Yesterday I realised something awful. It's really made me feel ill.
I come from a dysfunctional background and did not have a stable environment at home.
I have been coming to terms with this.
From the age of 5–11 I went to a school where I was bullied. I know bullying is awful for everyone who experiences it and no one should…but all through my life I have felt there was something more to it in my case. Like I wasn't seeing it right.
Last night I wrote out the things I felt were something beyond what people refer to as bullying.
The list included:
A group of bullies took turns to hold me underwater in the school swimming pool. This went on for quite a few minutes. The teacher wandered over eventually (not in a hurry) and told me off for messing around. On quite a few occasions when changing for swimming (ie. wearing underwear) the same teacher would storm into the changing rooms and scream at/humiliate me and encourage the other pupils to join in and do the same thing. I never understood what I had done wrong. When I changed schools we went to a public swimming pool, everything was fine..it got me thinking that the fact the pool at my first school was on the grounds/no members of the public around was the reason she got away with this behaviour.
This teacher constantly taunted, insulted, humiliated and ostracized me…I have no idea why. She also encouraged the rest of the class, who she was nice to, to do the same.
I told this teacher I had a sore throat and my mum had said I could go home if it got worse. By lunchtime I had lost my voice and swallowing was very painful. I was sat next to the teacher at lunch, tried to indicate I could not eat. She served me a full portion. I left it. She told me I was greedy and wasteful. It came time for pudding. Again she asked me, again I signaled and pointed to my throat. She served me a full portion. I couldn't eat it. She made me stay in the hall after lunch until I had eaten all of it. To teach me a lesson for being greedy. Since I usually could speak and also loved my food, I find it hard to believe she didn't know what she was doing. I think that's pretty cruel.
A boy who was particularly awful to me started to escalate in the things he did. Eventually the whole class would gather around and watch him physically hurt me and I would be told by everyone I had to not react to the the pain or I would be a wuss and a grass. This went far enough that he broke off the end of a pencil in my hand. As in so deep it could not be pulled out. He got away with that and he progressed to sexually assault me with another boy.
I asked/begged my parents to let me change schools. They said I had to learn to be tougher and I couldn't expect to go through life like a princess getting my own way all the time.
Eventually I started running away from school and coming back at home time. This caused me to get in huge trouble obviously, especially since I refused to answer questions about why I had done it or where I had been. Would not promise to not do it again etc. I didn't answer teachers or my parents because I didn't see how it would help my situation, Looking back I can kind of see I was almost trying to force my own expulsion from the school.
After that my parents moved me to another school. Despite supposedly being this delinquent nightmare child I settled from day 1, made friends, was never it any serious trouble, never ran away again etc. Now, I'm not saying if I had continued to behave poorly that would justify anything, just that once out of the environment I never seriously misbehaved again. was just, normal. Like everyone else. I never asked to move schools again or not go in, I loved it!
I am in my thirties now, and I have always sort of got stuck thinking about this. Why was the situation so extreme? That's the question I've always kept coming back to.
The thing is when I came home from school with that injury to my hand I told my mum exactly what had happened and begged not to have to go back. She told me not to be stupid and also refused to take me to the doctor in case my dad found out. She had persuaded my dad to put me at private school which he thought was poncy. If he found out what had happened he would use it as an excuse to move me to free school which, being very much about appearances, she didn't want. So she sterilized a needle and dug the pencil end out of my hand. It was so painful, I was screaming all the way through, it took a long time to get all the bits out…and I actually have a very high pain tolerance. She told me not to be such a wimp.
I've always thought that my parents (though not young when they had me) were just from shit backgrounds so maybe didn't understand. But now I'm older I just don't see how you can act like that. I know we all make mistakes but it seems extreme to me.
I feel like I need someone to tell me if this was bad or not because I am very confused right now. I know the bullying was bad/wrong. What's made me feel so horrified is my family didn't stop me from getting hurt further. Especially because surely if a boy hurt my hand like that and got no consequence and I was told to keep quiet...surely you don't need to be clever or a good parent to know you've just given that boy a pass to do whatever he wants to your daughter and that's sick, surely?
Basically I've always thought of the bad times at that school as a totally separate thing from my parents/home life but now I am not so sure.
YABU - It's not ideal but hardly unusual. Get over yourself.
YANBU - You feel very bad about it because it was very bad.