Some of my friends have been and I was wondering if I could learn anything from y’ill.
Yes. A lot.
My whole life pretty much, but I think high school was the worst, I don’t know if it’s high school because I’m not English/American and the terms are not the same. It’s “Lycée” in French.
Anyway, I have been bullied for many reasons my whole life. I figured out much later that I was trans and a lot of that bullying made sense because I understood that a lot of people understood that I was what I was long before I ever did and used it against me.
But that bullying peaked when I was around 15. Or at least back then I thought it did.
DISCLAIMER 1:
I don’t have any advice to give, this is just me, sharing my story.
DISCLAIMER 2:
This post is REALLY long. And thus, it is cut into four different parts, which will be posted separately. This is the first one, the retainers will be found as responses to this one.
It seems that Lemmy has a phantom character limit and I can’t quite figure out what it is. I think it’s 10k character. But like I said, this is a REALLY long answer.
DISCLAIMER 3:
Everything I’m able to talk about happened in the French public education system. I have never been to a private school in my life. This is strictly public and it’s also French, so if something doesn’t make sense to you, it might be a cultural difference. I use the word high-school but it’s probably the right term, for exemple.
WARNING, ABSURDLY LONG POST INCOMING!
PART 1: First School Change
My school at the time, the one from my hometown, moved me to a different school telling me that they would be more specialized in what I wanted to do. I had this desire to be a graphic designer back then. It never happened. Judging by how complicated and sometimes shitty that career is, how hard it is to make money in it, to live from it. Well, I didn’t miss out on anything I’d say.
Me and my parents believed it naively. Because on paper it did have a part of it that was similar to it or at least could branch out in the direction that I wanted. Because the rest of the school was focused on manual work, like repairing roads and shit. Which is something that is not up my alley. I am not a very strong person or a very manual person. I have a handicap that prevents me from writing by hand, So you can imagine how that would impact for the rest of the manual labor here is wasn’t something I could do at all. But I had completely given up on school, so it seemed like a way out.
This proved to be a very long year for me. People there were insufferable. Where I came from people were hard with me, but this was on a different level. They were borderline violent sometimes. I was surrounded by people who were older than me, much more masculine than I ever was and made me felt that this was a man’s school, not a girl or whatever I was school. I felt like a sheep among wolves. And the whole school immediately figured me out and somehow people that I’ve never met had already a nickname for me which went through the whole school.
What was the most difficult for me is that I had a cousin with me. This cousin was like a brother to me. And he always had my back. Not this time. I don’t think he ever realized it, and I never really held it against him, but he fell in the group and basically turned against me.
No matter where I would go in the school, someone would randomly insult me. I got called transphobic shit multiple times. I never dressed like a girl back then. I just had long hair. Again, people knew way before I did what I was. But I got called all sorts of random things. The most vicious part of that is that this was basically everyone. So if I wanted to have friends, if I wanted to not be alone, I had to endure it. So it was either find a place to hide or deal with it.
But there was this one guy I remember him. He kept pushing it. My cousin was friend with him. It was very amusing for him to watch this, but for me, the dude kept pushing it again and again and again. The dude was an idiot. I don’t have any other way to say it. I mean the dude had actual though intelligence. He was dumb as a rock. But he was also an annoying cunt who never knew when to stop. When he was bored instead of fidgeting, he would pick on people, and I became his favorite toy.
Imagine a guy constantly poking you with his finger. That was him. He would do all kinds of shit constantly. Cutting my hair when I had my back turned, throwing stuff at me, but it was constant. That type of people. You know them. The difference with him is that he never knew when the fucking stopped. Because he never did. It was constant.
I yelled at him in the middle of the class more than once. He was like twice as large as me. I could have never had him in a fight even though I wanted too. I am not a violent person at all, I never pick fight. I’ve never really gotten to fights in my life at all, but I would have done anything to make him fuck off and I never figured something out. I despised him. I remember wishing he would die on the way there so that I would have peace for once. This feelings are awful to have. But I don’t feel guilty. He made me.
Of course no one had my back in this school. No one… You couldn’t count on anyone. Some of the teacher were nice, but that’s about it. Everything else, asking for help, would be… you know, making ways. So I didn’t. And I just kept on going… quietly.
It was a long year, and by the end of it, I had awful results. If I had not completely given up before now, I did, and all of my wishes to get to new schools, including those who would have made me a graphic designer, all left me hanging. I was left with nothing and nowhere to go. I have no memory of that summer vacation. All I remember is the final weeks. I went back to that school and saw the person in charge of helping people finding schools and everything and she had a couple of propositions. I took the only one that made sense so that I could get a diploma, a “Baccalauréat”, in French.
And if you think this is where the story ends, it’s actually where it begins. Like I said, it’s a long one.
Because of what just happened I arrived two weeks later than everyone else. And this was the beginning of a very long three years, which to this day - I am 26 and this was back when I was like 17, 18, 19 - it’s still the three worst years of my life.
Part 2, below.
PART 2 : Second School - Daytime
When I finally arrived, I remember hearing someone say, “Is that [awful nickname from previous school]?” It turns out some of the people who I went to the previous group with also got here. And because of them, the reputation that they gave me on first day when I arrived there followed me here. I thought I had a brand new start. I thought this was the beginning of something else. It wasn’t.
I finally arrived in my class. This class was made of mostly girls and just a couple of guys. Among those guys was one that we will call Roman. Roman was a piece of shit, but I didn’t know that at the time.
My first day of classes didn’t went well. Once I came in class and I figured out I had a chewing gum in my hair. So I tried to remove it and I got told to fuck off by the teacher because I probably did it to myself because that is such a normal thing to do, apparently.
Classes were pretty basic, pretty nice, and I learned some stuff that I still use these days, so that’s nice. But my classmates were something else. Remember Roman? Well he became obsessed with me.
Every joke was at my expense, constantly. And what’s worse is, he would always be followed by the rest of the guys, and he would follow me everywhere I went. I spent three fucking years playing a game of cat and mouse for this guy so that I could have some peace between classes. I would go places where I wasn’t allowed to go just to hide to get my laptop out so that I could write or do whatever I wanted in peace and in total secrecy.
Because when he was there, he would throw stuff at me. He would bother me. He wouldn’t solve me. He would take his phone out and take photos of me, publish them online, and so on. And I would move, and he would follow with the rest of his small pack. At first I had a few places where I’d like to go. But over time, every time I went there, guess who’d show up. With his fucking grin, so proud of himself every time.
It’s gotten to a point that I would hide in the town. It was a small mountain town and in winter It was cold as shit, but I had a few places that I knew I would never see them in. And until I did I would hang around there and move when they found me.
But one day Roman got sick. Roman got sick and the class was very different. It turns out that the class is pretty much like a pack of wolf. There is an alpha and when the alpha isn’t here, the vibe is completely different. He was a poison to this class. Everyone was much more friendly, less hostile. I could find peace. But when he was there, he ran the show and people who didn’t have anything against me particularly would also turn on me because that’s who needed to be respected apparently.
The dude had such influence that I swear to you the teachers were different when he wasn’t there too because some of the teachers would bully me as well. They would say shit to me just to go along with the class laughing at me. But the few times where he wasn’t there. God damn, it was almost like a fucking paradise. I love that school, believe it or not. The teachers were great!
Anyway. This went on for three years. Three years of having to hide from this person who would basically stalk me wherever I went just to try to hurt me mentally and humiliate me. He even managed to convince me that we were friends. And a part of me was dumb enough to believe it. Because I wanted a way out. That’s all I wanted.
Did you ever got to a point of resentment so intense against someone that just seeing their face could ruin your entire day? That was me with him. It would cripple every ounce of joy I could have in my body this day and I’d get depressed.
There had been a period when I gave up, I just accepted it. Just did my thing. And they just came in here, insulted me, did whatever, took photos of me, threw stuff at me. And I wouldn’t react. You know, they always say ignore them. They’re going to get away, get bored. That’s bullshit.
And the worst part is, you know wen I told you that he was a piece of shit. The truth is I don’t think he was but he definitely acted like one. But I don’t think he was such a bad guy. I don’t think he was like evil or anything. He acted like a piece of shit but I think it was just his way of acting out against the rest of his life I guess. I don’t know. He didn’t seem bad to me. Yet he made my life hell for three years.
But there was another aspect of this school that was new for me. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t sleep at home. I stayed there. It was a part of the building which was separated from the main one. It was a cross town and we were sleeping it.
I just said that this guy made my life hell for three years and he did. During those three years it got worse and worse every time. But the worst part of those three years, intensity wise, was definitely the first six months.
Part 3, below.
PART 3: Second School - The Dorms
I didn’t get to choose my room because I was one of the last people to arrive.
I got placed with two very masculine guys which were very muscular, very tall. And clearly, didn’t want to have another roommate. I wanted nothing to do with them either but I was going to suffer from it all the same.
I didn’t knew them, and I never saw them outside of the dorm, because our school was separated into two buildings with two very different speciality. So outside of the dorms we would never meet each other.
We get a new character here, which we’re going to call Nicholas. Nicholas was not just an asshole. He was a downright sociopath and I’m scored of him. I learned to fear him very fast, but I wasn’t aware until a few months on how much I should fear him.
With these two it started friendly enough. I would stay in my corner. I would sleep in my bed which was over one of them. And I would be very quiet, very discreet. I would not make eye contact. I would answer when I’m talked to and that’s it. I was very docile.
They too made my life hell. And honestly, out of all the memories I have from this place, these are the worst. And they only lasted six months, because I begged my parents to get me the hell out of here. I would sleep in my bed every night after that. I had around an hour of bus to get home and to get to school. So it wasn’t that much. I had no obligation to sleep there. I could have done without it. We just wanted to try to experiment. And I was open to new things…
You know, a lot of people talk about the dorms like it’s the best time of their life. It was the worst time of my life, by far. Among the three years, which also were the worst period of my life, these six months, that was something else.
I guess that it started friendly enough, but very soon confrontation would start to happen over nothing. One day I was downstairs. I was actually under the stairs. It was a good spot. I had my laptop. No one would bother me here. But Nicholas and a bunch of friends just went by here and saw me. He said something to me that I didn’t like. I don’t remember what it was, but I pretty much told him to fuck off at which point he came to me, pinned me to the wall and pretty much threatened me to break my arms or some shit. Okay, message received loud and clear. I won’t do that again, especially if you’re with your friends.
Soon after, when we were in the room, all three of us, my other roommate, let’s call him Gabriel, and Nicholas would yell at me for nothing. He would kick me out of the dorm even though he couldn’t, which made it so that a surveillance had to brought me back in. Telling Nicholas that he couldn’t kick me out and Nicholas would yell some more at me saying that I basically ratted on him which I didn’t and he knew it. I could tell he knew it. It wasn’t some twisted logic or whatever, no he just knew it, he just liked fucking with me.
Writing this, I’m realizing that Roman and Nicholas have a lot in common. For example, Gabriel, when Nicholas wasn’t here, was pretty nice and chill. He wasn’t the massive asshole he would turn into when Nicholas was here to influence him. I guess bullies have that influence on people.
I remember both of them would constantly do shit like talk to each other in the middle of the night, joke around, ask me questions and if I ever answered they would get mad at me because I talked in the middle of the night and they’re trying to sleep. And if I did give an answer they would get mad at me because I didn’t answer. They would do shit like this constantly.
Back then, I was piecing together that maybe I was a girl which, now that I write it I realize that in this period of my life, I was actually understanding it. It was making sense, it was starting to become a thing, but because of what was happening, I got scared and I just put it back in the closet as far as I could. And it would take me years for me to finally get it out and accept who I was, which was last year.
I think they could sense that something was going on. Because they would play on it. I got insulted for being too feminine. Even though I wasn’t. I never dressed up like a girl. Like I said, I was just wearing jeans and hoodies and whatever. Nothing very masculine but nothing very feminine either. I was very neutral. I didn’t really have a sense of style.
They would tell me that I was weak, that I was too feminine, and that I would get basically eaten up in this world because of that. And for some reason I trusted them. Because they were bullying me, and it seemed like they were on top of everything, so maybe they were doing something right. I don’t know what was going in my mind. This was getting mixed up with lots of things in my life.
To continue listing the shit they did to me, I remember one night Nicholas was on the phone with his girlfriend. She was on speaker, and for some reason, they were talking about me. How lucky for me. And… she was bullying me, a person she never met in her entire fucking life.
Among figuring out that I was trans, which I eventually pushed back for many years, I also was figuring out that I was bisexual and I had a strong attraction to some parts of the, shall we say, masculine anatomy. I was a naive kid, but I wasn’t dumb enough to share that with them. They probably figured this out on their own. I’ve been called a fag my whole life so it’s not surprising that they were making fun of me for this.
So I had two people in the room, and a third party on the phone which never even saw my face, talking and mocking me because they were discussing me sucking dick and getting fucked. By them, at some point, too, I remember. This is burned into my mind. Having people in a room which you barely know and one of them on the phone which you don’t know at all, talking about gangbanging you - with it going from you loving it or you hating it but being powerless to do anything - even though they are all straight and are talking with obvious disgust, just to get a reaction out of you tends to do that I guess. I remember her hurting me the most. She was basically mocking me for being submissive sexually I guess. But also for being feminine in many ways and coming from someone who obviously was feminine. I don’t know, it was especially violent because I was trans, Playing around with my femininity in a social way, as well as in a sexual way, was something that I desperately needed back then, especially at this point in my life. and I wasn’t in a safe place to accept it or explore it.
It’s burned in my mind because it was vicious. It was awful and I felt terrible about it. And also because it made me “horny” and I didn’t want to. It made me feel something positive to the humiliation which made me want to throw up. I was disgusted on myself and I was disgusted and everything that was happening. It was one of the weirdest combination of feelings I’ve ever had in my life. It felt like they had gotten into my mind and just played around with it and tortured me with it. I felt violated.
Things turned differently when all of a sudden, continuing in that direction, Nicholas asked me if I would want to fuck his girlfriend. He insisted on it, and I knew that it was bait. Because the whole night he was like, “You’re gay, you suck cock, you’re disgusting” whatever. But then all of a sudden he was describing to me how beautiful his girlfriend was and the size of her breast and everything. And he was basically trying to make me lust after her. Trying to make me say something that would justify him being violent towards me. Because I knew his type, a guy looks at his property, uh I mean, girlfriend, the wrong way and he gets violent.
Most of my memories are now blurry, you know? It’s a bit of a mixed bags of various things that come up here and there, but it’s pretty much a blur. I have some distinct things, like the ones I told you that are stuck in my mind, but I have one last one, which was perhaps the worst night of my entire life. Oh actually, there was that time where I woke up drenched in sweat and wanted to stuck a knife in my skull to end the sudden pain I was feeling from my teeths before we figured out a couple of days later that I had somhow developped scurvy. Take your vitamin C kids, it’s important. But that’s a story for another day. So it’s one of the worst night in my life.
Part 4 (last part), below.
PART 4: One Of The Worst Nights Of My Life
I don’t remember how it started. I just remember what started happening in the middle of the night. I assume it started like every other with some bullying, the usual crap, whatever. But in the middle of night, I feel my bed moving. And mind you, this bed is suspended over Gabriel’s, the other roommate, not Nicholas. I think in English it’s called a bunk bed. And all of a sudden, I fell. I felt it lift up and then it suddenly like gave up underneath me. I fell on the ground and when I looked up again, the bed was on Gabriel, who was beneath me. It fell on him.
I was half naked on the floor. I wasn’t panic. I was apologizing. And both of them were standing in front of me. Getting half mad at me. And I say half because they were trying to suppress their laughter because they clearly organized the thing this way. They ordered me to keep quiet because they didn’t want anyone else outside the room to hear. They told me to not move, and to stay quiet for a while. I stayed on the ground, almost afraid for my life not knowing what the fuck was going on. I was in deep sleep when that happened. But no one came, so no one heard my fall.
After that they talked down to me, pretending that this was my fault as if they didn’t organize the whole thing, I blamed them for it and they almost got violent because of it. So I backed down. I got docile again. I was laying on the floor half naked in front of these two guys. It was humiliating. That was the only reasonable thing to do. No one was coming to help. And I had learned years ago that asking for help from the school itself was just a shit idea, so I was on my own.
I fixed the bed. Gabriel also helped me. I mean, his comfort depended on it. And I went back to sleep. That would have been a bad night but that’s it.
But the night wasn’t over yet.
Did you ever woke up suddenly, panicked with like a giant alarm yelling in your mind “you are about to die”?
I don’t know the hour. I don’t remember this. I remember just waking up suddenly panicked. I had a strong smell in my nose. It smelled like pepper. Like it just took every thing in my nose. That’s all I could smell, nothing else. And all of the sudden blood started coming out of my nose. And not just a drop like suddenly I had blood all over my face.
I have no idea what they did to me. I just don’t. So I went down my bunk trying to just figure out what was happening. I went into the bathroom, turned the light on in panic. They both yelled at me because I turned the light on and I asked them for help. And they yelled at me some more, also while laughing, which confirmed to me that they were responsible for what was happening to me.
The bleeding stopped on its own eventually. And I just locked myself into the bathroom for the rest of the night. And I slept there on the cold floor. I spent a good part of that night trying to get rid of that smell in my nose. I mean, I tried to sleep, I mostly cried all night, I was freaked out and I was afraid of them. Because again, I woke up, and the first thing that came in my mind was, “You have to do something, you are about to die”, which I wasn’t, but that’s just what my brain communicated to me. I figured out otherwise shortly after but I was freaked the hell out. I guess it was adrenaline or something? I don’t know.
But the door had a lock so they couldn’t get me there. When morning came and the surveillance came into the room, to wake us up she asked where I was and I put on my brightest voice and told her that I was up early and already in the bathroom.
To this day, I still have no fucking clue what is it that they did to me that night. What was that strong smell of pepper and why the hell did it burn everything up my nose and started to make me bleed like that. I have no idea what happened.
But morning came, but that night wasn’t over for me because I really didn’t have a night, to be honest. There was one more thing to come. Most people cleared out off the floor and I was left in the room with just Nicholas and me, which accused me of being responsible for his poor sleep, and me being stressed the hell out and having close to no sleep… I told him that he could only blame himself for what he did to me. We started to argue and I argued back. So he got violent and how did it ended? Nicholas went to his locker, which we had in our room, opened it, pulled out a massive knife, put it at my throat, pushed me on the desk, which was near a window, opened the window, pushed me on the desk to that window. He had much more strength than I could ever had and he was either going to open my throat or throw me down five floors. I don’t really remember what I did in defense of that. I’m pretty sure I just got real quiet and just got as docile as I have ever been.
He let me go but made a point to threaten me again. Of course.
You know what’s weird? I think I had a pretty normal day after that. Which is really weird now that I think about it. After all the shit that happened, I had a pretty average day. Nothing special. I think the effect of that day happened at first, days after and later, months and sometimes even years after.
At that point I had gotten used to having regular panic attacks. At night when I knew I had to go back up there, it only got worse and after that I begged my parents to take me home as I explained earlier, which they did. It’s only gotten worse after this because now they didn’t just threaten to beat me, to rape me, to do whatever. Nicholas threatened to kill me, and it wasn’t just words. I had a knife put on my throat and I was held close to a window ready to be thrown out. Things just escalated massively.
I never told anyone. I finally talked about it to my family recently that I was years and years after but I kept my mouth shut during the whole thing.
And what was I supposed to do? Talk to the principal about it? They would have searched his locker, found the knife, expelled him forever from the school, and he would have come found me and gutted me somewhere in the street. At least, that’s how I saw things back then. Nowadays, I don’t know if it would have been that extreme, but I still think ratting him would’ve been a pretty fucking terrible idea.
One of the worst things that happened to me in that school was something that happened completely outside of it. It was in my home. One day I opened up about the shit that was happening to me, to my father, which I never got good relationship with. I don’t know why I opened up to him. It was a bad idea. I remained vague about what was happening because I just didn’t want to tell him in details the shit that happened to me. I was afraid he would do something violent or whatever. I didn’t want it to make things worse for me. But his response is one of the worst memories I have of this place. He basically told me that if I was bullied everywhere I went, that maybe I ought to take a good look at myself and that maybe I was provoking it. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I deserved it. That I asked for it. That was after that night, too.
I have never felt so alone that in that moment. But also, even though I didn’t have a good relationship with him, he was someone I still trusted. So I kind of got it into my head that all of those things that were happening to me, well, maybe I deserved them…
I didn’t. Of course. But I didn’t know that back then.
Anyway, there is plenty of other stuff that happened to me in that school. And I wasn’t the only time I was bullied, of course. I also got bullied later in life in the wonderful work of employment. But that’s already long enough. So, you know, I am going to end this by a very short story. The story of my last night in that god forsaken dorm.
I lied. Kind of. Bonus story (Bullying Free), below. (this is the last one, for real this time)
I was bullied a little, but frankly kids are not nearly as horrible as people say. The adults were far worse.
When I hit high school I may has well have sent up a flare to all the pathetic little fascists who became a teacher not to teach, but because it was the only meager bit of power they could grab. I came from a different city, my uniform was all off-brand, I didn’t have any money, my fees weren’t being paid on time, I didn’t have all the books, I spoke differently, and my commute was long and prone to delays. I was an easy target, and it would only get worse as the clothes began to wear and my stationary began to dwindle without replacements.
I’d get pulled out of class randomly, not by my teacher but by someone else on staff who had taken on some admin work. They’d look me over trying to find something to punish me for. I got done once because the hem of my shirt wasn’t thick enough. No, that wasn’t specified in the dress code.
I once spent months being locked alone in a detention room and not allowed to attend classes.
The longer this went on for the more things there were to find. My grades obviously went down, as did my attendance. I had been an A student in gifted classes at the beginning.
I knew about a dozen people who were constantly being harassed this way. More than half of them dropped out of school.
Also one of my regular harassers was fired a few years after I left for being a pedophile.
Yeah, here to say, as bad as my childhood bullying was, the adults are worse.
They’re the ones who, in the background, were creating the circumstances for this by talking shit about you or instilling within their kids a bloodthirsty competitiveness that only lets them see others as targets.
And in the foreground, letting the kids who instigate the bullying, especially when it gets physical, get away as the victims - by equally enforcing punishment & loudly saying that you’re both at fault, or just punishing the kid being bullied only for fighting back.
I was bullied relentlessly through much of preschool, elementary, and middle school. Being an autistic kid with few friends and even fewer resources to help acclimate to proper socialization did me no favors whatsoever. Things got a lot better as I got closer to high school. All was well and good until I got bullied out of my last job; I failed upwards into a better position with a facility that actually appreciates me, so fuck them. :)
To be honest, I have no wisdom for other people, as my main coping mechanism is just crying. Probably the best habit I ever adopted was removing myself from situations that aren’t comfortable for me. If my work, school, or anywhere else can’t foster a healthy environment for me, then I’ll happily walk away with a metaphorical (or literal) middle finger right back at them.
Yep.
I was lucky to get my growth spurt early and spent my teenage years lifting weights regularly. My size ended up dissuading a lot of the bullying.
It also helps that I’m a little crazy and I can manage fear very, very well.
Opposite for me.
Early growth spurt plus a lot of time working on my uncle’s little pig farm had me big before the end of middle school and for some fuckdamn reason it was part of what made me a target.
I think that mainly came from my mom raising me to be a complete pacifist (possibly out of fear, that’s a long story), so when the bullies realized I wasn’t going to hit back they tripled down because it made them look good to harass a much bigger person.
It lasted a year and a half till I hit back and then it never happened again.
I’m sorry that happened to you, but good on you for losing it and refusing to take their shit. That’s usually the key to making it stop completely.
If you think you’re a little crazy then that means you’re healthy.
Yeah, I’ve never been officially diagnosed but I have all the symptoms of Bipoloar II.
The fear thing is kind of a superpower, except when I’m in a place I definitely shouldn’t be, like the one time I ended up on the wrong block in Chicago trying to find the DuSable Museum.
What’s a wrong block exactly? I heard there are gang areas in the US?
That’s what I mean. I’d wandered on to a block controlled by a gang without knowing it, but I ran into a postman who told me it wasn’t safe and gave me directions to the nearest bus stop, and I figured it out from there.
Wow that’s crazy! 😵💫
In K-12 in the US? Yeah. I’ve been bullied past that too, but K-12 was the worst of it.
- I had to leave my kindergarten class due to someone who was acting out. We became good friends in school bc we ended up being into the same nerdy things, but he had bullied me a ton until about 6th grade when it became just joking instead of bullying. He credibly threatened to kill his wife a few couple years ago, whom we both grew up with. I’m still processing this in therapy.
- I remember once one of the people who hated my guts growing up, I accidentally walked into him because our class was crowding and I mistook how much space I had. He pushed me to the ground and said, “stay away from me, faggot”. I’ve brought this up in therapy more than once.
- Everyone in my class picked up I was gay before I did. I had to fight it a lot, because when I wasn’t fighting against the bullying from it, it was worse. I even went as far as starting a rumor that the guy I was sleeping with was sexually assaulting me, because he was a giant piece of shit to me & bullied me a lot too and it was socially convenient. He wasn’t really affected because he’s mostly straight and was just using me to get his dick sucked, while I thought I had romantic feelings for him (and didn’t realize they were that). I’m still processing this in therapy.
- At some point someone started a rumor that I was a pedophile in 10th grade. Being a minor myself, I didn’t understand this, but I think it was a rumor from my work with middle schoolers cub scout group. I haven’t discussed this in therapy.
- In college, I had my ability to trust people on the basis of religion shattered in a Bible study. I got brought into a group that I thought was good, but as I started developing relationships, we had a session where the leader of the group singled me out during a “share your favorite passages” section and just completely railed into me, saying things that invalidated my choice and trying to put me in my place by arguing against my interpretation of its meaning. I’m agnostic now, even though I have a great relationship with my childhood church. I’m still processing this in therapy, it comes up quite often.
This is all just top of my mind, and there’s a lot more, but hopefully it gets across - being bullied is something that can affect you for your whole life. I’m in my mid 30s now. I’ve been treated for depression, and gone in and out of therapy since I was 20. It’s pretty easy to say being bullied fucked me up a lot.
At least I’m better than I was before starting therapy. That’s all I can really say.
Strength to you
I was bullied in middle school. Multiple assaults, general torment and the like, but after I got even, everyone left me alone. He probably wouldn’t work these days and it probably only work to then because it was at a Catholic school where they let that sort of thing fly.
I learned how to bully the bully and got him to throw the first punch. From there it was all downhill because I was in control. I was not angry, he was.
Since I was thinking clearly I was able to easily best him, physically, and after that he feared me enough to leave me alone. Everyone did. In retrospect, I’m lucky I didn’t do permanent damage to him.
This is definitely not advice. It’s also definitely not something but I am proud of.
My takeaway from this is that you should never send your kids to Catholic School. That shit went way too far and nobody should be pushed to the breaking point like that. (neither of us)
Not until jr. high when we moved.
Lasted for a year and a half till I finally fought back, of course I got the worst of the punishments and called names like ‘psycho’ and ‘spaz’ for the rest of my time at that school but FUCKING NO ONE tried to step to me again.
That is how you deal with bullies, you hurt them publicly, in front of their friends.
You hurt them bad enough they know never to fuck with you.
I spent a year and a half listening to my mother, being compliant, walking away, turning the other cheek.
Then when I couldn’t deal with it any more I took my father’s advice and smashed my bullies nose flat at lunch.
So much could have been avoided if they had just left me the fuck alone but no they had to push and push and push and push until they had to bleed.
I hated doing it, I hate violence and think it is the worst solution in every case, and in a rational world there are always alternatives.
But this isn’t a rational world.
Told this to my nieces and nephew: The moment they start bulling you, even if you are outnumbered and might get the worst of it, fight back and aim for the face and nuts.
I was bullied extensively for my entire time at school.
Supposedly it’s all changed now, and reporting bullies to teachers means they’ll actually do something about it, but back when I was in school, the main lesson I learned is that bullies only stop if they actually fear the consequences of continuing. Since the teachers never impose any real consequences, I had to do it myself. The trouble is, you have to give an awful lot of bullies concussions to really get the problem to end, because it only works on the bully who is actually hurt due to their actions. It doesn’t stop their friends until they, too, fear pain.
Interestingly, when I started A-levels at the local college, a bunch of the kids from my previous school were there as well. One of them decided to continue bullying me, so I did the thing I was supposed to do: report it. I was fully expecting nothing to be done, and it would follow the same routine as it always did: empty platitudes, promises to deal with it that ultimately went no where, ending in the inevitability of me snapping one day… However, the college had a rather different attitude to bullies than the school had. The first report was the last one, and the nasty little bitch got expelled that afternoon. Never saw her again. I hope getting expelled screwed up her life.
All the other kids from my previous school started being very, very nice to me. Turns out they can treat others with respect after all!
Children are assholes. Empathy is not innate. It’s something they have to be taught, and if their parents can’t be bothered to do that, they will be cruel, vicious little dicks who only care about themselves and who only respect others if there are meaningful consequences for not doing so.
The ideal outcome is that the school imposes those consequences before you have to take matters into your own hands. In some countries, if the school doesn’t do anything, the police are a good option after that - in my country, the police don’t like dealing with it, so they tend to come down like a ton of bricks on the school with major “why has this gone on so long that it has come to us, sort it out now” energy. Sometimes the school has to feel like fobbing you off is more effort than kicking the bullies out before they take it seriously.
I guess in short my advice is that to stop bullies, you’ve got to be willing to stand up for yourself. Bullies cannot be reasoned with, they can only be compelled to behave by the fear of what will happen if they don’t. Sometimes the school also needs to fear the consequences of not taking reports seriously.
Wow amazing!
I wish this would also apply to the workplace.
Yeah, giving colleagues concussions sadly is not an option. But if the bullying is taking place in the workplace, there are other options - although it does still come down to making yourself more of a hassle to ignore than to listen to. HR exist to protect the company, so making the point that the company has to provide a safe and harassment-free environment for employees, and therefore have to deal with bullies, can be a good strategy - basically implying that failing to deal with the bullies can get them sued. And depending on what country you’re in (ie, whether you have good worker protections), if you’ve reported bullying, they haven’t done anything, and you’re left with no option but to quit in order to escape the bullying… the employment tribunals will be brutal for the company.
Yes. I moved in third grade and I was the only Asian boy in a public school system in the American south, in a very small town of less than 250.
I got picked on relentlessly. I never had friends. Every slur imaginable from everyone. People ganged up and fought me on the playground. At least once a week. I got a reputation for always getting into fights in third grade and so I was always in timeout because I was new and obviously the problem. I gave up on teachers because they always favored the white kids.
At one point, they spray painted swastikas and KKK on our house. Then the sheriff deputy showed up, they said it must have been me, because I had a bad reputation. A black lady cop and a white guy cop. The lady cop took the lead and insisted because nobody had any motive to vandalize our house like that, we were not black. It must have just been me, the twelve year old who was in school when it happened. Case closed boys, pack it up and let’s head home.
I ended up associating with the kids who also got bullied for things far behind their control. Being poor, having bad teeth, ill-fitting clothes, for example. My best friend had a physical disability. Although eventually, he decided to pick on my ancestry when he thought it would make him friends, and so I stopped hanging out with him.
In high school, I was vocally mean to bullies because they picked on my friends. Bullies also had significant overlap with the “Young Life” crowd, and so I associated it with their religion. I did very well with grades so the teachers did not intervene. I bullied the bullies. People were scared of me. I was kind of like a stick of dynamite, I could go off on anybody. I did not care because getting in trouble was no better than not being in trouble. I was also very physically fit and played basketball, but I was not friends with anyone on the team and had no social life with them. They were greedy with the ball and when we lost in the tournament, I laughed because I thought they deserved it.
I do not talk to any of those people, except my girlfriend who is now my wife. She had a similar treatment being Hispanic, until she had her glow up and everybody who had picked on her started chasing after her. That is gross because guys thought they were entitled to her as a brown girl. That is her story to tell.
I never felt accepted anywhere until I moved to California and suddenly I was not always conscious of being the only brown guy, I was just another person, and I was like is this how other people live?
Our kids go to a very accepting school now and it’s different for them.
Hello, yes. All eleven years. Yelling, picking, fighting, name-calling, stealing, stalking - never understood why, until I was diagnosed with ASD not long ago. I guess I really was that different.
At one point in middle school I remember being so sick of one guy in particular, - he always kicked and pushed me during PE. Sometimes he would steal my things and throw them in the girls changing room to lock me there when I go to get them (I am a man). One time he pulled my pants down so the other guy could snap a photo of my bare behind on his phone. When I asked them to delete the photo, he punched me in the face.
I had a crush on a girl once. Came clean about it, we even went on a small date. This one time she waited for me after school with two girl friends - they pushed me to the ground, kicked me in my stomach, my back and between my legs, laughed at my pain and threw snow at my head. We were 10 at the time, and I was a lot smaller than the girls. I never told anyone, didnt want them to laugh at a boy who is being picked on by girls.
In middle school I got in a fight with one of my bullies during PE. He kicked me, I caught his foot with my hands and lifted it up - he fell on his wrist and broke it. The entire school started treating me like a plague. No one talked to me for several days, aside from the occasional “maniac” or “break my arm too, I wanna stay home”.
There were several kids like me in our school. Teachers did nothing - for them I was a weird quiet kid, and quiet kid always get picked on. Parents did nothing, because nobody knew I’m autistic - they thought I’m just “lazy and weird”.
I don’t know what is there to learn besides “don’t raise bullies”.
My god I’m so sorry. I wish I could’ve been there for you. Especially the part about the girls is horrifying. Can you imagine what it must be like to be that small? They may well have leveled up to become Karens.
Do you want to say anything about ASD? I have a friend that might have it and it’s challenging for me to communicate with her at times.
Do you think bullying might be due to incompetent parenting?
Thank you!
I was only recently diagnosed, and I am into my thirties now, which means I am a “high masking” individual. I am learning very slowly how to communicate what I actually feel and think, instead of saying what “would be appropriate to hear from someone who fits in”. It can be very challenging.
I have family and friends now who are supportive, and they do a lot of things that help: we normalized non-verbal communication (texts, gestures, etc, - I have read about communication cards as well). Also, it is ok to be unable to say anything at all sometimes, especially during an intense moment.
Something I have noticed about myself which is also fairly typical (AFAIK) for people with ASD is that our attention and focus work differently than in most people. I seem to be unable to divide my attention up between things: I am either hyper-focused on something singular, or relaxed. So when I am focused, and something distracts me, it is distressing. Imagine someone you know suddenly startling you as you exit your home bathroom as a prank - getting pulled out of the focus feels sorta like that, minus the fear. When that happens, the frustration can be tough to control. If I suddenly snap at someone when they’re trying to reach out - that is the reason most of the time.
I wish I could help you more - but I am only learning these things myself now. I used to really struggle with communication as a kid, and it turns out I just didn’t have access to the support I needed.
When it comes to bullying, I think the most effective way to get rid of it is to start deliberately calling it out. This may be tougher than it sounds: sometimes we have to overcome a lot of bias and fear to call out a bully. Once I nail that, I’ll think about a way to teach it to a kid.
Yes, but I’m going to start with what I took away from it, which is that living well is the best revenge.
I was going into fourth grade when my family moved, which took me out of an advanced curriculum and landed me in a parochial school. That school year was a repetition of everything I had done scholastically the previous year - my experience and boredom with the topics instantly made me persona non grata to the teachers and the other students. The school’s solution, after I completed and turned in all the coursework for the year, was to give me the next year’s work to do but all that did was compound the problem. Each parent teacher conference my parents would hear the teachers say that they hated me, and during classes they would join the classmates complaining about my participation or lack thereof.
In sixth grade I broke the growth plate in my hip which put me on bed rest for four months before starting physical therapy. During that time I completed all the book work for seventh and eighth grade as well, but another person was also industrious; someone had created and emailed a “hit list” around (only a few years after Columbine), and all the students in my class and others named me as the most likely suspect to the police. I hadn’t done it, but that didn’t prevent me from being questioned by federal and state agents, nor did it stop them from seizing my family’s computer or the apple II e I had rebuilt. After that I was an even greater pariah in school. The police eventually found the person, but because they were a minor their name was never released and no authority ever officially cleared my name - even to school administration.
The last two and a half years were hell. Projects were assigned but I had nothing to do besides self isolate during class. Teachers who disliked me before now treated me as an aspiring killer. Groups outside of school didn’t want to have “the death threat kid” involved with them. I started borrowing high school and college textbooks from the library.
When my class was set to graduate from eighth grade to move on to high school, I had received and turned down four separate full ride scholarships to several of the private high schools in the area and asked that they disburse the money between other students who had needed assistance to attend. During commencement they had some award they wanted to present me for all the acceptances I had gotten, and I used the time I was given to say “thank you” to instead list how much money was newly available as financial aid (knowing full well that most of them had received some). I went to a different school than all of them, then a different college, and I almost never think about them at all.
🤯
We got to pick our seats in class so I sat near the teacher. I loved learning, especially together, and adults were always fun for me. I knew everybody living in my street!
For some reason nobody else thought it was particularly cool and so they all sat further back, and so I was alone.
So the teacher asked why nobody would sit at the table with me. Well an old friend of mine looked angrily at me and loudly said: Nobody likes Ellie! It really caught me off guard and was painful.
I’ve learned to always listen to my feelings and those told me that some people just feel like pissing down on others, so they can feel big. Honestly I can’t think of anything sadder.
