With Anti bullying week coming to a close I’ve had plenty of
time this week to reflect on my own childhood experiences. I would say there
have been two periods in my life where I have been bullied and one where
without realising it, I was the bully.
 |
| My first day of school! |
In year two of primary school there was a girl in our class
who was just different (let’s call her Mary). One of the ‘popular’ girls in our
class started this thing where if Mary touched you then you had ‘Mary germs’
the only way to get rid of these germs was to wipe your hands on someone else
and say ‘Mary germs no returns’. I can guarantee that Mary knew this was
happening. Now for a long time I was Mary’s friend but as more and more people
in the class started doing it then I did as well for fear of being left behind
and becoming unpopular. Eventually teachers found out and the whole class were
sat down and our teacher talked to us about bullying and introduced us to the
phrase ‘if you laugh with a bully then you are a bully’. I’m glad to say that
after this it stopped and I remember things going back to relative school normality. 'Mary' if you are reading this then I really am sorry that this happened to you.
I was never a slim child, despite attending swimming classes
and being on the netball team I just wasn’t slim. A few years ago I picked up
some holiday photos from when I was about 8 years old. It was a photo of me in
a swimming costume and I was just horrified at how I looked. I was never
bullied for my size in school; it was actually my friend’s brother who came up
with the nicknames that still makes me wince today. ‘Whale’ was his favourite
but ‘Boom’ was the other (that one had a song to go with it). Because he was my best friend’s brother,
there was no escaping it, sadly it caught on a bit, and his mum thought it was
amusing and didn’t discourage it as such so it continued. I never really
remember it stopping.
The second time I was bullied was year 9 & 10 my parents
were splitting up and I threw all my efforts into my school work and I loved
English, I loved reading anyway and everything I did in that class I just
seemed to be good at it. Of course my classmates weren’t going to let that go
unnoticed! Sadly, their constant barrage of name calling and negative comments
made me really dread going to a class that I really loved. At that time in my
life I really needed something positive to look forward to (we had English
pretty much every day) sadly, it became a daily struggle. Luckily in 2010 I got
my GCSE results with 2 As in English and I was finally free of those people.
 |
| My end of school prom, a few weeks later I would find out those GCSE results. |
I hope that by sharing my story it gives you the chance to
reflect on your own life. I’m glad bullying has an awareness week, I don’t
think it’s something that’s talked about enough in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment