The great thing about releasing a memoir is that you have a public document of all your neuroses, available in fine bookstores all across America. The even better thing is that, as time goes on, you revisit your book, and discover neuroses you didn’t even know were there.
I was bullied in childhood. Relentlessly. Like in the way where every day, school was an unceasing horror, and I walked home alone in a barbed tangle of anguish. From the very moment I entered the front doors, whose weight I remember so well, there was someone to communicate my worthlessness to me. One week, I’d handed in an assignment late, and been given a grade of zero, and so several of my classmates followed me around chanting ‘zero zero zero,’ during any spare moment, when they weren’t shoving me, and that remained my nickname for some time. Everyone who bullied me was popular and well-liked and approved-of, by peers and teachers alike.
I mention this in the second chapter of the book, where I say the following:
“To get at what chess meant to me as an adolescent, unfortunately, I have to tell you a little bit about my childhood. Specifically, there’s one piece of information I should convey, which is the fact that nobody liked me, and that they were probably right not to like me. I was an annoying and abrasive person, constantly ranting and raving and demanding attention from others, and whining and crying when I couldn’t get it.”
This was a perfectly unobtrusive passage, from my perspective. Until last Saturday night, when, in bed, while introspecting, I thought, ‘uh, no wait, that’s bullshit—they weren’t right to dislike me.’
Yeah, sure. I was needy, loud, disheveled, and, generally, a handful. But I was, like, fine. I was a sweet and confused kid who made some mistakes. In fact, I was pretty cool, in some ways. I had imagination, passion, and an endless appetite for information, and I sang long, improvised songs about secret caves to myself in the bathtub. Sure, I externalized my enthusiasms clumsily. But I was a kid.
And yet. At the age of 29, at the height of my triumph—got a book deal, childhood dream fulfilled, get to tell my own story—I was still, somewhere inside, convinced that the bullies were right. And I was still trying to appease them. Trying to say, ‘yeah, yeah, guys, no, it’s cool, I was a lot, I get it’—instead of saying the appropriate thing, which is that those kids were awful, and that they were allowed to be so by the real monsters, the administrators who glibly showed up and did their jobs and thought it perfectly normal that a number of the children in their charge should walk the halls pale-faced and sorrowful.
This is the real long-term danger of bullying. It’s not just that you have lots of bad days. Kids can take bad days—they shouldn’t have to, but children are resilient. It’s that bullying is an education in a set of values. An induction into a caste system in which, above you, frolic the capable young men with cool t-shirts and the fair-haired angels who smell like nice shampoo. You are taught, daily, that there are halls forever closed to you, pool parties where your tainted soul doesn’t belong, and that the best path to safety is silence. It’s an education delivered by the knuckle and the jeer and lashes of cruel laughter, and it is comprehensive. It gets in there so deep that long after you escape, even as your self-worth increases, you’re still keeping score.
For much of my life, I’ve been living to spite those children—to gather as much approval as possible so I can prove that they were wrong. It’s not that I think about them specifically, although I do, occasionally. It’s more like I scream into a chasm they installed. Look at me, you fuckers. Hello, poisonous super-ego in my chest, regard me if you can. Look at how approved-of I am.
My life now is unbelievably great. Me and my wife have a house in LA and I have amazing friends and family and I’ve got a book out and so on. But at times I still feel hungry and frightened. Because, somewhere in there, I’m still measuring myself against this invisible committee, and co-opting everything in my life as a symbol of my own adequacy. I still catch myself desperately searching for affirmation to shove into the hole it can’t really feed.
It’s weirdly difficult to let go of. The thing about internalized standards, whether you like them or not, is that you don’t think you can live without them. It’s deeply instinctual—the need to be measured, graded, given the stamp of okayness. Even if you don’t like the measure, and you don’t believe in the grade, you still want to pass muster.
When I was maybe ten, I used to disassemble autumn leaves. I’d sit under a tree and carefully peel the yellow flesh away from the brown veins, until I had a delicate batch of deciduous skeletons. Then I’d assemble them into little sculptures in the dirt, and I’d return later to see how the wind had rearranged my work.
If I don’t spend my time defending myself, then I have to realize that nothing requires defending. Every day is a mysterious disclosure of change, not some test to pass or fail. Around me, the ambiguous blue space stretches on forever, and, if I summon the courage, I can play, love, and die there, without any judgement except my own. It’s terrifying. But it’s also the only way I want to live.
brought me to tears, this is so relatable. (“still measuring myself against this invisible committee.”)
thank you