TW: Bullying
Sorry, this is long. I had this prepared earlier.
I would walk around the school so fast that the teachers who were on duty wouldn't come up to me and ask why I was not with my friends. Even though they knew I didn't have any. I was so scared they would judge me. I would even eat lunch in the bathroom at times. It really sucked.
In class, people would leave me out or call me names. In grade ten, in my history class, we had five tables in a half-doom shape and then one in the centre. Guess where I would sit in the middle one; they fit six people, and I would be there all on my own.
In grade four, someone wrote the f-word on the wall. I don't think it was in our grade, but a couple of girls who were supposed to be my friends who really weren't told my grade, I wrote it on the wall. Firstly, it didn't look like my handwriting. Secondly, I was good and never swore or did anything wrong in class. Yes, I might have talked a bit too much, but other than that, I was good. I couldn't believe the teachers believed I wrote it. I sat outside once class started, as everyone had made fun of me. I was sobbing. It was so awful. I was ten years old.
Group work, gosh, that was hard. People wouldn't let me join in, so I would have to get the teacher to put me in a group.
In primary school, we had to choose where we sat each week or month. People would move the tables away from me so I wouldn't be near them.
People would throw my Tupperware containers around the place. One time in grade five, a group of girls got my shoes after we did some dancing and dangled them where I couldn't reach them. One person ate some orange and spat it onto me.
In high school, people would act like I wasn't there. If I were to talk to them, they would either ignore me or say, "Ah, is that a fly? I can hear it needs to go away; we don't like flys around here" It might sound odd, but when you are sitting in the PE class in the sports area, and you don't want to feel like the teachers or others students are judging you, I would try and talk to some girls who would let me be there friend at specific times. So when they would move away from me or act like I'm a fly, it really hurt. Then we would have to do group work in PE. I hated it because I'd have to wait around for the teacher to tell me what group to go into because no one would let me. Then, when it came to the two captains picking people for a team, I was never picked. The teacher would say for me to go in whichever group had the least. It was the worst. Knowing that 60 people in that PE class wouldn't want you in their group.
People would call me names in the class and say how much of a bad person I am, that I'm worthless, dumb, stupid, retarded at times. They would swear at me, and at one stage, I got called a professor because I had glasses on and a lab coat in since class, but it wasn't in a nice way. I would also get called beluga whale because of my apparently big forehead.
People would say I don't deserve to be here, that I'm worthless and deserve to die.
I got called a garden nome at one stage, but I was never told why. It's not that much of a word, but it hurt because of the way people would say it. I didn't understand that one.
Now, science lab people would not want to work with me, so I would have to work out how to do a two-person prac on my own. If I sat down and people were there, they would get up and move because you couldn't sit next to birdofparidise it wasn't the cool thing to do.
Then, in other classes, at one time, I had a group of girls that would stare at me and then make it look like I was staring at them, and then I would get in trouble for it. Or they would say stuff behind my back, and I would turn around and tell them to stop, but then I would get in trouble because they would say "miss me keeps turning around and looking at us" and then I would get in trouble.
I think in grade eight, I started getting the bus to school, which has three other schools and mine. The other schools were fine for a bit until one girl left. The people on the bus at my school would turn the whole bus against me, and one time, they were so mean to me that when I got to school, I started sobbing. It was awful. No one did anything. The bus driver didn't even care.
Again, in grade eight, this girl was really mean to me. Yes, I was a bit rude back, but I had no other way to defend myself. I would tell the teachers what would happen, and they would just take this other girl's side. In the end, the teacher who did nothing said it would be better if I spent the last three weeks in a different class, and boy, did that backfire because then the girls who invited me to hang with them then turned out to be really rude the following year to me. I swear it would follow me as if I had a target sign on my back or something. It truly was awful.
In year 11 I had my religion class, and I got to class early and put my stuff down while I waited for my friend. I went to the bathroom as the toilet was right near the class and when I came back, that supposed friend (she was mean in primary and high school we both moved to the same college she did and didn't like me) moved my stuff to a different table on my own because she didn't want me to sit with them. She wanted to try and get in with the cool girls. She didn't. It was only for that class because of a family friend or something. What was sad was she told me we could sit together so I didn't have to worry and be anxious because she knew I would be, and then she betrayed me like that. I also always got worried in assemblies sitting alone. This same girl would say I could sit with them, and then next, she would say no, you can't sit with us anymore. We can't be seen with you, and I would panic because I then had to find somewhere to sit that wasn't obvious. I was alone.
Um, I think that's a bit I can think about. I'm sure there might be more.
I just wish someone would have helped me more. The teachers and school psychologist would tell me to ignore it, but how could I do that when it would happen every day for 40 weeks a year for 13 years? It's like telling someone to ignore being punched every day.
I really don't even know how I survived it. It was such an awful time at such a formative age.
