t do anything, or maybe I did and wasn’t aware of it. I’ve been told I used to make strange faces and hand gestures when talking to myself, and I was often so absorbed in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice if others were bothered. I had animated conversations with the air and occasionally burst into self-comforting vocal improvs that sounded something like scatting.
Back then, I hadn’t yet figured out how to navigate the world I shared with other people. I was too young to hide my eccentric behavior. I assumed everyone was like me, merrily going through their days without rancor or ill-will, and I still carried a kindling of sweetness typical of children that have not yet learned to be cruel. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that people had that capacity, and so I was completely mystified by Beth’s behavior.
Later, when I learned there was such a thing, I recognized Beth was a bully. And yet, over time, I’ve re-envisioned her as a gift. While I’ll never know what provoked her, I’ve come to appreciate how much of a catalyst she’s been. The experience of being bullied shaped me in unpredictable ways. As a poet, I no longer think of Beth as my childhood tormentor but as an unlikely muse to whom I’m indebted.
Though she might have been my first bully, she was not the last. As is often the case with kids who are socially awkward and shy, I was a magnet for mean girls. As a result, I learned survival techniques. It was on the playground I learned to outrun everyone. Perhaps I’m rewriting my history, reimagining an injury to make it a windfall. But if so, it’s working. Because now, years later, I’m sitting in a room full of poets. We are a disparate group who’ve chosen to beat ourselves bloody trying to make meaning from the beautiful mess of our lives. It’s a sublime pursuit in which few succeed and even fewer get recognition for having done so.
We spend hours talking about craft, deconstructing language, pausing to admire syntax and diction or an artfully placed line break, all of us hoping to pull off the ultimate hat trick: describing something indescribable—some essential truth about the human condition. Mostly, for me, it’s a futile exercise. After hours spent conjuring a few lines, they collapse under their own pretentious weight. On a bad day, everyone in the poetry workshop piles on in a feeding frenzy of criticism that leaves my poem (and my ego) in tatters.
It is during one of these pile-ons that I begin to ask questions. Why am I doing this? Why do I keep trying? It certainly isn’t because I need another challenge. I was the wheat-fed, shit-shoveling kid from Kansas who inexplicably grew from Midwestern misfit into a big city lawyer and TV producer; and ultimately, the poet laureate of a California beach town noted for being one of the most artistic cities in the United States. I’ve known my share of difficult situations, of having to prove myself in a hostile room. But why, I ask myself, after another brutal comedown where it feels as if my poem and my heart have been eviscerated, do I keep trying to get better at crafting poems—the hardest, most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Why not just go and read a good book?
I believe what keeps me going is something akin to religion. Poetry is a lifeline that tethers me to other humans. It’s how I transform pain, or loneliness into connection and shared experience. It’s a way to access another person’s otherwise inaccessible inner landscape. Every poem is a vehicle I hope will carry me from self-delusion into self-discovery.
And so, I continue putting lines on a page in pursuit of something inscrutable. Which is to say, mostly, I fail. Even so, I keep at it. This is notable because I’m not an inherently confident person. I walk through life with a box of insecurities and fears. I will apologize to you for bumping into me, or for how the sun came up late this morning. I struggle with self-doubt the way some people struggle with weight. I put myself on a confidence diet, only to fall back into a pool of despair so deep you could swim in it. But though that has been a lifelong struggle, it has not held me back. Thanks to Beth. She was the sand in the oyster. Because of her, I developed a defiance that has served me well. Despite my size or gender or age, my lack of connections or experience, my secret weapon has always been that I’m too tenacious to give up. Scholars have a term for this type of resilience. They call it grit, and it’s purported to be a stronger factor in long-term success than intelligence or academic achievement.
So here I am sitting in a workshop with other poets trying to get better at my craft while harnessed into a time bomb of self-doubt. I think of Beth, and I hear that stubborn inner voice, run faster, and I’m off into the next week in pursuit of the holy grail. A poem that will capture some elusive truth so all the demons inside me will join hands and sing “Kumbaya.”
Beth, the girl who made the days of my youth miserable, is the nemesis I’ve come to appreciate. I’m grateful to her for teaching me to move through life with grit and equanimity. I forgive her for sitting on me. I forgive myself for being sat on. I know now she was probably just a child carrying more than her fair share.
Maybe, if she had been taught to write her pain into a poem, she wouldn’t have unleashed it on the playground. Now, teaching poetry to underserved communities is a way for me to give back to all the potential Beths in the world: to the disenfranchised and the misunderstood, to the bullied and the bullies.
And so, Beth, if I’ve remembered your name right, I’d like to check in and see if you’re okay. I wish you happiness. I’d like to give you a hug and thank you for providing me with a memory I could always push away from, an image I have carried with me like a war cry. Though I suspect you don’t remember me, I have a fantasy that you too have grown past the limits of the children we once were. Maybe someday our paths will cross. I will pour us both a glass of good California Chardonnay and tell you a story about two little girls. One ran faster than wild horses, hightailed it out of Kansas to arrive here. And for that, and to you, I will always be grateful.