Mini Brain Dumps

Canvas of Skin marks the final short story of 2024, a poignant and introspective piece that delves deep into the complexities of self-identity and the human experience. As the year draws to a close, this story invites readers to reflect on the delicate layers that make up who we are—both the visible and the unseen.

Trigger Warning:
Canvas of Skin deals with themes of self-hatred, bullying, and emotional distress. The story explores the psychological impact of negative perceptions, both internal and external, and may be triggering for some readers. If you or someone you know is struggling with similar issues, please seek support from a mental health professional or a trusted individual. This work is a fictional portrayal, inspired by real-life events, and is meant to shed light on these difficult experiences, but it is important to remember that you are not alone, and help is always available.

Canvas of Skin:

There’s a peculiar kind of silence that follows you when no one likes you. It wraps around you like a thick fog, suffocating every breath, every step. It doesn’t matter how many faces you pass, how many voices you hear—it’s always there, pressing in from every side. It’s the loneliness you feel even when standing in a crowded room. It’s the way you can see how people look through you, the way their words cut just a little deeper. The bruises fade, but the words stick with you, like scars that never heal.

I used to think I could ignore it—the quiet laughter behind my back, the whispers in the hallways. But over time, the cracks in my confidence grew wider. The insults, once sharp and direct, became more insidious, like the virus of a thought that infects your mind and refuses to leave. It started with the jabs at my appearance, my voice, my laugh, my very existence. And then it shifted—no longer just about the things they could see. It became about who I was, who they told me I was.

Before long, it began to feel like no one liked me—not in a way that made me question their words, but in a way that made me question myself. And that, I think, is where it all begins—the moment you start to believe the lies, when the darkness that others cast upon you becomes the only light you see.

___

School was a different type of hellscape, I’m sure you probably know from your own experience of it as well. Or, perhaps, you were one of the lucky ones who had it easy. No bullying, no insecurities, no bad grades. I am jealous of you if that was your experience. But, for the majority of us peasants, we had to endure some of the most ruthless tortures that anyone could face in their life; and the worst part? It persists even outside of school. It follows you into adulthood. Spoiler for you if no one has ever told you that before. It’s not the same, but still present in the subtle passive aggressive way that is somehow acceptable in the corporate world.

We are always told the same song and dance, that the person bullying you is jealous of you in some capacity. Or, if they were a boy, they had to have a crush on you. Which, might I say, is a fucked-up thing to do. If you like someone, don’t hurt their feelings.

Although, I think the world has changed a bit from when I was younger. I pray that it has.

In school we learn about human nature, about our innate need to fit in to a group, to feel like we belong. It is a survival mechanism, those who were excluded from the group or lived in isolation were more likely to die. The wilderness is a ferocious beast after all, and a lone human makes fairly easy prey. A group of humans, however, is a force to be reckoned with. Our planet will tell you that. The same is still kind of true today. No, you will not end up being hunted down by a wild boar in the forest if you do not fit in but, our bodies still crave human connection.

Growing up, I was the kid that never belonged.

Many of my peers grew up inside the town limits, whereas I grew up on an acreage roughly thirty minutes away. Most of them had already knew each other by the time they started school so you can imagine the difficulty that a child, who does not have a mother, has when trying to fit into a new group of people their age. I was immediately a target. I can date this back to some experiences that I had in preschool. I am allergic to most citrus foods so instead of receiving juice and cookies, I was given milk and cookies.

Arguably, my combination of snack food was way better. However, between the fact that my beverage was a completely different color than everyone else’s, and that milk and cookies is obviously a superior combination, this better deal became apparent to my classmates.

I was a different kid, a strange kid. I had short blonde hair that was cut into a bowl cut. Let us ignore the fact that this was obviously an awful type of haircut to have, it was considered abnormal because, “girls aren’t supposed to have short hair”. I loved reading, writing, singing, and learning. Throw in a pair of circular glasses and the fact that I prided myself on being smart, I was destined to be a bully magnet.

There was a girl, Amanda, in my class during my preschool years. She was also from outside of town, growing up in a little hamlet close to where I lived, who I became friends with. She was nice and we played together all the time, slowly warming up to the others within our class. I would share my milk with her so that we could both eat milk and cookies. We later ended up on the same bus route and would sit together and share the snacks that our parents packed for us. She was my best friend. That is until grade three when we were placed in separate classes.

That’s when my sense of reality shifted. I no longer had a friend that I could spend time with during classes, or during recess. She had found new friends to hang out with who were arguable not as weird as I was. We still rode the bus together and shared our snacks on the ride, but she did not hang out with me in school anymore. Eventually, she stopped sitting with me on the bus too.

I knew that I had to find some new friends. The one problem is when you grow up in a small town the cliques form when you’re young, and that window had long since passed me by. And so, I became the wallflower, always there and unnoticed. Able to watch everything that went on around me but never included in the conversations unless needed. That’s when the bullying started.

There was a boy in class, Troy, who tormented me to no end. When I brought this up to people, they would say that he was bullying me because he liked me. Seriously? How does someone show their affection for someone by making their lives a living hell? I doubted that was the case. But people would simply shrug off my complaints, citing ‘Boy’s will be boy’s.’ And thus, I endured the torture by myself.

School, which had previously been my salvation, became my worst nightmare. I would walk the halls with my books huddled to my chest, my head down, the voices carrying down the hall as they shouted insults after me. The insults ranged in severity, sometimes they would call me a variety of curse names, often referring to me as a female dog, or stuck up, sometimes they would call me fat and ugly. When I would pass their desk in class to go to my seat, they would try to trip me. When I successfully thwarted them, they would knock the books from my hands or shove me. If I beat them to my desk, they would knock them off as they walked past- I could never win.

People told me to ignore it. That they were just looking to get a reaction out of me. So, I stopped talking. Kept my head buried in a book in the corner of the classroom as far away from anyone as I could. That only resulted in them ripping the book from my hands, and when I didn’t try to grab it from them, they would throw it in the trash, and I would have to fish it out. On one occasion, they ripped my book in half.

I vividly remember one day when I was coming in from recess. I was wearing my light blue puffy coat and a pair of pink string mitts that my grandmother had knitted for me. As I approached the front of the school I was grabbed by Troy from behind and pushed into the front doors. This was normal so I really didn’t think much of it. That is until someone else grabbed my arm. My eyes widened in surprise as I looked up at Jason, Troy’s best friend. I struggled against them, but I was far too small and weak in comparison to my assailants. They wrestled my arm away from me, nestling my fingers against the cold metal of the door frame. I watched in horror as the door slammed onto my fingers.

The strange thing is, I don’t remember there being pain, at least not immediately. I made eye contact with Troy, a malicious grin twisting his face. Jason released me from his grasp, and I watched as they entered the school together, laughing. As their figures retreated down the hall, I looked down at my hand. The pink mittens, the ones my grandma had knitted for me, were beginning to stain crimson.

I walked quickly to the bathroom, clutching my hand to my chest. As I approached the sink, I tried to swallow but my throat felt like it had restricted to the size of a straw. I removed the glove as gently as possible, the yarn sticking to my skin. When my hand was finally freed from its prison, I looked down in horror.

And at that moment, the pain finally caught up with my brain. It was excruciating. I clutched my hand between my legs, curling in on myself as I tried to suppress the screams that threatened to erupt from my lungs. I bit my lip in hopes of stifling the noise as much as possible. I couldn’t give Troy and Jason the satisfaction of hearing me cry. Fresh hot tears streamed down my cold; wind kissed cheeks.

After a few moments the pain seemed to subside enough for me to inspect my fingers a bit closer and to come up with a plan for what I was going to do. My fingers were swollen, my nails turning black and blue, the nail separating from the skin. My top knuckles, where the door had made impact, were bleeding, deep cuts running along them, the skin curling in on itself. I tried to bend them which caused the edges of my vision to go dark. I breathed another breath in and began to run the water so I could clean the blood from my fingers.

Red met porcelain which mingled with the water, turning pink, before circling the drain. Down…Down… Down… When all the blood had been removed, I dried my hands with paper towel. I grabbed a new piece and wrapped it around my hand before assuming the same position I had previously, hand between the knees, clutching my hand wrapped hand tightly. I focused on my breathing. Inhale. Exhale.

After a few minutes I tried again to bend my fingers. The pain was still tremendous, new blood springing from my open wounds as I bent them, but I managed to curl them completely into my palm. I tried to do it again, and again, and again, until I could manage the pain, a trick I had learned from summer camp where I had sprained my ankle every summer. If I could move it, it wasn’t broken. If I could move it, I could get through it on my own. I wouldn’t need crutches if I could withstand the weight of my body.’ After I became confident in my ability to move my fingers, I threw away the bloody paper towel and cleaned up the sink, ensuring no blood was left behind. I looked at the red stained gloves that I carried in my hands before placing them in the garbage. I went to the office, hoping to get bandages for my fingers. When I presented my injuries, the administrative assistant asked me what had happened.

“I got my fingers caught in the door,” I answered.

“Oh gosh, those darn doors are so heavy. Let’s get you all fixed up!” she said. “Just sit there and I’ll go get you some bandages.”

I sat down on blue bench, the bench that was solely reserved for the bad children who were summoned to the office. She came back a few moments later with the first aid kit.

She pulled out an alcohol wipe first.

“I know you’ve cleaned it already, but we have to disinfect it, so you don’t get an infection. This is going to hurt,” she said before placing the wipe on my knuckles.

It didn’t hurt, I didn’t even flinch or tear up. The pain was nothing in comparison, like a drop in a bucket of ocean.

“Wow, you didn’t even flinch. Good job!” she said as she put the wipe into the trash. She grabbed the bandages and wrapped each individual knuckle. When she was done, she straightened up. “Were going to tell your dad what happened okay, do you want to talk to him?”

I nodded my head.

She grabbed my hand gently, the one that was not injured, and directed me back into her office and behind her desk to where her phone sat. She dialed the number for my dad quickly and listened as the phone rang. When my dad picked up the phone, she briefed him on what I said had happened, and let him know that I was okay and that the injuries had been treated to the best of their ability. She then handed me the phone.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice edged with concern.

“Can I go home?” I asked, ignoring his question, fresh tears springing to my eyes.

“‘I’ll come get you,” he said and hung up the phone.

I gave the phone back to the nice lady. “He’s going to come get me,” I said.
She smiled sweetly at me, “I’ll go get your things for you.”

I lost the nail of my middle finger from that incident. The torture continued. And my life began to spiral.

Down… Down. Down.…

My dad didn’t believe me when I said that I had accidentally slammed my fingers in the door of the school, despite my insistence that it had happened. It’s stupid but I was embarrassed to admit that I was being bullied. It was far easier to lean into my clumsiness. To pretend that it wasn’t happening. That, and a part of me feared that the bullying would get worse if I did tell someone what was happening. But despite me never admitting what actually happened, my dad confronted the school about their inaction when it came to the bullying that I had been enduring. The bullying didn’t stop though, it evolved.

Long gone were the days of physical injury. They didn’t learn their lesson about not being bullies, they instead got better at hiding the fact that they were doing it at all. So, instead of coming home everyday with bruises, there was not a scratch on me. Yet, I felt far more defeated than I had ever felt before.

Before, the torment was easier to manage. At school, I would get beat up. But it was temporary. Eventually, the bruises would fade, and Troy would be left with a blank canvas in which he could paint black and blue, red and yellow, however he saw fit. But now… the injuries cut deeper than the surface level of my skin. Now, the sharpness of his words became a virus that slowly infiltrating my brain, poking and probing at every vulnerability until it broke through my firewall. The physical punishment was nothing compared to the inescapable onslaught of my own mind. Of my thoughts telling me that I was worthless, that I was stupid, that I was fat and ugly. The words echoed through my mind, his voice at first, but slowly it became my own.

I later learned that Tory’s parents were going through a messy divorce. With their pent-up aggression not being able to be expressed at home, nor physically anymore, they resorted to brutalizing me emotionally. At first, I ignored it. It was far easier to ignore comparatively. This evolution to the bullying persisted until the end of the school year, and into the next.

It also manifested itself across the internet. Posts on my wall, direct messages, comments telling me to ‘fuck myself with a remote’. As more people joined in, people I thought were my friends began to like comments that tore me down. Before long, it began to feel like no one liked me.

And I couldn’t blame them; I didn’t like me either.

___

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