Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I am writing this letter from my closet, because I don’t want anyone to see. Not that any of my family believe what I am writing you. They would just take the letter away, and tell me I need to try harder, listen better and concentrate more and I wouldn’t have these issues. They don’t understand that this is just simply not true.
I am in seventh grade in a very competitive school – there are three seventh grade classes that compete for excellence. We are always pitted against each other in the way of contests, projects or like. I have been a student here since fifth grade, when my family moved here from out of state. In my old school, I was happy, had many friends and did well. I had teachers who cared about me and made sure that there were no arguments or fights among the girls, that snobbishness was nipped in the bud, even if not everyone liked each other. Elitism was discouraged and during school hours we all lived and learned like a team.
Everything changed when we moved here. The school was huge and the class I was put into was filled with mean, nasty girls who not only made no effort to make things easier, they went out of their way to taunt me and another new girl. From day one, they would amuse themselves with different ways to get me in trouble, give me false information about homework when I was absent and laughed and made fun of me when I answered wrongly when called upon by the teacher. The teachers also are mean and uncaring – they pay no mind to how the girls treat each other, or in my case, mistreat each other. They turn a blind eye to my complaints and a deaf ear to my pleas for help. More often than not, they insist that I am the instigator and the cause of my own problems.
My grades have fallen to just a hair above failing, and my parents and sisters, who don’t suffer as I do from their classmates, choose to agree with the teachers that I am not applying myself and am anti-social, discouraging any desire for the other students to include me in their groups. This is absolutely not true! How does a student, who had a great average and social life in her old school suddenly become anti-social and a poor student? Why does everyone, even my own family, not see what is happening?
Please help me find a way to make them see how sick and tired I am from all the misery and neglect I suffer each day in school. If nothing changes, then I am afraid I will be forced to give in to the dark thoughts that have begun to invade my thoughts and dreams.
Dear Child,
Your pain is evident in almost every sentence of your letter, so much so, that it boggles the mind how effortlessly all the adults in your life are able to make such flippant judgement against you and divest themselves of the responsibility to try and work through these issues in order to resolve them. It seems you have been made to carry the entire blame for all that you have endured since you came to this new school. Add to that the lack of support from your family and it makes perfect sense that you feel isolated and alone.
You raise a very valid point. How does a young person who did so well socially and scholastically in one school suddenly morph into an introverted, socially inept and scholastically failing student? There must be some explanation for the drastic changes.
Of course, no one likes to be uprooted from what they have known, home, friends, the comfort and security of a neighborhood and school where everyone knows and likes you. This may very well have been the basis of an anxiety that began the downward spiral for you. The fact that you had no part in the decision making for the move made you feel forced and intensified the stress and fears even before you moved, thus creating a festering foundation and aversion to the relocation. It also blocked out any chance for good to come from the move as you let those fears and the disappointment overwhelm you. The misery just grew as you continued to see everything in a negative light, one that intensified with each adverse experience, and which ultimately allowed the dark and disturbing thoughts you mention to take root and grow.
I am unnerved at the thought that your elders and teachers chose to overlook the extreme change in you, and, rather than make a concerted effort to help you, seem to be laying the blame entirely on your shoulders. There is no good reason why teachers should turn a blind eye or deaf ear to a student who reaches out to them for help. Even harder for me to grasp is the matter of your family who seem so willing to overlook your suffering without investigating the why and seeing what they can do to help you adjust.
By now, your situation has gone way beyond anxiety. I am concerned about your “dark thoughts” and your isolation; they are a troublesome combination.
Please get in touch with me, and let me know how I can help either by speaking to your parents or even to your teachers. I’m pretty good at listening and offering some solutions that will make life a bit easier to cope with. I want you to understand that dark thoughts are not healthy and shouldn’t be allowed to visit your solitary moments, where they have a chance to grow stronger and speak louder to your misery. I deeply care and I am here to help in any way I can.