Bullying (II)

In last week’s article, I believe I touched upon the effects that bullying had on me but I did not go in-depth. In this article, I want to focus on how I believe bullying affected me and how my life has changed after starting anew. Before I get into the article, I must confess that I got really lucky with the bullying. The first reason is that I actually had the opportunity of an escape, which many bully-victims may not have. Secondly, this may sound a bit selfish but I am just glad that social media and phones were not that popular back then, otherwise, I am not sure how I would have turned out today. Since social media bullies are everywhere and my bullies were only at school.

Moving away felt bittersweet. On the one hand, that place was my home for a good decade or so. On the other hand, I am glad to leave the place with the bullies behind. In another country, I had a chance to start my life again. No one knew me and I could be the person I always wanted to be without being burdened by these bullies. It felt freeing after years of bullying to be in a place where bullies are no longer the problem. I could focus on my grades again and do things I liked without the fear of being made fun of or tormented.

In my first week at my new school, the student counsellor found two classmates to help me navigate the school. They showed me around and introduced me to their friends. Their friends are all nice and they asked me tons of questions. However, there was still a cloud lingering in the air. I wanted to trust them and answer the questions they had honestly but I just could not due to the fear of being made fun of. I was hesitant and I believe it is thanks to the hesitancy that my new classmates started to ignore me. The two classmates the student counsellor set me up with were popular and I just did not like the attention that much, since I fear that, I might embarrass myself in front of my new popular peers. Luckily, a classmate remembers seeing me in science class and invited me to eat lunch with her friends. The two tour-guide classmates did not mind me leaving them and hanging out with the person from science class. I am not sure why but I also believe that they are secretly grateful that I choose to hang out with the classmate from science class.

The classmate from science class only had a few friends, unlike the popular classmates. She introduced me to her friends and in all honesty, they were all weirdos but in a good way. I really enjoyed their company even though I did not trust them. Unlike the popular kids, they did not interrogate me when they clearly sensed that I was feeling uncomfortable. Her friends immediately recognized me as one of them. It felt good to be with people again, who doesn´t make you feel as if you have to run away. Honestly, they did not mind that I do not like to talk about myself. They included me in their conversations anyways and did not force me to be someone I am not. I do not believe that I told them that I have been bullied in the past since they made me forget about it completely. They helped me up when I was down. They were there to make me laugh when I was sad. They came back no matter how often I pushed them away. Therefore, I am so grateful for my friends who showed me that there is no danger. I did not have to be over cautious anymore even though I still kept my guard up.

By constantly keeping my guard up, I always felt a bit exhausted and would lash out from time to time. I would like to believe by keeping my guard up I prevented the worst-case scenario but the truth is I might have missed out on a good time. To avoid personal or sensitive questions or topics, my newly developed sarcastic defence mechanism kicked in. I learnt how to take a joke and not take comments from jerks seriously. I believe one can say I learnt from my previous mistakes. My personal experience with bullies helped me notice bully-victims. In comparison to what they have been through my experience with bullies did not seem that harsh. This make me realize that bullies come in different shape and sizes. And the severity of bully is different from person to person. I could see that everybody´s experience is and will be different. However, I fail miserably trying to comfort those bully-victims. Since I believe that, my sense of sympathy for people has been ripped away from me. I really wanted to help the bully victims and make them feel safe and happy again since nobody deserves to be bullied but I just feel like I turned into a cold person who doesn´t feel anything. Not only do I believe I have turned into a cold person but I also believe I turned into a cruel person as well. In no way am I saying that I would actively hurt someone but I passively allowed people to be harmed. I could not help those bully-victims and I just stood there coldly watching them suffer. My sarcasm defence mechanism, which was there to protect me, hurt people. Not saying that the people who I accidentally hurt did not deserve it but I have to admit that they just have been caught in the crossfire. My sarcasm took things to the next level trying to protect me. I had a feeling that I turned into a bully myself to a certain extent. I just had a feeling that I should hurt the others or leave them before they have a chance to hurt or leave me.

After a year with my new friends, I was forced to move again. I was devastated to move since I found a group of people who would be there for me no matter what. In Germany, I learnt to find a balance between sarcasm and seriousness so that no one could get hurt again. There are a few instances where I accidentally hurt someone´s feelings but they forgave me. It is just hard to know where to draw the line between all right and actively hurting people. I felt emotionless and I could not judge if my statements were funny or if they could hurt. In Germany instead of hanging out with one group of people, I jumped from group to group. Most of the time in Germany I spent alone since it did not really feel like I belonged and no group could compare with the previous group in the other country. Another reason is that I just did not want to stay in a group long enough to hurt someone.

Thanks to my past of being bullied made it harder for me to trust people. Even in a new country where most of the people do not know me and do not wish me any harm, I still had problems opening up to them and trusting them. In my new schools, I have been overly cautious even though there was no threat. Being bullied made me paranoid. I constantly had a feeling that people are staring at me and planning my demise. Even though my worries are misplaced. I somehow became the mysterious girl at school, since whenever someone asked me a personal question; I would hesitate and give them a vague answer. I did not trust them enough to give personal details since I believed that they would twist it around and use it against me. For unspecific reasons, I also found it hard to take compliments since I believe they contain ill will. I also could not take criticism, since it felt like a personal attack even though the people giving them just wanted to help. I also became somewhat cold and distant, since I felt emotionless. Honestly, I still feel emotionless since every emotion just feels forced and fake. I just don´t want anyone to worry about my wellbeing since I learnt the hard way that they can´t help me anyway. Not only do emotions feel fake but also every part of me feels fake. My statements are vague and often far from the truth. My sense of fashion made me blend in even though I hated to wear those clothes sometimes. My sense of self faded since I felt the urge that I had to protect it. Now after so many years, I am just not sure what is me. I built up all these walls to protect me but I am not sure what part of me is me, since everything just seems like another façade I built for potential bullies to take down.

I wish I could tell my younger self that everything will turn out fine. I wish I could tell her that she is not alone. I wish I could tell her to not give the bullies the satisfaction of seeing me hurt. Bullies only hurt since they take pleasure in seeing people suffer. I just wish my younger self could understand that. I wish my younger self would live her life to the fullest without the fear of being backstabbed, bullied or broken. She did not get the life of a normal child. She was forced to live with those people who traumatized her and she had no choice but to shut up and live with it. The fear will haunt her for the rest of her life and the worst part is that she can´t do anything about it. Trust is the thing she does not have at her disposal and sadly, she will need to trust to be able to heal again. She did not choose it but she has to live with it. I just find it pathetic that people would just look at bully-victims and think that they are weak. Victims who live to fight another day are warriors and that is something I wished my younger self would know.

Now looking back, I would say that my bullies are not as inhumane as I thought. They themselves are weak. They constantly pick on someone weaker because they know that they are not strong enough to face someone their own size. However, they are humans themselves. Even though the victims can´t see that, the bullies had their own struggles. I could see that they are hurt in one way or another and hurting me made them feel better. In no way am I condoning that behaviour but I understand and forgive. The truth is that once I felt powerful again, once I was able to stand on my own two feet again, once I left those bullies in the past, I hurt many people too. They were caught in the crossfire of some issues bottled up inside me. The issues came from everywhere. From school, from bullies, from life, from my family, from home, from my mind even. I did not know how to deal with those issues and I just lashed out at innocent bystander whether I liked it or not.

The truth is bullying is so frowned upon that we do not even like to admit that we have been subjected to it or the cause of it. We don´t like to admit that we are wrong and we don´t believe that we can fix it. By telling the truth that we are either bullies or bullying victims, we are only subjecting ourselves to more scrutiny. I believe that would be the last thing we would want for coming out. Instead of lecturing bullies, we should try to go to the source of their anger issues and pain that they are taking out on other people. Instead of telling bullying victims to speak up and talk about personal experiences, we should make sure that bullying does not happen in the first place. Bullying is not something that can go away overnight. There will always be bullies and where there are bullies there will also be victims. By increasing awareness, one can decrease the misunderstandings aimed at bullies and the bully-victims.

For relatable reasons, I believe that bully-victims never reach out because they never feel understood. They might have reached out once but found out that the help those people can provide is just not sufficient to stop the bullying and make the pain go away. Let´s take parental units as an example. Parents may have been victims of bullying themselves but what some parents don´t understand is that bullying went way past the playground punching and moved into what used to be safe places. Their advice does not feel applicable in modern internet times. From personal experience, I can say that I know that my parents were just trying to help but I did not need people to say something and never do anything. Knowing that adults don´t understand what I was going through I just started to hide emotions and pretend everything is fine to not explain myself.

One of the reasons bully-victims never share what happened is because they believe that speaking up would make it worse. They know when the bully finds out that they succeeded in hurting the victim, they will continue. Bullies inserted fear into their victims, which may make the victims feel as if there is no way out. There may be a support system for the victim consisting of people who really want to help that victim. However, the victim may have lost the trust or the victim just knows that their support will make it worse.

Another reason I believe that many bully-victims do not share their stories because it makes them seem like these wimps who can´t stand up for themselves. However, the reality is completely different. I do not think many like to face the facts but we live in a world where we are constantly victim-blaming. This toxic behaviour makes speaking up hard. We are always trying to treat the symptoms and not the cause. This does not only go for bully-victims. This also goes for sexual assault victims, brutality victims and many other victims. We are constantly blaming the victims for not being strong enough or prepared enough but the truth is by focusing on the victims we are letting the real suspect getaway. It may be easier to blame the helpless victims by telling them to prepare themselves but we really should be blaming and stopping the strong attackers who have the guts to harm people just like you and me. We should not do what is easy but what is right. This cycle of fear cannot continue just like how our current behaviour towards victims cannot continue. We should take action and stop the real culprit instead of blaming the innocent victims.