Recently, a friend of mine sent me a message and asked if I had any stories about bullying that I could write about. She is a writer for the local newspaper and she's doing a series of articles on the topic. She wanted to include actual stories from people who had either been a bully or had been bullied.
After reading her message and thinking about it for a while, I decided that now at 41 years old, it was time for me to talk about my experience. At the time it was bad, a really horrible experience but now, looking back, in an odd way I'm grateful for it.
I am the second daughter in a family of 5 daughters. The first 4 of us are stair step, in that we are only around a year apart, with my youngest sister coming along 9 years later.
We lived in a small rural community in Limerick, Ireland where the local elementary school was co-ed. I wasn't the best looking kid in the world. I was fat and I had the most awful hair. I looked nothing like my sisters. They were thin, beautiful and they had gorgeous hair. They all looked similar to each other and I was most definitely the odd one out.
As a result in the 4 oldest of us being so close in age and because it was such a small community, everybody knew us. All the boys and girls in my class as well as the teachers knew all of us me and my sisters. Again it was obvious I was the odd one out.
The worst part of school was recess. I hated it because I knew that I would be picked on by the other kids. This wasn't the normal type of kids being mean to each other, where one day they say something nasty to you and the next day their best friends with you. This was relentless, everyday, regardless of what I did or who was there.
It was a very lonely time for me. I would try and hide from the other kids behind the school or just stay in the classroom. Sometimes, I would just spend all recess walking in circles around the buildings trying to avoid being noticed by the other kids.
Whenever they did spot me, their teasing would begin. I would be called fat and ugly. I was told that I stank and that nobody would ever be my friend. They would tell me that my sisters weren't really my sisters and that I must have been adopted. I used to wish that I really was adopted because that would explain why I was so different.
I remember kids pouring drinks on my homework and the teachers then berating me because they thought I was being messy and careless. Telling the teacher what really happened only made things worse. They would just tell me that the presentation of my homework was my responsibility and the kids would get even meaner when they found out I had said anything.
They would trip me up in the school yard so that I would cut my knees and hands. They would steal my lunch and tell me that I didn't need to eat anyway. Most days I cried but I knew I had to hide it. I knew that the other kids would tease me even more if they saw me cry and the teachers would tell me just to ignore it and suck it up. The teachers would tell me that I wasn't a baby anymore and I needed to grow up.
I remember the kids in my class passing around notes about me. They would each write a nasty word to describe me on the note and then leave it on my desk. It happened so often that whenever I saw a note being passed around I believed it was about me and straight away that feeling of complete misery would overcome me.
No one could see how miserable I was. I had no real friends. I hated the way I looked. I hated being so different. I would dream of running away, I would dream of being dead and I thought no one would care.
I would try to tell my parents but they never really understood. They were always supportive of me but it was always just a temporary fix. I knew they loved me as all my sisters did but I never felt that they really understood what was happening. Normally the response was Oh their just being kids, ignore them and it will stop. But it didn't stop. The kids still picked on me endlessly, I was still fat, I still had no friends and I was still very lonely. I had low self esteem, no self worth and I had lost all interest in anything. It was a terrible dark period.
No one instance sparked the change in how I felt. It was a series of events. I remember one teacher, who we all loved, telling us about when she was a child. She too had been fat and was picked on. She too had sisters and brothers who were more popular than she was. She too had been miserable as a child but looking at her now, it was hard to believe. She was funny, very popular and gorgeous. I began to think that maybe there was some hope for me.
I remember my mom coming home from a trip and she had brought 4 hand fans for us older girls. 3 were large and colorful and one was small and white. I immediately wanted the white one. My mom told me that she knew I would pick that one, she did it with a smile and for the first time I felt being different was special.
Slowly, I began to look for ways to be different. Maybe I was just growing up, maybe I was just tired of being humiliated but I started to like the idea that I wasn't the same as everyone else. I didn't want to be one of the popular girls. I realized I had a quirky sense of humor and if people didn't get it that was fine, because others did. Oh I was still being picked on relentlessly at school and yes notes were still passed and lunches were still stolen but with the lessons of a teacher and the acknowledgment of a parent, I no longer felt that it was terrible to be different. I actually started to like myself. It was a slow process and it took time but I started to see these bullies differently. That's when I started to realize that thinking outside the box or being outside the box was not necessarily a bad thing.
My youngest daughter is now experiencing something similar in school. She acts and thinks just like me when I was her age. She often comes home with stories of how she was teased and bullied by other kids but because I get it and understand it, she is starting to answer those issues herself. She is starting to recognize that she is even more special by being brave enough to be different. She is all the more outstanding because she doesn't just follow the herd but she has a mind of her own and she uses it.
More importantly, no matter how anyone treats her, she likes herself. She knows that these bullies are meaningless. They're just following the herd and they are very insecure about themselves. She understands that when they bully her it is only to make themselves feel better. She understands that for some reason they feel like they need to put someone else down or treat someone else terrible in order to feel bigger about themselves. She gets that the bulling is for the bullies benefit and not necessarily to make the bullied feel worse but to feed the insecurities of the bully.
She has learned to stand up for herself and to appreciate who she is. She has no hatred for them, quite the opposite. When she tells me about kids that tease her or bully her she also tells me how she doesn't care. We secretly laugh at how the bully would react if they were the ones being bullied. We giggle when we imagine them crying and running down the hall. We know it will never happen but it helps her to picture it when she needs too.
Bullying is a difficult thing to deal with. Do you tell or don't you? Do you as a parent or teacher react or not? Will it make the bulling stop or will it only make it worse and more hidden? There are no straight answers. Every situation is different. As a parent or teacher of a bullied child it is your responsibility to keep that child safe but it is also your responsibility to make sure that the child has a healthy emotional wellbeing, that they love themselves for who they are and that they embrace all kinds of people and personalities. Sometimes just being there, listening to your child and continually educating them on the personalities and needs of others while embracing their own personality is enough.
Being bullied or intimated as a child is a very real thing. The reasons may be different for all of us but the results are always the same. You will grow up and you will become stronger as an individual for it and you will learn empathy for others who are in the same position. It really doesn’t matter how you look, what you do or even who you are, bullies are always going to try and make you “feel” inferior in order to feed their own insecurities and inferiority complexes. Bullying makes the weak feel strong.
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