Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Bullies

Hi all,

I'm in a quandary with this blog. I started it for me and found it helpful in my fight against anxiety and the usual stuff that you get when you are me! Then I used it as a diary. Then it was a platform for me to express my feelings. Then I became concerned with being too open and with upsetting my family and friends through my words. Then I thought I blogged too often and decided to just publish once a week but then I found that I couldn't actually remember what I did in a whole week. Scarey but true. Is that something that I should be worried about? My friends all tell me that their memory is not what it was. Mine has never been great anyway.
There is so much going on and so much that I want to say .....most of the time to be honest....that I'm just going to blog when I feel like it, rant away and publish it. I will think about it before I unleash my thoughts on the world but I will just put it out there.

At the weekend I was chatting away to my daughter and the subject of bullying came up. I guess we can all relate to the issue. I'm sure most of us were bullied in some way or another when we were younger. I certainly was but not continually. I recall being pinched on my hands until my hands bled in assemblies at primary school and I remember being chased into the toilets and having the hood ripped off of my new coat when I was at secondary school. I locked myself in the toilet for what seemed like hours until my pursuers gave up and went away. I was left crying, shaking and terrified that I was going to be followed home and set upon on the way.I wasn't! I hadn't done anything to provoke the girls that were horrible to me. They obviously saw me as an easy target. I wasn't smart or attractive. I was shy and self conscious. Way to go girls. You made an already insecure young girl feel a million times worse about herself.

Fast forward 10 years or so and I have children of my own, two of which have a genetic condition that makes them look slightly different to other people. When my eldest daughters were young I had to get used to the stares and double takes. It was hurtful.  We fought for the girls to go to mainstream school....there was no reason why they shouldn't... and we were successful. However, this put my girls into the melting pot of adolescents and the peer pressure and judgmental opinions that go with it. I know, although they rarely told me, that both my older girls had more than their fair share of bullying and victimisation whilst at school. Words and name calling more than anything else are so hurtful. They can scar a person for life. Really, what possesses a person to be vile to another just so they feel better about themselves?

However, whilst I was aware of the issues my elder daughters were experiencing, I was not so aware that my youngest daughter was having an equally hard time.
My youngest girl is smart...clever, bright and on the ball. She is also tall, wears glasses and has wild curly hair that I love and that she has (finally) learned to live with! She is25!! She had bacterial meningitis when she was 4 months old, was very, very ill and we are incredibly lucky that she survived with no ill effects except for possibly poor eyesight.

The other day she casually mentioned that when she was in year 8 - she would have been 12/13 - she used to catch the school bus and she was intimidated and ridiculed while she was on there. I have no idea how long this went on for but on one occasion one of the girls who was picking on her actually set fire to my daughters hair...just for a laugh...as you do. I had no idea about this until the other day and I am horrified that I wasn't aware of it, that I didn't do anything about it.

I know that this was a long time ago now but that kind of bullying does untold damage and can ruin a person's self esteem and wellbeing. Without doubt, my youngest daughter will never forget that episode. I have no idea how it was resolved. I also have no idea what other things happened to her, or to my other girls, because of how they looked.
It breaks my heart and makes me bloody angry that these things happened to them and I couldn't stop it. 40 years plus on from my own experiences of bullying and I can still remember the guilt and the shame that I felt about myself.....yet it wasn't my fault! I didn't ask to be bullied, I didn't do anything that I was aware of to provoke it. I was just me.

I guess there will always be people who think that it's funny to ridicule, taunt and bully other people. Perhaps it gives them a feeling of satisfaction to see a fellow human being fall apart under the pressure of their actions. Such is life.

xxxx
 

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