Kelly Creagh shares her bully story + Giveaway

 

 

I have the lovely Kelly Creagh sharing her words today. She has also donated a copy of ENSHADOWED! I am honored to present her story to you.

 

 

Kelly Creagh

 

 

In grade school, I always ate lunch alone.

Every day, I would sit by myself at my own table because, over time, I had learned that the pressure and dread of going to lunch eased up when I began to sit by myself. If I sat alone, I could eat and it would be okay because I wouldn’t have to field questions about my food, or defend myself for being “fat” or “weird.” I didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing and ending up at the bottom of a verbal dog pile. I could relax. I could daydream. I could be me.

Until the day we had a substitute lunchroom monitor.

She saw me sitting on my own and, out of kindness, insisted that I join one of the other tables, citing that “no one should have to eat alone.”

Obediently and with trepidation, I moved to the table with the other kids, set my tray down, gulped, and did my best to join in with the “Stars-on-Thars” Sneetches.

Although I don’t remember who set the small piece of chocolate on my tray, I do remember it was a Fun-Size Crunch bar and that it did not have a wrapper.

I also remember that everyone very much wanted me to eat it.

I knew better. I did. There was so much suspicious activity already afoot. I was an outsider, my presence had been unjustly inflicted upon them, my decidedly odd self was messing with the normal jive of the lunchroom hierarchy. The chocolate looked good but it didn’t have a wrapper, man. Why didn’t it have a wrapper?

I would have asked but, you see, everyone really really wanted me to eat that Crunch bar. Everyone told me it would be fine. Everyone said it would be great. It was chocolate! I had to like chocolate, right?

Maybe, I thought, if I ate the chocolate, I’d be in. I’d be gold. The Everyone would decide that I was “all right” and I’d have lunch friends and finally be able to join in on the Full House discussion and swoon over Uncle Jesse.

I ate the Crunch bar…and might as well have contracted the swine-flu-bubonic-anthrax-run-while-you-still-can-plague.

After the initial burst of squeals and screams, the collective evacuation of the table, The Everyone dissolved into hysterics because the chubby weird girl had been so hungry that she’d resorted to eating something that had been on the floor. On the floor! Who would do that? Who would be so nasty, so ugly, so stupid, so “crunchy” as to eat a Crunch bar that had been on the floor, under someone’s shoe?

Apparently Kelly Creagh who, in a mushroom cloud of shame and guilt, went right back to eating lunch on the solitary the very next day.

And every day after that.

 

 

Giveaway Rules:

13+

Winner must respond within 48 hours

Open to everyone

 

 

 



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