Nisreen came back from her 40th birthday trip. She had the time of her life, and I did okay holding down the fort as a parent. But we both messed up — and I have to take the blame here, I can't lay this on Nisreen.
As soon as she got back, we never sat down together to strategize and talk about the things that were important. Tuesday, November 9th, 2021, R.G. came to town and I went to meet him at S.'s — made amends with him — and sat late into the evening. It was good to see both of them. But now I think about it: what was the need? I give in more than I should and put my family in the background.
The reason I'm writing this is that we missed the registration deadline for Zara's IB program at Bayview Secondary that very day. It is not fair that Nisreen always carries the responsibility of the children's academics, and this time she wasn't on the ball — and I was not her backup. We failed miserably as parents. And that same weekend I had the BPS boys reunion, which wasn't even on the calendar. Why? Because at some point S.A. had said "#@$@#$ the calendar." Really? My priorities were a mess.
It was good to see the crew from Beacon. But was it really.
I thought long and hard about why I liked R.A. and S.S.. They were my friends from grade 12 and grade 13. I was bullied at that time by a kid named M.M.. He made me feel like the scum of this planet and it was really hard. I refused to go to school a few times because I was scared of how he would be with me that day.
In that darkness there were R.A., S.S., Z., and M.H. — the only people who gave me the time of day at that new school. It means so much to a person who is being bullied to have some kind of safe space. It was incredible. Now that I think about it, I also met A.Q. in the table tennis area at Beacon. Great times in the middle of hard ones.
We met at R.A.'s house. S.A. was already there, S.S. came shortly. We went to Kari Boys and then the arcade and played Mario Kart, which was genuinely a lot of fun. But S.A., for a moment, made me feel really awkward when we were playing — there was a situation early in the first game where I felt like he didn't help things when I was younger either. It felt weird, all those years later. I was still delicate about it. I opened up to them and they made fun of me at different points during the night. Regardless it was a fun night. But I did feel I'd have to wait for more of these.
I think I need to be with my family — be there in mind and in soul.
The short story of how I ended up at BPS in the first place: we had applied for our Canadian immigration, and in mid-grade 10 from SMCHS I had to give my O-levels early and head to Canada. We did that in May and came back in August, but by then we didn't have a school admission for A-levels. Beaconhouse was the only school that even accommodated a conversation, and because of my portfolio in writing they made an exception.
Coming to BPS was really hard. Two main reasons. First, it was co-ed. Second, most of the students knew each other from junior school, and they were already a couple of months into the year when I arrived.
M.M. had a new muse in the new kid. It was me, a guy named S.M., and a girl whose name I can't remember now. We all got picked on. It was a sad time — I had never had anything like that to worry about at SMCHS. My grades were actually good because of all of it, because my only priority was to survive the day without an insult or embarrassment.
Now that I think about it, there is so much more running in the mind of someone who is being bullied. And I'm not going to say I feel sorry for M.M. — though in my heart I might be a bit. Looking back, my BPS experience was not the best. I understand now how it feels to be plucked from one school in one grade and dropped into another. It's hard for the kid. Especially if there's someone there to really make things worse.
I wish that on no one.
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