Bullying, Take 2, My story continued

I hope you all feel as though me writing about my bullying isn’t about getting sympathy or feeling sorry for me, Its about me being able to get my story out there and show people that you can overcome. As I continue to write please let me know how you feel, ask questions….

It didn’t end with the girls almost killing me. They never really learnt. They continued to bully me for the rest of the year.

I am not only talking physical bullying here, I am talking verbal and emotional. After going through a police family conference and pretty much allowing these girls to walk free. I thought that maybe, just maybe, they would have learnt and would take on the second chance I gave them. I am certainly not someone who carries bitterness and I love forgiving people. I just do. I forgave these girls before they even apologized. No, I am not saying wave a flag and call me a hero, I am just stating that is the kind of person I am.

I spend the next few weeks at school staying away from pretty much every single person at the school. I was good at that, I tried to hide on the courts away from all the girls. Except this is where I found my second group of bullies, the guys……

Everyone would assume that they would leave a girl alone, as you know they get taught to be gentlemen. This school had no gentlemen. In fact, their parents should be pretty embarrassed by them. One boy in particular just seemed to hate me for no reason, I mean NO REASON! I think he once said its because I came up to him and introduced myself, and then one arvo after school i must have seen him and waved because he yelled at me the next day for waving… (don’t ask I have no idea, just shake your head, believe me you will do a lot of this).

I spose, I should tell you that in year 7, I shaved all my hair off for leukemia, I raised quite a bit of money, and I loved every second of it. Cancer has been throughout my family and I saw it as being able to be them for a day, or a few days. Feeling how one materialistic thing can make you so uncomfortable in your skin… Of course this would be my hair. However, this proved to get the opposite kind of reaction out of these kids, they tormented me for the entire year about looking like a male, shemale, he-she, anything that you can think of I was called. It was truly horrible.

So these boys took it upon themselves to absolutely attack me verbally whenever they could. One in particular like i said earlier just absolutely hated me, I would spend most of my lunchtimes running around the school with my back pack and in some cases without it, as he would have stolen it in last class and emptied the entire contents across the school premises, and then he would hang my back pack on top of the fence at school!

I would then spend an extra 10 minutes after the bell for class, going around and collecting as many of my items as possible and then climbing the fence and retrieving my school bag.

It didn’t matter what I said to the teachers, or who i told, it just seemed as no one cared. I was constantly bombarded with the just hide in the Library, they won’t come find you, or just go tell a teacher straight away! The problem is, the students had such a power over the teachers that most of my teachers wouldn’t even step in to stop the bullying anyway! I was basically fighting this all by myself. I think by this stage I actually stopped telling mum and dad what was going on at school, I think also they just stopped asking.

I think it might have been around 3 months after I was assaulted that I started getting headaches and feeling dizzy all the time. I was waiting for dad to get home one arvo, I don’t believe i had keys to the house, or I might have left them at home, but i remember a friend had ridden by bike past the house and said Hi for only a few seconds before he left and i was waiting alone again.

I decided to stand up and just walk down the drive way to see if dad was coming. Except I didn’t make it very far down the drive way, I passed out and it seems as though I had a bit of a seizure on the floor which absolutely scrapped half my face off it was red raw!

Dad got home and was in total shock when he saw me, I couldn’t tell him what had happened and I felt even worse when our friend who had ridden by earlier came back to say hello and saw the state I was in, knowing that he had only been up the road for 2 minutes and missed me passing out.

This one episode led to about I think 2 months worth of me passing out, or semi passing out where I could hear but not see or vice versa. I would be in bed and dad would come up to say goodnight and I wouldn’t be able to see him. I was taken to hospital for CT Scans where they found nothing wrong with my brain.

They decided to put it down to a relapse of a concussion and that’s where the diagnosis stayed. I would be running and my legs would just give out and I would wake up a couple seconds later with people all staring down at me. It was really hard to deal with especially when it wasn’t diagnosed as anything extremely dangerous.

I think this is where my attitude changed about how to deal with people, and It also changed the way I started to think about myself. I will continue this later, as once again. It is a fair bit to read. Thanks for reading once again.

Have a good evening.

P&CC.

Bullying…… My thoughts, My story.

(Picture by the ‘say no to bullying campaign Facebook 2012)

It makes my heart break every single day when I see people hurting, the look in people’s eyes that instantly tell you that they are NOT OK. The look of hopelessness, powerlessness and the feeling of nothing ever getting better.

Last night my partner read out a status on Facebook:
“Warning, What I am about to say may offend some people, But it is MY opinion.
I am very saddened to hear the news of *name*, Very tragic indeed.. And Bullying is wrong, I HATE bullies! I was bullied at school, and through most of my teenage years, so I know what it feels like to be bullied!.. However, Suicide is a cowards way out, and a selfish one too! Suicide is NOT the answer! It only makes things worse, think about the people you leave behind, family and friends are devastated and hurt by the loss of their loved ones. If you are being bullied, please seek help, talk to family, friends, Councillors, lifeline, anyone. RIP *name* , My thoughts and prayers are with your family..”

I am absolutely heart broken when I hear these stories of young people losing their battle to bullying. My entire teenage years was about running away from those bullied me and tormented me every single day. Throughout my high school years I lost 2 friends to suicide from bullying and another from other reasons.

Sometimes I wonder how many more children/adolescents/adults/older adults have to kill themselves before something is seriously put into place to stop it. I understand people will say that there is nothing that will stop it completely and that is fine. However, there has to be a better way to control it.

Stories like this make me angry as well, and this is where a lot of people will have a different opinion to me. For you to all understand my opinion or to better understand where I am coming from, I think I should tell you about what i went through.

Started in year 8. 

I wasn’t really bullying until i started high school, of course there was always the primary school banter; if you don’t give me that i wont be your friend, or your mean I’m not your friend any more… and that basically was it until high school .Everyone thought they were better then everyone, and hitting year 8 (SA) was where most people started to grow up a little, people started to ‘like boys’ and  have crushes and wear make up, (for me anyways) and all that grown up stuff. (sexuality wasn’t really explored as much as it is now in year 8/ and even primary school these days it seems). I didn’t even know what any of the language was that most of the boys were using!! Anyways, sorry I am doing that thing where I get off topic!

I started out in a new high school, most of my friends went from the private Primary school to the private Highschool that coincided with it and so I was left to basically fend for myself. I love getting to know people, and I love making new friends, so in some way I wasn’t too fussed about starting somewhere I didn’t know anyone. I did 7 weeks of year 8 before I was so far in front of all the classes that the school decided to put me into year 9. I started year nine as all the kids I got to know in year 8 went on their year 8 camp.

I started year 9 on a Wednesday and I was put in all the different classes, so I felt lost once again, I just followed people from class to class and ended up finally in my favourite class P.E!! WOO! Finally somewhere I could do my thing, run around and not really have to interact with anyone apart from yelling out hey you pass me the ball, or something to that extent! 😉 We were playing basketball and that is MY sport, I love it, I played it, Reffed it, watched it, drew about, talked about it and slept about it! It was just my favourite thing to do. We picked teams and I ended up on the team with most of the guys. Most of the girls were all in their own groups and just didn’t really want to play. I didn’t really think anything of it nor care, i just wanted to play basketball.

P.E, started and finished and we headed back to the change rooms, I finished changing in the open girls changing area as there were no doors on most of the cubicles which meant i had to face my fear of my private space being invaded (JEEEZZZZ). I walked out and headed over to the door waiting to be told that we could go. As I strolled out these two chicks started yelling out at me, so I turned and walked back over to find out what was going on, considering I didn’t know how everything worked yet i just figured I was doing the wrong thing.

I walked over and they started hurling abuse at me, I was taken back a bit and I wasn’t sure how to act, firstly because I had been brought up in a private school so most abuse was frowned upon but also , I was like what the heck!??  So I asked them what was going on and they starting asking me why I wanted the guys, and why I thought it was ok to just go after boys I didn’t know, especially if they had girlfriends, and started pointing out who were ‘their guys’. For me it was like :O are these girls serious, I don’t even want a boyfriend, I just loved sport and friends and that was it i was 14 for goodness sake!

I told them I didn’t want their boys and walked off, I walked out of the gym and went over to the water fountain for some water when I heard someone yell at me and I turned and it was one of the girls. I kind of said “what do you want now?” and she slapped me. A massive automatic tears in the eyes stinging slap! I just stood there waiting for my face to calm down. Lets call her Rachel. Rachel started going off at me saying “I slapped you, you want to fight now, Come on, lets fight.” I wasn’t really scared at all, I just stood my ground and kept telling her “that NO, I would not fight her and that why would I fight her she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

I walked off again, and by the time I started walking off, there was a nice amount of people starting to mill around, and group. I was so not sure what was going on in my head, and honestly I could not tell you what I was thinking, this was so far gone in a mental way it doesn’t play like that in my head.  I walked off towards another area of the school, when lets say we call the other chick Sarah came along. Sarah brought her friends Kaitlyn, and Brooke (all fake names). They circled me and then kind of said “fine she doesn’t want to fight let her go.” Thank GOD FOR THAT! I was freaking out I am sure. I am pretty sure I pulled out the whole “I won’t hit you, just because you hit me” comment. Which I look back now and just think “DEFEND”. (LOL)

I was like that is out I am out of here, for the last time through that lunch time, I walked off. Except this time I walked straight into Kaitlyn, who had set her self up right in front of the only other corridor I could get out of. She just stood there, I asked her multiple times to get out of my way, and she just kept standing there so I kind of tried stepping around and her and that’s when my body was shoved against the brick wall. The other girls I mentioned all of them, came at me, and I was absolutely smashed up. I felt fists, feet, rings, spit, anything I could imagine felt like it was hitting me every Punch and Kick felt like someone had just smashed me over the head by a brick. I don’t know what was going through my head at the time I just knew i had to protect my head as much as I could. My bag had been ripped off my back and it was being hurled at me.

FINALLY! 

A substitute teacher came over and started ripping the girls off me. Started telling them off, making them stop. I remember he just walked away after he made all the kids leave. I walked through the corridors at the High School, felt like I was floating around. I knew I was concussed. I knew I was bleeding but not sure where just needed to get to a safe place.

I found a couple girls who befriended me from a year above me and they stopped me and asked me what happened, I was taken to the office where they contacted my dad and he came in about a second since we lived down the road from the school. I had to walk around the school looking for the girls to point them out, and then I wanted to go back to class! The teachers thought I was crazy. I went to science and I walked in and as I walked in one of the girls started screaming at me and threw a chair at me. So I was sent to the office again where the science director helped me and taught me there.

I went home and I was not feeling well at all. I was taken to hospital where i spend a few days. The doctor told dad and me that If the sub teacher hadn’t come when he did they most likely would have killed me. My brain was swollen, my back and head were bruised I had a major concussion to the point where I could not open my eyes unless it was pitch black.

I went to school about a week later I wasn’t allowed out of hospital for a few days and I wasn’t allowed to go back to school until dad and mum thought I was ok. When i did go back, One of the girls was suspended for 4 days, one was excluded for 10 weeks. However, this was just the start of my high school life of being bullied.

We reported the girls to the police where we had to sit a family court meeting not an actual court case just a family one. Both of them had to do something that related to what they liked ie. singing and one drawing. But they had to relate it to Bullying…..

I need to stop here.. I will continue soon! It’s a lot to read. We aren’t even up to my thoughts yet!

I hope people read this without bitterness, but with a feeling of wanting to know how I got through what I did and how I am the person I am today.

P&CC xx.

Defining Myself

Defining yourself is a constant dilemma within yourself. Especially when media, radio and people are constantly spitting out ideas and views on how you should be, how you should look, what you can say and what you can’t say.

My opinion always gets me into trouble. I have views that for me are not going to change, and I will not compromise who I am just because the world tells me too. I am learning though when to sit back and listen and observe, and maybe one day I will learn how to put my thoughts into order and say them where people can understand. I have a problem with this too, i tend to speak as fast as my brain thinks it and I normally end up repeating myself a hundred times. I think it all makes sense up in my head and usually that is my exact excuse “It made sense in my head”.

The question is what or who defines who i am?
This is a hard one to answer in a sentence or two even a paragraph, but I will try to be short and sweet.

I believe I am defined by God, by what i have overcome in my life, what I have learnt and what I continue to learn. I learnt a long time ago, that I should never let people around me define who I am. It becomes dangerous, painful and somewhat deadly to myself – my spirit, my heart, my mind. Deadly not in a way that is physical although it could be an outcome of unintentional actions because of the path it leads you down. I have fought with myself on countless occasions about who I am, and who I am meant to be. You can have dreams and desires, I have a lot of those. To become a person who is happy within myself takes a lot of work and determination.

For now, I know that I am lead by God, and what he wants in my life, I am lead by my heart and my ambitions. I know that my life is valuable, I have a place here for a reason. I know I am to reach out to those who are lost, hurt and feel as though their lives have been destroyed by others who are hurt and lost. I believe that I am to be a helper on this earth to reach out to those who need a helping hand, who need some love, to provide for those who have nothing, to cry, to laugh, to anger, to smile and to be compassionate for and with those who are in need.

As for many people – I wish to make a difference in this world, to save people who need saving, and also those who don’t want saving. Everyone deserves chances, they just need someone to give them one.

What defines you? Your work? Your parents? Your sister, brother? Your past? Your hurt or pain? Your bitterness? Your tormentors? God?

Definition of define: To give the meaning of;

What is the meaning of you!?

Define Yourself

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define  yourself.”
Harvey Fierstein