Being bullied

TW: Sexual assault, violence, self harm.

When I was five, I looked like this.

Then, when I was eleven, I looked like this:

Now, I look like this (on a good day):

But in my head, I will always look like this:

You see, I was born with a malformed top jaw. Not something you notice much when your milk teeth come through, but my god, when I got my adult teeth, it was about as noticeable as you could get. I developed trichotillomania when I was 11 and scalped myself. So, going into secondary school I had the teeth of a deformed chipmunk and the hairline of Friar Tuck.

I suppose, all things considered, bullying was inevitable.

But this is the thing. I was bullied from starting school.

I don't know why. I was a fairly innocuous child. I was probably fucking annoying and a know it all because some things never change, but for some reason, a few girls in the year above me took against me and took up arms. I remember, aged five, being held, face-first, against a wall. I remember them telling me to come to the toilet with them in lunch, to be told a secret, and instead called names until I cried. 

Then my adult teeth came and lo, the bullying went up accordingly. I was already an easy target, probably because I didn't have many friends and didn't socialise outside school. But it's one thing to be targeted by a couple of bored girls, and something else to be targeted by everyone. They even stole my fucking lunch. It reached something of a nadir in year six, when I was first sexually assaulted on school grounds, and later had the shit beaten out of me by four boys, on the local park for the crime of being there. It followed me everywhere. At least when I was on holiday or at home, I could get my older brother to come and look threateningly at people. At school, I was mostly on my own. 

No wonder I ripped out half my hair.

And then. Secondary school. Oh the endless fucking DELIGHT of starting school looking like a morlock and having six foot tall, sixteen year old boys think nothing of calling me names across the playground, because all year seven girls need that on their plate. I developed a cruel and crude sense of humour to deal with it, and tried to give it back as good as I got. It occasionally got me into trouble, and being called names is not the worst thing that's ever happened. Of course, it felt like it at the time. Nobody ever had a crush on me, for example, because of the awful shame associated with being attracted to a morlock. I used to get in fights outside school, because I didn't want them to call me names anymore. There was a small crowd of 'cool' boys, who really took umbrage at my existence, particularly in shared lessons. One of them decided the best way to make his mates laugh was to put a piece of the cheesewire we used for cutting up modelling foam in DT around my neck. I couldn't breathe. I nearly knifed him in the face with a handy craftknife. I believe they left me alone after that.

I developed a few bad habits to deal with the constant angsty pain of existence. A bullied teenager is a most unhappy sight. I drank. I drank a lot. I drank often. I used drugs, now and then, mainly to deal with crippling social anxiety (sorry mum). And I beat myself bloody, because I hated myself so much I wanted to be anything else. 

Now. I am 31 years old. I have grown up. I have three gorgeous children. Despite being so hideously ugly, it has been constantly remarked on since I was five, I have got through two husbands. I know! The greed! Three years ago, I went back to my old secondary school for a reunion. I didn't want to go. I got so drunk the night before, I ripped a hole in my stomach lining. Then I got drunk in the car park before we went in. I couldn't bear the thought of being back in the torture chamber. I drank more as we went around to deal with it, disguised as orange juice. Then we went to the pub. It was that sort of a weekend.

And do you know something? There were quite a few of my former tormentors there, and none of them said a thing. They smiled. They nodded. They moved on. They remembered me, because I'm fairly memorable, but they don't remember every word they said to me fifteen years ago. That would be silly. They have moved on.

I have not.

I will never be wholly comfortable with the way I look because I was told every day for twelve years that I was hideous, either directly, or through a look, or a snigger, or a whispered comment. I will never really believe that I am worth a second glance. I hope I will stop hating myself for the way I look, but then worry that my children will be bullied in turn when people tell me how much they look like me. I doubt I will ever be cured of the anxiety I now recognise has been part of my life since I was pre-pubescent. Anxiety that people will shout at me, that they will follow me down the street threatening me. Anxiety about walking through a group of teenagers, because even at 31, they make me feel fourteen and a target again. I rarely go back to the town I grew up in, partly because it's a shithole, but mostly because it's full of memories. That's the alley I ran down when those boys were chasing me. That's the street those men threatened me on.That's the part of the park I was beaten up on. That's where I used to sit on my own with the dog because I had no friends. That's my loneliness. That's my pain. That's my lack of safety. That's my teenage years in a shitty nutshell. 

And therein lies the problem with bullying. Kids will be kids. Kids will shout names at others. Kids will take against what is different. Kids will hurt. Kids will fight.  Kids don't mean it. 

They didn't mean it.