I'm going to list five truths. Five experiences I've had as a result of suffering severe peer abuse between the ages of about six and sixteen. I'll explain a little about each as I go. Some of these things my family know about. Some they don't. One of them I've only admitted to anyone at all as of yesterday. It's time the world appreciates just what an affect peer abuse has.
Please note this hasn't been proof read as it was hard enough to write never mind read. I need a break from it. It may also be triggering for people who've been bullied, abused, or who self harm.
1. It was abuse, pure and simple.
By the time I was eight, I was scared of leaving the house. Leaving the house to go out and play almost always resulted in verbal or physical assault. I would be called names, I had my own theme tune (I couldn't go anywhere without the Addams Family Theme being sung at me). I was hit over the head with the wooden handle of a swinging skipping rope, repeatedly. I had things thrown at me. It never stopped and by the time I reached my teens I wouldn't walk around my village alone because I'd been hit, punched, pushed into rose bushes, intimidate by a girl weiding a metal pole, had my hair pulled, had my hair filled with chewing gum, and been backed up against walls more times than I can remember to be hit and kicked. I'd been surrounded to be verbally or physically abused more times than I care to remember, and the police denied they could do anything. That was bad enough, but what caused a little teasing to become something horrific enough to merit policy intervention was my headmistress in first school. My headmistress who denied there was any bullying in her school and left me stuck in anew environment where abuse could flourish.
She didn't leave me with much hope so my childhood was one of near constant fear, throughout my primary years and beyond.
Thereally was one day I was surrounded, hit, pushed into a rose bush (I was literally sat in it and I was pulling thorns out of my legs for hours), and intimidated with a metal pole. My one friend had to run home to get my mam to intervene. When mam came to chase off the 'bullies', the first words I said to her, while stood there with rose thorns in my legs and arms, were apparently 'but I didn't cry'.
To this day I can remember being proud of that, of not crying. Crying was weak, right? I'd been told so many times to 'toughen up' that not crying was worthy of pride. But it wasn't necessarily a good thing as, by the age of ther teen, I'd learned to shut up and take whatever was coming without tears, at least whenever I could hold them back. But there's only so long anyone can hold back tears and internalise pain and fear before it causes some serious damage.
2. Resulting vulnerability can lead to unhealthy intimate encounters.
By the age of ten/eleven I'd learned my peers could do what they wanted to me. Hurt me with words, intimidate me, attack me. Fighting was pointless. By ten/eleven I'd learned to treasure any friendship I made because eventually the intensity of the bullying and/or my social problems due to it would drive people away. This left me vulnerable. Very vulnerable.
There was a girl in my year who was... well, mam calls her a sheep... she followed where the bullies led. She went from being horrible, to being my friend, to being horrible again, really really viciously so. Even when we were 'friends' she was in control. We did what she wanted because I didn't want to fall out and lose her friendship. I wanted to keep her happy.
When I was about ten/eleven, that inequaity went too far. We were playing in a tent made from sheets in my back garden. I can still remember the wooden clothes horse which supported the structure. It was held together by hope more than structural integrity. Such tents had been a place of joy to me in summers playing with my siblings, but this one experience was anything but happy. In the tent there was me, my friend, and a girl a year younger than us. My friend asked if we'd ever been touched 'down there'. When we said no, she said we should touch each other.
I feel sick writing this because I didn't want to touch them. I didn't want them to touch me. Maybe she had faced some abuse elswhere or had accidentally seen something inappropriate to make her ask such a thing, I don't know, but at that point I'd fought bullying for so long and had so few friends that I didn't feel I could say no. Even if I ran inside and told my parents, I thought they wouldn't be able to do anything. They'd talk to the other girls' parents, they'd talk to the school or police, but the other parties would insist I was lying, just as they did about the bullying, just as had been going on for years. And anyway I didn't want to lose my friend...
The other two took turns to touch each other, then waited for me to join in. I didn't know how to say no without making my life worse. After all, my life had gotten worse every time I reported anything untoward. I believed that speaking out would've been pointless, detrimental... So I let both girls slide their hands into my underwear and touch me in a way I didn't want to be touched, a way that made me feel guilty and ashamed. Then I complied when they told me to touch them.
I hadn't even hit puberty. I barely understood what was going on down there except that one day I'd start bleeding and it all had something to do with making babies. And even that, I'd only recently discovered. I hated the experience. I was so very ashamed and afraid I'd get into trouble. The memory still haunts me.
For twenty years I've kept that secret, ashamed, disgusted, feeling dirty. I hadn't wanted to allow what happened, but being bullied had already taught me that reporting incidents and fighting got me nowhere. I was also lonely and wanted friends. Though, as it was, both girls returned to verbally tormenting me not long after that anyway, despite my compliance.
They remained friends with each other, they became friends with others who bullied me, but not with me. They'd made me feel even more disgusted in myself than I already did and stole some of my innocence while doing it. I've carried so much disgust and shame about that for so long, disgust that I did something that I knew to be wrong, something I didn't want, without rebellion, because I was already too afraid of my peers to say no. And I hate myself for that.
I had two more encounters aged sixteen and seventeen which came about through coercion, either from fear of losing someone or because I was lied too. Both were sexual, only one was attempted intercourse. Neither left me feeling happy. In fact, both left me disgusted at myself.
Oh, there was my eighteenth birthday night out too, when some stranger shoved his hand down my top... sad thing about that is, a lot of women go through that last one. Some men just think their hand can go anywhere, and so I accepted it as part of life. By then, I also hated myself so much I was flattered he wanted to touch me. even admitting that makes me cringe, ashamed.
My first positive intimate experience came wasn't until four/five months after that last event, after I turned eighteen, and after I met the man I went on to marry; a man who is still one of my best friends and my rock. I'm lucky I found him.
3. Children slip through unnoticed by mental health services and teachers can worsen symptoms.
In '96, I saw a child services regarding mental health. I can't remember this but my mam's recently mentioned it, as did my new psychiatrist in his recent report. By then I was ten/eleven and I'd already been diagnosed as having migraines due to stress. That's something my new psychiatrist called 'psychosomatic' last week. Telling, right?
By '96, I was already showing symptoms of psychological problems. Yet I wasn't treated beyond being given pills for migraines. I slipped back under the radar and the bullying went on. Only by then I had to do battle with teachers and school nurses too, people who declared me to be 'a sickly child' because I was ill so often. I missed a fair bit of school. It's a wonder I'm educated to the level I am, really, because middle school could've easily destroyed my chances.
So I was a sickly child to the adults at school, at least to start with. As years went by, a number of teachers also told me the bullying was my own fault when they couldn't resolve it. That further destroyed my self image. Said enough times, it also made me confrontational with SOME authority figures when I feel unheard or let down. Afraid of peers and untrusting and argumentative with authority figures. it's not a great combination, although I'm getting better with the latter now I'm an adult myself.
I am. No matter what some would say.
4. Consequences are long lasting.
I am agoraphobic. Open spaces are ok, but it's the crowd side that is too much for me. Being trapped among a lot of people where there's no obvious escape causes disabling anxiety and panic attacks. If I was looking for a reason for that, I'd say it was the times I was surrounded while out playing, or more likely again, when I was surrounded at the bus stop waiting for the school bus. Trapped. Just like I would be the day after, and the day after that.
I think I also have a degree of claustrophobia. It's there when I enter lifts, but also buses. Being trapped in a box with others is nauseating. But then, I can't count the number of times I spent squashed against the school bus window with people behind, in font, beside me all determined to get a reaction from me, make me cry, or make me say one of the useless pharases I'd been taught in a desperate attempt to reassure me...
'Sticks and stones may break my bones'... 'You're just jealous'... anything that I thought was better than tears.
These days, I'm also known to have social phobia, but I guess that one is self explanatory.
5. Consequences are life threatening.
I can't remember what it was like to want to exist. The peer abuse started so young that I learned to hate myself and fear the world long before I'd finished becoming whoever I'd had the potential to be. Falling apart this year isn't much of a surprise really as it's been coming for more than two decades. I've popped all my antidepressants out of their packet and started taking them before, intent on killing myself. I've driven towards the coast twice, intending to drive off the cliffs and only saved by two lucky phone calls. I've also self-harmed since my teens. So much so that I find the dripping of my blood comforting, a distraction, and because it means I've punished myself for being a horrible person.
I'd NEVER hurt another, not after how often I suffered other people's cruelty, but I often feel I need to be punished. There must be a reason people hate me, after all... It must be my fault.
I'm getting help with that belief now though, and at this moment I'm two weeks self harm free and willing to access crisis support when I get low or anxious enough to consider it. That'said a slight improvement, even though my distorted self image is as fragmented as before.
Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx
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