I've been thinking about this a lot recently because of my Teaching course. At Uni we've been talking about how to mitigate against the effects and at my placement I see a little bit of it. I think as a teacher it can take a while to notice bullying, it's pretty insidious especially when perpetrated by girls.
I don't think anyone really loves the person they were in school, regardless of bullying. Time plays strange tricks on your memories too.
I'm not sure how you gauge bullying, what's really bad? Is some bullying OK? Or if not OK, inevitable?
I can say easily that it was not physical, it also wasn't racist or homophobic or sexist. It was primarily by girls and it was for 'reasons' that are completely unimportant now. Also, I was lucky. I have really loving, caring, concerned parents so home was always a nice place. Although school was where the bullying took place it also had a library and if I had a book I was happy. Teachers generally thought I was smart. These are all things that my lecturers would say gave me resilience.
So my point is, it wasn't terrible. Well that's a silly thing to say, at the time I very much experienced it as a terrible thing. Children aren't great on perspective and being bullied is never really going to be anything but terrible. What I mean was it wasn't that bad, it could have been far worse.
There are a lot of things that happen to you at school, at home during those years which probably irrefutably change you. As completely nerdy as it is to acknowledge this, if Mr. Martin hadn't noticed me walking past the classroom when he was holding the first debating meeting of the year (a meeting I had said I was going to attend, but forgotten about) and told me to come in my life would, I feel fairly confident in saying, be very different. It's kind of terrifying to think of.
My point is that a lot of things change us and it's impossible to measure the subtle how and whys of it all. Regardless, I think being bullied changed me, particularly how I interacted with others. I'm pretty sure (and this is where your memory can trip you up) I was never anything but shy, so it's unlikely I was ever going to be incredibly outgoing.
Being bullied divides the world up into enemies and friends, and the first camp is much bigger and cooler. Enemies aren't just the bullies themselves, it's also the people who give tacit approval, like I said, there's a lot of them. When I meet people there is still a part of my brain which wonders "where do you fit into the hierarchy?" and "can I trust you?". This makes me sound horribly calculating but it's the truth. I think the really scary part is that a lot of bullies pretend to be your friends, to begin with.
The more I write this stuff down the more I think these are issues that a lot of people have, regardless of bullying. It does always surprise me how few people were bullied. Perhaps as a way of overcoming my general distrust I often assume that people who I like must have been bullied. Because you must have been, right? Because otherwise you're in the enemy camp.
The other thing is, if you acknowledge (as I find it impossible not to) that bullying made you who you are then how can you be so negative about it. Part of me thinks of young, defenseless, naive me and, well, I even annoy me. How could I have continued in life like that? Perhaps they were doing me a favor. I'm not sure how much of this is concerning self hatred and how much is amusing "oh shucks, wasn't I a loser?" backward glancing.
Anyway, the main point of this is:
- OMG I'm perfectly fine now, fuck you bullies! There are people who think I'm cool, not many, but some! (If I wanted to rub it in I would mention our comparative life trajectories, how is Coles, Susan?)
- Also: It's totally the fault of the above mentioned that I get nervous going to parties where I hardly know anyone.
- Plus, let's also blame the school yard bullies for all those perfectly nice people I'm not friends with because I pre-screened them out.
- I also blame my parents. Obviously.
THE END.
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