A/N: I should have written and posted this a long time ago.  I originally posted it on my Tumblr, but I figured it needs to be here too.

Slut.  Nympho.  Homewrecker.  Everyone either hates or pities you.  One day in October of last year I woke up to the first of many such messages.  At first, I was confused.  In my year and a half at Rice I’d never met anyone who hated me.  I had met many people who liked me (and who I liked) and many people who simply tolerated me with what I’m going to go ahead and call a friendly and aloof attitude.  But I’d never met anyone who seemed to hate me with such fervor.  I thought it must surely be a mistake, someone drank too much and sent the wrong person a message, but as they kept coming I realized that this person was purposefully trying to harm me.

At the time, said person was still attaching their name to the messages.  I tried to reason with them, to ask why they were doing such a thing to me, with no result.  So I finally blocked them.  This was, I believe, in January.

In March I started to get public posts attacking me by name on a page called Rice Confessions.  Such posts are filtered by an admin through a third-party website before they are posted on the Facebook page, which made the whole thing even weirder.  I had found RC, decided I’d found a good waste of time, and commented on posts I found interesting or relevant to my own life.  The post accused me of “squatting” and “whoring out my friendship.”  It begged me to shut up and get a life.

A few days later, another post appeared, expressing joy that another person hated me as much as they did.  And all this without a blink from the admin.  I wasn’t the only target of such unmitigated hatred, either; just the most obvious.  I find it incredible that the admin of a page not affiliated with the university but using its name and picture should post such vicious attacks considering the amount of bad press universities have gotten in the past for similar cyberbullying.

Anyway, RC closed for the summer, so of course whoever was stalking me would have to find a different venue for harassment.  It turns out I have a blog hosted on the rice.edu domain which, at the time, allowed comments.  I wrote a post about my struggle with PTSD and depression, both serious medical illnesses, and closed with the sentiment that I was glad to be receiving appropriate treatment and, for the first time in a long time, I felt like things were getting better.  Nowhere did I mention being bullied.  The closest I ever got to that topic was discussing triggering events caused by my friends, but this is the comment I got:

have you ever wondered why out of the 100s of individuals in every location, setting, and social environment, you’re always the victim of both social and cyberbullying. granted that those people might be wrong, you on your own part also need to reflect on why it is always specifically you who gets picked on. maybe if you adjust the way you behave or conduct yourself in social situations, people might just find you less annoying and leave you alone. (adjusting your behavior and conduct is by no means being someone you’re not. you can still be yourself without being socially annoying or irritating. its call learning social skills) p.s i recommend you review all your facebook statuses and ask someone who is truly honest with you to explain to you why 75% of them is socially irritating and annoying.

Leaving such a comment on a blog post where the author has publicly and specifically explained that she has moderate to severe depression and PTSD made me think that this person isn’t playing games.  S/he is really out to hurt me.  Or maybe s/he does not understand the consequences of her actions.  What if I hadn’t been receiving appropriate treatment?  What if I didn’t have the many, many friends and supporters, both fellow students and faculty, that I have at Rice?  What if I had ended up dead because of this and become both a tragedy and a punchline?

Rice is an elite university with an acceptance rate that has hovered right around 20%.  Its courses are rigorous and its labs and offices have hosted some of the greatest minds of the 20th and 21st century.  In my two years here, I have become a scientist and writer in my own right.  So you see, I am not a timid middle-schooler getting pushed around at lunch time.  I am extremely accomplished and intelligent (otherwise I wouldn’t be here) and unfortunately, the person(s) who have decided to target me are as well.  There is no stereotypical cyberbully or victim.  Such activity is everywhere, and it is serious.

One of the messages I received claimed, “It isn’t cyberbullying if it’s true.”  I want everyone reading this to know that cyberbullying is never okay and is never the victim’s fault.  My only crime was to put my name on my opinions and for that I became a target.  Unfortunately, since my harassers haven’t made explicit threats or made me afraid for my physical well-being, the authorities can’t do anything.  It’s up to me to handle this unexpected notoriety that I did not ask for or want, and I want to handle it with intelligence, grace, and self-confidence, since I know that despite claims to the contrary I am not the only person who has ever been harassed online, not even at Rice.

I will close with this.  The number of suicides related to online bullying is too high, especially when most suicides are those of bright young people who could have had a long and successful life.  One of the common criticisms of cyberbullying-related suicides is, “If you’re too stupid to log off the computer, you deserve to die.”  But the human mind isn’t designed to easily forget, and words online can be just as harmful as those said in person.  Words are powerful.  I hope you use them well.

On Easter Sunday, I went to church for the first time in years.  More importantly, I went of my own accord, which was quite unusual.  Now, over the years, I’ve called myself part of many different religions or creeds.  I started out Catholic and went through animism, agnosticism, Unity, Wicca, and a vast array of in-betweens.  These days, if someone asks me what religion I am, I just tell them, “Vaguely Christian with a huge helping of spirituality and some Mexican Catholic cultural practices on the side.”  So UU was a perfect fit for me.

But this isn’t a blog post about Easter.

Last Sunday, I went back to UU.  I almost didn’t, but I happened (by some miracle) to wake up in time for the 11:30 service, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.  What completely broadsided me was that the sermon this time was built around Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”.

Oh.

God.

Why.

I sat there, attempting valiantly to control my tears, as wave after wave of music poured over me.  It was something unlike anything I’d experienced before, because one of the main points of the talk was that life is hard.  It is.  “Some days,” I remember the pastor saying, “you just want to crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head, stay very still, and hope the day doesn’t notice you.”  I was like, “Oh, yes, totally.  I have totally been there for days and weeks at a time.”

But this isn’t a blog post about how pain is beautiful or some crap like that.

Sunday night, and Monday morning, several events occurred in rapid succession.  If I had to use figurative language to describe how they felt, I would say that a giant gust of freezing cold wind poured over me while I slept and neatly, without a fuss, removed my heart.  I felt like such a poser.  Here I had been spending so much time and money learning about philosophy and poetry and chemistry and biology, and then real life came along and rendered everything completely useless.  I had no resources to deal with heartbreak, and I felt stupid, because I’m 20, for God’s sake, and I’m not supposed to be breaking my heart anymore.

This is a post about living, I think.  About living and college and growing up.

At UU, we talked about finding your hallelujah, or your reason for living.  (Yes, I know it doesn’t really mean that, but bear with me.)  Turns out your reason for living changes over time.  If you asked a five-year-old, “What’s the meaning of life?” you would get a different answer than if you asked a 13-year-old, or a 20-year-old, or a 50-year-old.

Sometimes, you can’t find your reason for living.  Sometimes life just comes along and kicks you in the butt.  Hard.  Sometimes you lose your job, or your spouse files for divorce, or you find out you have a serious illness, or you find a gray hair.  And during these times – don’t you hate this – some idiot comes along and tells you that everything will be okay.  Tells you to look on the bright side.  And you’re just like, “What bright side?  I’m alone/old/ugly/sad/dying, and you’re telling me that ‘at least things can’t get worse’?”

Over the past few days, I’ve come to understand myself a lot more, and to realize what I’m capable of.  I wish I could tell you that I understand life better, or why God/fate/the universe chooses to make bad things happen, but I don’t.

Here’s what I do know:

• Life is hard, and anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something.
• Things might not get better, but your response to things will.
• Music is a form of expression that transcends cultures, languages, and species.  You can play music to someone in a coma and they will hear it.  You can play music to a baby in the womb and they will hear it.  You can listen to music and it will explain things better than any amount of words ever could.

After the past few days, I have found a new level of faith.  Not faith in God, but faith in myself.

Baby, I’ve been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.  May you find peace.

1. You take my breath away when I see you.  You were so sick, and now you look newly happy and at peace.  I missed that smile, the one that I trust.  Thank you for your counseling and your kindness.
2. I’m sorry.
3. I still don’t understand why you hate me, but I’ve learned to accept it and to move on. Your hatred is a part of me now.  It’s part of the proteins that make up my skin.  It glows in me and makes me stronger.  When I look at my eyes in the mirror I see new depths, of sadness and of wisdom.
4. I’ve always admired you, you crazy, scary, uplifting, beautiful mess.  I wish we could have hung out more this year.  I wish I was better at metabolizing alcohol.  I wish a lot of things.
5. I’m just really glad I don’t have to deal with you anymore.
6. We could have been best friends if you’d given me the chance.  I tried, I did.  I gave you everything I had.  But I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.  So I release you, and I wish you all the happiness in the world, you beautiful, beautiful person.
7. I’m so proud of you.  I know you don’t remember me – I was just your dull, quiet lab partner, just for one semester.  But I’ve heard about what you’ve done since, and I am really proud of you.  You’re destined for a stellar future – even if you weren’t always the nicest to me.
8. I wish I knew who you were so I could give you a hug.
9. You were right about college.  Right about love, and right about everything.  Sometimes I picture you in a gleaming office building in California.  Sometimes I picture you the way I remember you, the fluorescent lights casting a halo on your perfect hair.  Either way, I’ve never stopped thinking about you, even though I only knew you for ten days, five years ago.
10. It will be okay.  It will absolutely, completely, perfectly be okay.  I promise.

Yesterday, I got a haircut.  My hair was probably down to my middle back before the cut, and now it’s well above my shoulders.  I’ve noticed several things immediately:

• I no longer feel like such a – pardon my expression – “dirty hippie.”
• Either I get more double-takes, or I notice them more, because I no longer have this huge amount of hair blocking my view.
• I feel different.  It’s very hard to explain.

It took a lot of courage to cut my hair, and if I’d had my way it would have been shorter still. (The stylist was reluctant to go all the way – “you’ve never had your hair that short, and you don’t know if you would like it,” she explained, to which I wanted to retaliate I am nineteen years old and I think I know what I want, thank you very much, but I didn’t because I am an overly nice person and I like to be kind to the people who take my personal appearance, quite literally, in their hands.)  The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why.  Why was it so hard for me to cut my hair?  What are the social implications of having long versus short hair?

Here are the things I came up with:

• Long hair, on women, symbolizes health and sexual vitality on a subconscious level. In Houston, long, straight, sleek hair is an especial status symbol because it takes a lot of work to maintain in such a humid climate.
• However, a woman absolutely cannot have visible hair anywhere else on her body if she is to conform to acceptable standards of beauty.  Women must shave their legs and armpits, wax their facial hair, and trim, shave, or wax “down below,” or risk being labeled “hippies,” “ugly,” or “weird.”

Let’s talk for a moment about pubic hair.  I know we are all adults and that it’s fairly common knowledge that virtually all post-pubescent adults have pubic hair, to one extent or another.  With that in mind – and this is entirely my opinion, of course – I find it just a little creepy that most of the men in my age group prefer women’s pubic hair to be scanty or nonexistent, mimicking the natural state of a prepubescent girl’s body.  “It’s cleaner,” they say.  “Pubic hair is gross.”  To which I remind them that shaving and waxing damages skin, even to the point of creating fertile breeding ground for bacteria.

It comes down to this.  Women endure the pain and inconvenience of waxing, plucking, and shaving their body hair, and conditioning, straightening, curling, dyeing, and styling the hair on their heads in accordance with the current fashion.  Having good-looking hair is so important that we will literally spend hours in front of the mirror working on it.

I realized all this a few months ago.  I stood looking at myself, puffy-eyed in the mirror from crying over yet another of my features that refused to behave.  Maybe it was the thick, wavy hair that never would flow as nicely as my white and Asian friends’.  Or someone teasing me about the “mustache” that I refuse to wax.  I took all of this in, stood for a moment wobbling as if I were knee-deep in the ocean, and then I thought:

What on earth am I doing?

Why do I care so much about what other people think of my appearance?  Why do I spend hours trying to please their sense of aesthetics?  I wouldn’t decorate my house to suit someone else, so why would I decorate my body in any other way than to please myself?

Dear ladies – I can only speak to you because I honestly know nothing about what men go through when they see themselves in the mirror – hair is keratin.  That’s it.  It is dead by the time it emerges from your scalp.  What you do with it is entirely up to you.  If a man is squeamish about your pubic hair, maybe he isn’t the best guy to be intimate with.  If someone teases you about your mustache, remind them that everyone has a mustache.

Hair is there for a reason.  Humans have been evolving for so, so long, hair and all, and every bit of hair, whether facial, scalp, arm, or leg, was once the difference between life and death for our ancestors.  Hair is an extension of the human body, and therefore beautiful in its own right, regardless of length, texture, or color.  I beg of you, if you do nothing else today, look at yourself in the mirror.  Change anything you don’t like about yourself and your hair, but that should be the only reason you change at all.  Easier said than done, of course, and it’s something many people have forgotten how to do.

I think my hair is staying short for a while.

In case you don’t remember or have willfully blocked the memory from your mind, last month I wrote about five important things I learned during my freshman year of college.  As it’s countdown time to Oweek 2012, I decided that now would be a good time to wrap up the list.  Please enjoy, or not.  Whichever.

6. Don’t Worry About the Amount of Stuff You Have.

Nothing can make you feel like a college noob than struggling into your dorm with six cardboard boxes, three suitcases and an under-the-bed box.  On move-in day last year, I wanted to shrivel up and disappear.  However, once it was tucked into my room along with my roommate’s things, suddenly it didn’t seem like all that much.  Yes, your things will be a lot to carry/ship/store, and yes, the ironing board, vacuum, and personal printer will come in handy, so don’t leave them out.  Follow your Oweek handbook’s guidelines, read this blog for more advice on what to pack and what to leave out, and – I’m very sorry to have to say this – listen to your parents’ and older siblings’ advice.

7. Don’t.  Skip.  Class.

… Ever.  Unless you are very sick, or have a conflicting university-scheduled event (as the professors call it.)  If Hutch’s 8 AM is too early for you, it’s your responsibility to switch to another section.  It is very tempting, especially with a class like math where you follow along in the textbook, to sleep in or do homework for another course, but you’ll miss a lot from the lectures (many times, professors will throw in extra information that won’t be covered in the book but will be covered on the test.)  Smaller, seminar-type classes may even take attendance, so be careful.

Conversely, if you are really sick, please, please do not go to class or a midterm.  This also goes for if you are emotionally upset, if you are sleep-deprived (beyond a reasonable limit) or if you are hung over.  I have seen people drag themselves to class when they really should have been home, and maybe in the hospital.  Use your judgement – if you go to class only to sit in a feverish haze, you won’t learn a thing, you’ll probably make yourself sicker, and people around you might get sick as well.

8. You Don’t Have to Do Anything to Fit In.

Pop culture often portrays college as a place where everyone gets wasted and has gratuitous sex, but it really isn’t – at least, Rice isn’t.  No matter your views on sex, alcohol, or anything else, you can easily find others who share your opinions.  Also, you do not have to dress or act a certain way in order “not to stand out.”  There are people of every ethnicity, gender, style, religion, and body habitus at Rice.  (More about body habitus later.)

Bottom line: it isn’t high school anymore, and if you don’t attend a 7:45 AM midterm wearing your pajamas and flip-flops before you graduate, then you haven’t really lived.

9. Eat Whatever You Want.

Fair warning: people will judge you for what you eat in the servery, albeit mostly unconsciously.  I’ve been teased for eating too many carbs, for drinking soda at lunch, for eating Yoplait for breakfast.  Because I was already extremely self-conscious about my weight, these innocent comments had me eating meals in my room (which attracted more snarky comments – you just can’t win.)

You don’t have to put up with anything that makes you uncomfortable, whether it’s about food or exercise or sex or school.  Particularly concerning food, it is your right to eat whatever you want wherever and whenever you want (you’re paying enough for it, after all) and people who criticize your eating habits (or exercise habits, or social life, or school performance) need to find something better to do with their time.

10. Have Fun.

Seriously.  These are going to be some of the best four or five years of your life.  What makes you happy?  Is it tennis, basketball, WoW, study groups, coffee?  Then get out there and do those things.

Now, what makes you uncomfortable?  Do you hate meeting new people?  Are you afraid of Houston?  Does Beer Bike not sound like that much fun to you?  (Traitor!)  Then, may I humbly suggest trying something that high-school you would never have dreamed of doing.  Try a new food, explore the light rail, learn all your college’s cheers and anti-cheers (particularly if you are in Lovett,) and most of all, always remember how happy you were when you opened your acceptance letter, and carry that joy and enthusiasm every single day.

You’ve earned yourself a place at Rice, one of the country’s great universities.  Now it’s time to leave your own mark here.  And on the world.  But that comes later.