My bullying hell.
NOTE: I know this isn’t a dating piece (I’m working on a couple of blog posts at the moment though) but I went walking near my old school, which has been demolished for housing although there’s a fight to make it parkland instead, and it brought back memories. I know most of us get bullied for something. For me that was often my weight but in this case it was more. I think this is why I can be so insecure, and sometimes too sensitive and needy. I contemplated changing initials on the off chance any found my blog or twitter but decided not to. Not once did they display an iota of regret. Even as adults they acted like mean girls do you know what, fuck them.
I know that for many people high school can be hell in parts. I know that many kids have been bullied in school. For me that part was almost the entire year of 8th grade, a year so horrible that I regularly contemplated killing myself, cried myself to sleep most nights, woke in the morning crying because God (despite my not believing in God) hadn't answered my prayers to let me just die, and just generally was completely and utterly miserable and totally alone. I remember one day, with my usual puffy red eyes in the morning, thinking how if it were possible that we only get a certain quota of tears in our lifetime that I must surely have used up a shitload of them. I remember mum, in tears with me, having to practically drag me to school. I remember countless meetings with the school social worker, the year co-ordination, the vice principal and mum. All this was because it had been decreed by the popular girl of the class that I was persona non grata. Nobody was allowed to talk to me in class or out of class- unless it was to say something cruel like about how I was fat. That was allowed. Tripping me over was allowed. Knocking my bag or books over so I had to pick everything up was allowed. Pulling my school dress or skirt up to laugh at my fat arse in front of the boys was allowed. But nice things? No.
There were only 2 people who went against this. On one occasion one of the boys who I had also gone to primary school with asked me if I was ok? Such small words. I managed to nod, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. "Hang in there," he said. "It'll blow over." I had to hide my face behind my then long hair so he- and nobody- saw my tears. That one simple act of kindness meant more than he will ever know.
The second was when one of the girls I used to hang around with before the decree returned a book she borrowed from me. Her little sister had made a mess of the book. She offered to buy me another one to replace it. I said it was fine. I didn't need to be hated anymore than I was. She left me a note inside the book apologising and signing it with xoxo. I remember thinking how hollow it was given she hadn't spoken to me in a few months. But at the same time I appreciated it.
How did this happen? In an absolutely ridiculous fashion.
Something mean was written about me on a table: it said, in essence, my name is X and 1) I want to be TC’s girlfriend (ironic as he was my best friend), 2) GW’sbest friend , 3) I never have showers and I think there MAY have been a fourth one but I can't for the life of me remember what it said. I think I blocked a lot of that year out. My minds way of protecting myself I guess, like people often do for traumatic events.
As an adult I can say they were relatively benign statements but as a 14 year old they weren't. The thing was the popular girl, LA (now LH) decided that I had written them about myself. (Seriously!) Her reasoning: it looked "kinda" like my handwriting (it didn't) and it looked like it was written by my pen (one owned by something like half the class including, ironically, her). Interestingly a few months later one of the popular girls told me that she had seen her coming out of that classroom at one of the break tones not long before it was discovered. I'll never know who did it but the simple fact that the popular girl said it was me meant that naturally the class agreed with her.
So when she said nobody was to talk to me they all just did it. Not a single person stood up for me. I have felt lonely at many, many times in my life (haven't we all) but the loneliness of that one moment will never ever be forgotten. Even now I feel literally sick as I remember that moment. It was like one of those movies where you wake up from a dream and everyone's gone, and you are all alone. Or a dream where you suddenly become invisible and no matter how much you scream and jump up and down and wave your hands you remain invisible.
I had hoped that maybe my friends would have stuck up for me. I would even have taken them doing it not publicly but privately if they were too scared to disobey or too ashamed to be my friend in front of the popular girl and her best friend JB (now JI) my two tormentors. Like still hanging out with me at lunch and recess. The popular girl wouldn't know after all. But no. Even the girls I had hung with pretty much since the start of school when we'd made friends with me followed and I was suddenly cut off from everyone, completely and utterly alone....
There are some things that stand out from the next eight or so months, things beyond the pain and loneliness. Moments where the bullying was worse than the usual daily taunts. Like the time they soaked a bunch of tampons in water so they became nice and big and ran around the corner and threw them all at me. Because I found a spot to sit and have my lunch all alone day in day out. Technically, being at the front side of the school, near the road, it was out of bounds but I didn't care. On rainy days I got a bit wet but I didn't care- I even thought well maybe I'll get pneumonia and even if I don't get lucky enough to die from it I could get some time off school, away from my living hell. Sometimes I'd eat quickly- prompting comments from the girls about how fat people like me ate too quick- and then go to the library to hide in a corner and read. Being a bookworm over those eight or so months I got through even more books that I ever imagined I could.
I was trying to eat healthy (I was on a diet which, lets face it, I have been on for most of my life!) and I often had those little tubs of two fruits in my lunch. The girls would sneak around and laugh at my lunch. I'd be tripped over, had leftover bits of food thrown at me, was called fat and ugly so many times that even now I say it about myself and actually mean it. One day after PE I discovered my watch had been stolen from the box we put all our special items in. It was a Mickey Mouse watch I got from Disneyland that played music. I was devastated. These girls that I speak of were- surprisingly- not my two tormentors, the instigator of it all, but my former friends. I think that these girls, and the few boys who sometimes hung out with them, were actually crueler to me than the popular girl and her friend. I could never understand that. I still don't.
For almost eight months my mum battled with the school to have me moved to another form but they kept saying that the numbers were at maximum in each form. I offered at one point to take a lie detector test to prove I hadn't written those things. I spent way too many hours in the social workers office in tears.
At one point all of a sudden one of the boys started being nice to me. I lapped up the kindness, kind of like how an abused dog will still always want their masters approval. Every kind word was like a balm on my soul. He'd come and sit with me sometimes at lunch and we would talk and laugh. It was only when someone slipped a note in my locker- I suspect the girl who returned the book- telling me that he had been given a dare by the two tormentors to get me to sleep with him. Needless to say the next time he came to see me I said to him "I know what you're doing. I know it's a dare and you've been telling them everything I said!" (Probably one of the only times in my life I stood up for myself.) He didn't even look ashamed or guilty, he laughed and said "well I wouldn't sleep with a fat four eyes like you for no reason. You are pretty dumb for believing it." Perhaps the saddest thing was the fact that I contemplated not telling him I knew. Oh I wouldn't have gone so far as to sleep with him knowing what I knew but to just continue the ruse for awhile because he provided the only conversation in school hours, the only kindness, in all the pain and loneliness. But, ultimately, I knew being alone was better than living a lie.
My persona non grata status didn't extend to just my class. All the popular kids knew not to talk to me and to make fun of me or even spit on me if I walked past. One of them even tripped me up on the top of the stairs so I went flying down them, landing on my side so hard it was bruised and hard to breathe for ages. I never told on them. I knew that "dobbing" would just make my life worse. Though how they could have made it worse than that I will never know.
The worst moment was when I actually did attempt to kill myself. This is something I haven't ever told a single soul. My mum only found out I had wanted to kill myself a few months ago- not that I attempted it a couple of times- and she was devastated. But I never told her at the time because I saw how much it pained her to see me so unhappy. I couldn't burden her anymore. The night it happened was a Sunday night, the night before school started again for the new term. I was pretty naive. It was pre-Internet which, in retrospect is probably a good thing because had Google existed back then I would have found a way to do it. I took a packet and a half of Panadol. I thought surely that was enough. It wasn't. Not only did I not die, but I simply woke up the next morning feeling like absolute shit.
The turning point came about seven months in. A chance encounter in the library with one of the girls I'd gone to primary school with and I told her about what my life was like. She was horrified and said I could come and hang with her friends sometimes. Not all the time, she said, because they wouldn't like that but sometimes. I probably should have thought it a strange offer but needless to say at the time a little bit was better than nothing. So maybe two or three times a week at lunch mainly I would go and hang with them. I didn't really say much. I had always been shy but my ordeal had made me even more so. When people came up behind me and stuck crap down the back of my top or yelled "boo fatty four eyes" suddenly I would jump a mile. If I saw one of my two tormentors or any of their friends I would instantly start shaking waiting for what they would do or say this time. They soon learnt they didn't even need to speak, just look at me, and I'd be affected. So when my school friend said to me that I couldn't really hang out with them anymore because the others thought I was stuck up (because I didn't speak much) I didn't feel much emotion. It seemed to me that it was perfectly right. Why WOULDN'T they reject me too? Who would even WANT to be friends with someone like me?
Finally, FINALLY, after eight months battling the school by mum they let me move classes. Not to the form I wanted to go in as by then I had made a couple of friends through my childhood male best friend who lived a few houses up and I had known since we were three and who I spent most weekends and school holidays with along with my brother and his younger sister who were in the same year, but a new one nonetheless.
It was the middle of second period, I think, that I was moved. The class were in the science block so I'm guessing it was a science class but I can't quite remember. The year level co-ordinator took me in there and just said, "X is in this class now. She's been given the class schedule." Of course everyone turned to look at me curiously. I slipped into a seat in the back of the room and put my head down. At the desk next along from me were three girls. At one point they said my name and I looked up and asked "yes?" I was given a withering look. "I wasn't talking to you. X here has the same name as you." I was told.
The next period those three girls asked me to sit with them and asked plenty of questions. But then after lunch they told me they'd spoken to my main tormentor and knew who I was and what I did. Great, I remember thinking, I could never ever leave it behind me!
But, slowly, over the remaining few months in the year I began to make friends. There were four girls in my form who became my friends- to this day one of them remains one of my best friends- and from another form there were another two. The six of them hung around together and, as time went on, I became part of their group. There were another few girls in the form who sometimes came to hang out with us.
I was with two of them (both had the same name and it also coincidentally happened to be the name of my main tormentor) one day walking across the courtyard when my tormentor and her best friend (the girl who had been one of my close friends for years before this all happened and who's friendship with me seemed to threaten my main tormentor for some reason before the table incident) suddenly appeared. Apparently someone had written something in chalk in the girls toilet near the year ten common room (or it may have been year twelve then, I can't remember when the merger happened) about her and I was blamed. One of the girls stood up for me, pointing out there were many with her name including my two new friends. But no. It was definitely about her because it had her last initial or name. She tried to get in my face, telling me she knew it was me and I had mental problems etc but my two new friends basically stood in front of her. They were a bit tough and told her that she'd have to go through them to get to me. She chose to walk away.
Though she did get the popular girls in my class to make extra fun of me for a bit but all of a sudden it was water off a ducks back because I had my new friends. They did try and get them to abandon me, telling them what I had done but I'd already told them my side and all the pain- though I had edited it because it was too raw to tell the whole truth, in all its intricate and painful details that soon- and the attempts failed.
Soon it was summer and I spent much of it with my new friends.
In the next school year my old friends and my tormentors still would make smart comments or something when I walked past but the more I ignored it, the more I showed no reaction, the less they did it though it never totally stopped throughout my whole time at high school.
Teenagers can be cruel and girls I think the cruelest of the bunch. Sure teenage boys can be cruel too but girls are bitchy and that is much worse in my opinion. Boys might have a fight and then it's done with. Girls will just bitch and snipe and make you miserable. My tormentors never said sorry, never acknowledged I didn't do it. I occasionally see their names pop up as comments on mutual friends posts on Facebook and I look at their profiles and see how perfect their lives seem. Both are married, one has two kids, one has one. I wonder, when I see them, how it's fair that they get the perfect life and I don't. There is no sign of karma having ever gone their way for what they did to me. As for the girls who were my friends before the decree, I'm Facebook friends with a couple of them. We never really spoke again at school. But, with school far behind us and time dulling some of the bad memories and letting most people look back at their school days as the halcyon days of youth, and remember the good times not the bad, a couple of them are friends on Facebook. Only one have I ever really caught up with but another two I do talk to sometimes on there.
I do believe that, to this day, it has affected me. Just writing this is affecting me: for instance I'm feeling a bit sick, my hands are a bit shaky, and I feel like I want to have a bit of a cry. (Yes- I still have tears left despite those eight long months. The human body can be, I think, up to 65% water. I swear back then my percentage was much lower because of my nightly crying myself to sleep.) But I feel good having written this, having gotten one of my stories off my chest. Sure there are others in my life I may talk about in the future but this is one that shaped me. For instance I know I can be a bit of a needy friend, wanting to see friends more often, wondering when I haven't heard from them in a certain amount of time if I've been replaced or done something to make them angry or upset. I take things way too personally, am far too sensitive about things said or done, I overthink things. And I have no self-confidence at all. I don't see the good in me. Outside or in. When someone gives me a compliment my first reaction is to laugh at them. Especially if they say something positive about my body. I look at them and I say, "are you blind?"
If you take anything from my story please let it be this: kindness doesn't cost a thing and just a little bit can truly make a major difference in someone's life. Bullying- whether it's a child, teenager or even an adult- can really fuck someone's life up. And words- like fat four eyes- can do just as much damage, in fact I would argue MORE than hands. Words CAN hurt. Words can linger in a person's mind years and years after they have been said. They can affect the way they live their life and choices they make. They can reverberate in a person's brain for years. So please be kind. And if you are lucky enough to have kids teach them that too. Because- especially with the proliferation of social media in our lives- words can lead to people taking their lives. That stupid little childhood singsong retort to insults "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a load of utter bullshit. Words- just like actions- can kill. Bullying can kill.
