Bullied to Beloved
by Elizabeth Broz

On April 20, 1999, two teenage boys walked into Columbine High School and randomly shot their classmates. Like most Americans, my husband and I were glued to our television set, watching and re-watching the horrific scenes. At some point, my husband said, “How in the world do two teenage boys get to a point where something like this makes sense?’’ I looked over at him and said, “I know exactly how you can come to that place and feel justified in what you are doing.”

In order to understand why I would respond that way, I need to take you back to when I was in middle school, which, in my school district was fifth through eighth grade. I was a typical young girl in many ways. I came from a loving, two-parent home in a middle class neighborhood in southern New Jersey. We attended church, had a loving extended family, and I felt loved and secure.

I was a bright kid, but shy and introverted. I felt different from other kids, kind of a square peg. And on top of all that, I was unattractive. I had a lazy eye that stayed over to the side. I wore glasses, and I was born with a jaw abnormality, causing my mouth to not close properly and hang open. I appeared to have buckteeth. As you can imagine, I took a good deal of teasing about my appearance.

The first memory that stands out happened one morning while riding the bus to school. A girl sitting across from me called my name. When I looked over, she stared out the window with her mouth hanging open and had a goofy look on her face. At first, I didn’t understand what she was doing, but she was making fun of me. She did it several times, and I ignored her. One of the boys on the bus was watching her, laughing. He stood up, pointed at me, and said, “She’s such a dog face,” and then starting barking. Other boys joined in, and from that day on, every bus ride was a nightmare.

Literally, every day I listened to comments all the way to and from school.

“Does your face hurt, because it’s killing me.”

“Is every mirror in your house broken, because you looked in it?”

“Why don’t you just stay home so we don’t have to look at you every day?”

I dreaded getting on the bus every morning and every afternoon for most of my middle school years. But during the school day, it was even worse because classmates made fun of me several times a day. I walked into a classroom, and the boys started barking or making some loud comment about my appearance. It was usually three or four of them. Thankfully, not everyone joined in. Sometimes they snatched my homework and ripped it up, so I couldn’t turn it in. They shoved me, knocked books out of my hands, and did anything to harass me. I pretended not to notice, but I felt humiliated. I think some of the girls felt badly about it, but they didn’t stand up for me. I honestly think they just didn’t know what to do. I desperately wanted someone to support me, but it rarely happened. My teachers were aware of the situation too, but most just ignored it. I don’t think they knew what to do either. Some of my male teachers actually encouraged the behavior by laughing at the comments or letting them bark at me. It was awful.

When I was in fifth grade, I had a male English teacher. He assigned projects in the class that required us to go to the library and do research. On certain days, our teacher would allow us to use classroom time to go to the library. He would allow two students at a time to go for fifteen minutes. If we wanted to go, we would write our names on the chalkboard, and after he called our names to go, he would erase those two names so he’d know who was next. Several times through the year when my name was on the board, he erased it and acted like it was never there. He’d actually looked at me and smirked, like he was waiting for a reaction. I wanted so badly to say something, but I was timid and fearful. I was sure no one would have my back, even if I were brave enough to stand up for myself.

As time went on, I began to feel extremely insecure. I was embarrassed about the way I looked. I had no self- esteem or self-confidence. I assumed that everyone I met looked at me in disgust. Over time, I became angry and vengeful. I remember the first time I had a violent, angry thought. I was in seventh grade, and the Farrah Fawcett hairdo was all the rage. It seemed every girl in school had some version of that hairstyle. Most of the girls in my area of New Jersey were either of Italian or Jewish decent, so they had thick, wavy hair that seemed to be perfect for “the Farrah.” I had the straightest hair you can imagine. Even with a curling iron, I couldn’t get those flips. On the weekend, I figured out if I rolled my hair in those spongy pink rollers and wore them to bed, I could get those flips! I was so excited. My friend’s dad even said my hair looked pretty the first time I did it. I thought, Finally, I’ll look like everybody else.

So I went to school on Monday, nervous, not sure what people would think. Everyone noticed, but no one said anything, which was actually better, because I reached the point where I didn’t want to be singled out for anything, good or bad. That day, we had a test in English class, so everyone was sitting quietly, working. In the middle of the test, with no provocation, the boy sitting directly across from me leans over and whispers to me, “You think you look pretty just because of your hair, don’t you? Well you don’t. You’re still ugly and always will be.”

Suddenly, I felt heat rising in my body; my heart began to pound, and I felt numb. I visualized leaning over and stabbing him in the stomach with a knife. I told myself the next day I would bring a knife to school, and as soon as he opened his mouth, he was getting it. I honestly believed he deserved it; he needed to pay for the way he treated me all these years. I never brought a knife to school, but after that day, I began to have murderous thoughts all the time. Thoughts of throwing burning sticks, soaked in gasoline, into my tormentors’ bedrooms, burning down their houses; thoughts of stabbing people in the middle of the classroom so everyone would see it, and know that I was not going to put up with their constant teasing anymore. “You tease me; you pay!” The scary part is I felt completely justified in those thoughts. While I never acted on them, I honestly felt that if I had, they deserved it. Who gave them the right to make my life so miserable? So I can understand how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine murderers, became enraged. I never acted on that anger, but internalized it, which began years of self-hatred and a feeling of worthlessness.

When high school started, things settled down a bit. I think people naturally grew up a little more at that age, so the bullying was not as intense. I made a few friends, hanging out with a group of people in my neighborhood. I also smoked pot and partied a lot, but I felt that I was having fun for the first time in my life. I did fit in somewhere. Then, at the end of ninth grade, my dad announced he was taking a job in Houston, and we would be moving as soon as the school year ended. I was devastated! I finally had friends, and now I was going to have to start all over again. But after thinking about the move, I thought it could be a good thing. I would have an opportunity to get a new reputation, just the new girl in school, not the ugly girl that everyone knew from middle school. Maybe people would finally see me, not my appearance.

So, on the first day of school in Houston during my sophomore year, I got on the bus to go to school. I sat alone, not knowing anyone. A few minutes into the bus ride, the two boys sitting across from me starting pointing and laughing. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but they were making fun of me and teasing me about my appearance. I remember feeling utterly humiliated. I leaned my head against the window and decided right then and there that my life would never be different. I would always be the ugly girl that no one wanted around. I literally felt all hope leave me that day. My heart was heavy, and I felt empty. I decided I would turn off my feelings. I would never allow myself to feel anything again. That’s how I would protect myself.

My personality changed after that. I acted awkward and weird. I did things I knew would make people reject me, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t know why I was acting that way, but I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. I began taking drugs and had no motivation in life. I worked part time, still made good grades, and had a few good friends, but I was emotionally disengaged. I was afraid to step out and try anything new, for fear it would give people even more ammunition to tease me or put me down. I was intelligent; I could have done anything with my life that I wanted to, but was paralyzed with fear. I thought if I made a single mistake or did anything that wasn’t perfect, everyone around me would talk about me or laugh at me, so I did nothing at all. I existed, but I had no life in me.

In the summer between my junior and senior year, I underwent surgery to fix my jaw issue. It made a big difference in my appearance (I had already had my lazy eye corrected in sixth grade). When I went back to school on the first day of my senior year, the first person that saw me didn’t even recognize me. She walked right by me. When I said something to her, she just stood there staring at me. She remarked that I looked completely different, and she asked what I had done. I told her I had jaw surgery over the summer. She told me I looked pretty. I literally had no idea how to react. I had never been called pretty before. Other people complimented me too, but I couldn’t receive their compliments. I felt unworthy of them. I still felt ugly, awkward, and rejected. My outside appearance had changed, but my inside was still dark, wounded, and hurting. I still had no self-confidence, no self-esteem, and continued to behave in ways that caused people to reject me. I couldn’t stop acting that way, no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to understand my behavior, but I couldn’t make sense of it. I believed deep down inside that this was just how I was wired. That was my personality, and it would never change. It affected every aspect of my life, relationships, career, everything.

I got a job right out of high school, but I wasn’t able to move ahead or learn new things because I was too embarrassed to ask questions. I thought they would think I was stupid. The worst part was I knew I was bright; I knew I was capable, but I was paralyzed by the fear of failure. I was doing well in my current position, so I just stayed there, safe, too afraid to extend myself.

Eventually, I met my husband, fell in love, and became engaged. I couldn’t understand what he saw in me. To me, I was awkward, nerdy, and unattractive. But he didn’t see me that way. He was the first person to ever make me feel accepted for who I was. Early in our marriage, a family member encouraged us to give our hearts to Christ, and we began a relationship with Jesus. I immediately began to feel peace down deep inside. I knew something transformed on the inside, but on the outside, I was still behaving in ways that brought rejection and judgment. We attended church and learned more about God. I began to believe God could help me change the way I acted. I prayed and told Him I didn’t want to be timid anymore, and I was tired of having no self-esteem. I wanted to be a different person.

One day at church, it was announced they were starting a twelve-week class called “Search for Significance.” They explained it was a class for anyone dealing with issues that kept them from moving forward in life. I needed to sign up. With my husband’s work schedule and two small children, I wasn’t sure if I could commit to twelve weeks, but I was determined to try. God used that “Search for Significance” class to literally change my life. We studied fear of rejection, fear of failure, shame, and other mindsets that can prevent us from feeling good about ourselves. The week we talked about shame, I felt that God was impressing upon me that this was the mindset keeping me in those same patterns of behavior I desired to change. I thought to myself, I’m not ashamed of anything. I don’t understand.

But God helped me see that all those years ago, all of the teasing about my looks had made me ashamed of who I was. It made me hate myself, inside and out. I had never even thought of that before. But suddenly it became crystal clear. I shared in class about what I felt God was revealing to me, and told them about being bullied. I thought they would all think I was a big crybaby.

Get over it.

It was twenty years ago.

I was embarrassed to tell them about it, and almost didn’t, out of fear of what they would think. It was hard, but when I shared my story, they were very understanding. They made me realize it was okay that I felt hurt by the numerous situations I endured.

What happened next was amazing! This may sound weird to some of you, but I promise, it’s all-true. Two days after I had shared my story, I was feeling very melancholy all day, like I was on the verge of crying any moment, but I didn’t know why. That evening, as I was getting into my car to go somewhere, and pulled halfway down my driveway, the tears just started coming. I cried and cried, like I had never cried in my life. Gut-wrenching cries.

There I was, sitting in my car, in the middle of my driveway, crying my heart out. Yet all the while, I literally felt as if someone was standing in front of me, pulling a rope from my gut, out through my mouth. It was the strangest feeling, yet it felt wonderful. My head was filled with images from all those times I had been humiliated and made fun of. And as that rope was pulled, those images went with it. It was so weird! I knew in my heart that it was God, pulling out all the junk I buried down deep inside me for all those years. I sat there for over an hour. I eventually pulled myself together and went back inside. My husband clearly saw I had been crying, so I tried to explain what I experienced. It was hard to put into words.

I felt so light, so different. So free.

It felt wonderful.

Over the next few days and weeks, I felt like an entirely different person. I didn’t recognize myself. I was full of joy for the first time in my life. I was friendlier and more light- hearted. My husband said I didn’t seem like the same person. I felt good about myself for the first time. I knew God removed all the old pain, and he healed every emotional wound I carried all those years. I went from feeling wounded to feeling whole.

The transformation didn’t happen overnight. It took about a year for my personality to completely transform. I had to learn how to be a new me. My self-esteem was restored, and because of that, I became much more self- confident. I believed in myself for the first time in a long time. Friends and family would remark on the changes they saw in me.

That was twenty years ago, and I still marvel at what God did in my life. Since then, I have had a heart for hurting people. I want to see people restored to the person God designed them to be. I meet people sometimes, and I can tell they are emotionally wounded, and I want to tell them they don’t have to stay in that place. I don’t want anyone to go through life never knowing what it feels like to be whole, instead of broken. Our God is a God of restoration. He will bring beauty from ashes if we will allow Him to work in our lives.

I was bullied, but now I feel beloved, thanks to God’s grace and love for me.

Elizabeth Broz is an aspiring writer who desires to introduce the healing power of Jesus to those who are living with emotional wounds. She resides with her husband in the Dallas, Texas area. You may contact Elizabeth at ebroz2016@gmail.com.