Bullying

This is a fact I do not like to admit but I have been bullied in the past. In school specifically. It just feels like an eternity ago since that happened. Luckily before it got worse, I had a chance to start my life over again in a different country. I believe I do not talk about this very often not because this is a topic that hurts me when I talk about it. However, after moving away this topic just faded in my mind and I also believed that no one really wants to hear about the negative thoughts and experiences I have to share. Therefore, I did not talk about it very often. Another reason I do not talk about bullying is that I do not believe I was being bullied. It may sound a bit funny but I only realized what I went through was classified as bullying when someone told me that it is. I must confess it is hard to define something that caused that much distress. It also seems that my bullies are not as mean as the bullies I have seen on TV. Therefore, I did not perceive verbal abuse and traumatization as bullying.

Honestly, my life is perfectly fine now. At least so I thought. The truth is that the bullying from years ago changed me. What I did not realize is how much it shaped me. In this article, I wanted to sort out my thoughts towards bullying and what it felt like to be bullied. As mentioned, it was a long time ago and some memories are blurry. I also believe that I have exaggerated my memories a bit but you can´t blame me for the exaggeration since it really felt like that.

In the past, I went to a school where the classes used to be small. There are only ten to twelve students in a class. It came as a shock to see classes with thirty students in Europe. I digress. What I am trying to say is that small classes meant we all knew each other pretty well. When a person knows you well also meant they had the ammunition to fire the shots. To my misery, the people in that class decided to fire those shots. Specifically, one person started it and the others just followed. What made it even worse is that we are constantly in the same small class all day every day. There was no avoiding my classmates and the only way out was to be sick and stay at home. I just hated school back then and I would do anything to avoid it. My grades did suffer for my hatred towards school but I was busy avoiding bullies all day and I did not realize that my grades were caught in the crossfire. Some days the bullies would lay it off but they never permanently stopped. It started ever since I started elementary school.

I could not express how much joy I felt when a bully transferred to another school. Just knowing that that person will no longer be around brought joy back into my otherwise depressing life. What I did not realize was that every time a bully left, another bully just came and replaced the previous one. The endless cycle never stopped and I just gave up hope.

I tried to raise awareness about my concerns but I do not believe anyone truly listened. For example, I told my parents, teachers and some other faculty members but they told me just to ignore the bullies and focus on something else. It felt as if they never really went to the cause of the problem and just tried to treat the symptoms. Maybe they thought that trying to stop the bullies would make the bullying worse. On the other hand, maybe they thought that I was the only one raising the concerns and it was not big of a problem. Some others just told me to toughen up and show those bullies who is boss. Easier said than done. All I am trying to say is that raising my voice and speaking up just did not help at all. Honestly, speaking up made it worse, since the bullies would cause more distress whenever they found out I told someone else.

Some others brushed of my complaints by saying I should let children be children. Now my question is that by letting children being children at the expense of other children trying to be children. Is it worth it? Being bullied forced me to grow up faster than I should have. I have to learn which people I need to contact in case people started to bully me. I became an overthinker to avoid meeting these bullies on the playground. I stopped sharing information to stop the supply of ammunition. The last one did not work as well as I thought it would since bullies do not need ammunition to hurt a person. The truth is I gave them the ammunition they needed subconsciously. When I would talk about bullying, many people also consider my concerns as me being overly dramatic. I should just walk away but what the people do not realize is that it is hard to walk away from people who have it out for you if those people are everywhere.

The worst part of bullying is that I don’t even know why me? It just started one day and never stopped until I moved away. For the record, my family did not move away due to the bullying. My parents would never do that. Back to the topic at hand. I do not know why the bullies picked on me specifically. Maybe it because there are not many options for the bullies since the classes are small and all that. Another reason that occurred to me was that baby me was also a condescending little brat. I am not going to condone the bullying but I just believe that the reason for all the bullying is understandable at first. It just would make sense to me, to put someone egotistical into his or her place. What I do not understand is why the bullying continued. They had to knock me down time and time again even though there is no reason for that behaviour.

Now that we grew up, I believe that my bullies can be categorized into subgroups. It is for understanding purposes where I decided that categorization is acceptable. Another thing is that I only could group them years after we fell out of touch. When I was younger, I only saw a bully, not different categories of bullies.

There are the bullies who apologized for their erratic behaviour and we became friends. Honestly, I would not call those people bullies since what they have done is minimal in comparison to the others. They called me out a few times and left me alone since. Once we put our differences aside, we realize that we are not that different after all. After a while of making fun of me, I believe that they stopped and we grew closer due to the small classes. We can´t avoid each other so we should learn to live with one another. I forgave them since their apology seemed genuine and we stayed in touch ever since. What seems funny to me is the fact that every time the topic of bullying comes up, they always have an urge to apologize again. To me, it just seems a bit weird, since I already forgave them multiple times. In no am I saying that their apology is not appreciated but the fact is that I am not desperate to remember what they have done and I just want to leave that topic in the past where it is supposed to be. In addition, I do not believe we would have become friends if I did not forgive them for what they have done. In all honesty, after a few years, I completely forgot what they have done to me since it was overshadowed by other traumas caused by other people.

In comparison to the first subgroup, the following subgroups were all part of a bullying gang. The first subgroup acted independently, the following three acted as a group.

First, there are the bullies who reached out to me and apologized. Since the people who did reach out and apologize are the same people who were not the leader of the bullying but rather a follower. After they apologized and we shared some pleasantries. Then we never talked again. Maybe it is because of the lack of a common interest or I do not want to go there again. I do not mean to offend anyone who is trying to make amends but I just do not want to dig up the old skeletons again and reliving the entire trauma. After all these years, whenever someone mentions their name I can only think of those mean people who caused me a lot of stress. Another reason that we never talked again is that it is hard to trust someone after half a decade of bullying. The damage is already done and no amount of apology could fix that. All we can do is forgive each other and move on with our lives. Preferably a life where I would never see them again. At least I know if we ever do meet again, it would not be awkward. I just believe that the amount of harm each subgroup has done is different and the more harm they´ve done the harder it is to forgive them.

Then there are the bullies who never apologized. I do not believe that they never apologized because they do not regret bullying me but it is because they can´t face me again. I confidently believe that they know the harm they caused in their childhood and now realize that what they did was harmful. Again, those are the followers, not the leaders but in comparison to the second subgroup, they did not have the guts to face me again after all those years.

Last but not least, there are the bullies who I don’t believe have changed at all. The leaders of a group. I do not think they have changed at all since, in comparison to the minor stress the others have caused, they caused the most distress. I do not really believe that they regret what they have done and I would not really believe them if they genuinely apologized. Part of me wants to forgive them if they would want to apologize but there is also that broken inner child within me screaming that I should not believe a word they say.

There is also a rare instance where my parents befriended the parents of my bully. My parents constantly contacted the parents of my bully since my bully constantly bullied me for an unspecific reason. Turns out the parents of my bully did not even know that their child was bullying other children. The bully´s parents did force the bully to apologize to me multiple times in the past but the bullying continued nonetheless. After a few years, the amount of bullying decreased. The bully would pick on me from time to time but in comparison to the previous years, it was tolerable. When the bullying calmed. The bully´s parents would constantly invite my family over. It was weird to go to the home of someone who bullied me from the day we met. I eventually found out that the bully would never misbehave in front of the parents. The bully´s mother also assured me that I could tell her anything and she would talk to her child. That did put my mind at ease. After they moved away, the parents stayed in touch. We would visit them from time to time if we were in town and the subject of bullying was never mentioned again. Oddly enough, we grew apart and it was not because of the bullying. The bullying started the association between my parents and my bully´s parents. After a year the tension left by the bullying faded and the bully and I would find each other’s company a bit forced but tolerable. However, we did not talk in the past years and I do not believe that we would talk in the future anytime soon. My parents would still share some pleasantries with my former bully´s parents but we grew up and grew apart.

I do not believe that I can ever put my every experience with bullies into words but writing this article made me realize that I still have words that I have left unsaid. I do not believe that this will be the last article I write about bullying since I still want to cover the effect the bullying had on me. Honestly, I never intended to write this much about something that I did not realize was a problem. Maybe I should make it a habit to talk about things that I do not believe had an impact on me, since trivialities I tend to brush away tend to have big impacts on the person I currently am. Whether the impacts are good or bad is another topic completely.