My Bullying Experience
This is the experience of me, a girl who was bullied throughout all of her schooling. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I was the girl that nobody liked. But nobody really didn't like me either. I floated in and out of friendship groups without ever being a part of one. I constantly felt like I belonged on the outside, that my destiny was to be disregarded and my company was undesirable. I think it would've been easier if I had just been hated because then I would've felt as though there was a reason for all of it. But in some ways, it was worse that nobody ever had a reason because I didn't know why I was so unlikeable. I wasn't weird. I wasn't annoying. I wasn't mean. But I was always bullied.
I would come home every day crying. After a while, it felt like my parents replaced their sympathy with annoyance and inquisition, leaving me feeling disbelieved, inconvenient and (truthfully) pathetic. Even if it wasn't coming from a place of distrust, there was certainly frustration that I couldn't just 'get over it'. I remember feeling so defeated throughout and at the end of every day because I'd tried so hard to stop being bullied. I drew from the popular people, attempting to be the girl I was sure everybody would like. But I was like a looking glass. Everybody could see right through my desperation to be likable. When I tried to be someone I wasn't, I was only pitied, and perceived as a try-hard or an unoriginal. I also tried taking a step back, letting other people come up to me but when nobody did, I felt just as alone as when I was talking to a room full of people who I could tell didn't want to talk to me.
They proved my self doubt right: That nobody wanted to be my friend.
Coming home wasn't even the best part of my day because home became a place where I felt insecure about discussing the bullying. My mum had thicker skin than me, a lot thicker. My mum had a very different schooling experience to mine, one involving plenty of popularity. When I told her the parts about my day where I let people's comments and actions hurt me, she simply made efforts to instil more strength in me. For example,
If someone called me a name, she would say: 'What they said isn't even logical, how can it hurt you?'
If someone made a seemingly harmless joke but laughed cruelly about it to all of their friends, she would say: 'That doesn't sound too hurtful, just laugh it off with them.'
She came from a good place, of course, but as somebody who hadn't truly experienced bullying, I felt that she lacked the capacity to understand how sometimes the severity of bullying isn't found within words themself but rather in the bigger picture of the atmosphere, like the leering, the mocking, the shrood smiles and nasty whispers. I didn't have anybody to validate the pain I was experiencing, often leading me to be silent about the struggles I was facing. I internalised a lot of my sadness, swallowing it, and keeping to myself.
I think being bullied killed little parts of me over time; the trusting parts, the brave parts, the confident parts.
As the feeling that I wasn't likable only intensified over the years, I became desperate for any form of validation that I was. Most of the friends I had during the many years I was bullied were aware of my insecurities and the way the rest of the cohort viewed me. I think this led to many of my friends knowing full well that they could disrespect me and walk all over me and my love for them, nor the friendship would die. I latched on to all of my friends like lifeboats, ignoring the question of whether or not I was happy in those friendships. This affected how I would approach all of my future relationships. Now that the current relationships I have aren't toxic, I almost look for evidence that they are in the way that many of my previous ones were. I need to hear compliments multiple times to believe them. I need to feel that I am enough constantly to believe it. I need to talk things to death to be positive that no ill feelings toward me linger. Otherwise, I feel I'm being fed a lie, a false truth for them to either get something from me or use information against me, in the way that they were in my past relationships.
I continued jumping from school to school to escape the misery I felt. But when the situation reoccurred, I felt suffocated by the reality I was repeatedly being forced to face. From a young age, I experienced suicidal ideation, induced by feelings that I was unimportant, unworthy and inherently bad. It didn't matter how much love I felt at home because at those ages I spent six hours a day, five times a week in the tortuous school environment. There I was unloved, unvalued, unwanted and unheard. Alongside suicidal ideation, at 14, an eating disorder at the forefront was introduced. It acted as my only friend, telling me; 'Yes, Luka, finally, you are good at something. Finally, you can control an outcome. Finally, you can be enough.' It didn't matter the havoc it wreaked on my body. I had a friend who was kind to me when I did what they asked, who believed in me, who understood me. Nobody at that stage understood me, including myself.
Bullying broke me throughout the long period it occurred and it is only now, years after the fact, that I feel the broken parts of me beginning to mend. It hasn't only happened with time, naturally. It has also taken a lot of effort and a lot of tears. I do not know if I will ever fully heal from that sadness I endured. But perhaps with more time, more blog posts and more support, it all will have been worth it for something, even if it is for one of you, Dolls, to relate if you've been through something similar. And if you have, I couldn't be prouder of you for still being here and being you.
Kisses,
COS x
Comments