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Writer's Block: School Daze
May. 11th, 2010 03:26 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Odd, since I was talking about this last night...
Like many of my online friends, I was bullied and ostracised in school. Not straight away, however. In grade 7 I had friends - there were four of us who were as thick as thieves. We'd have lunch together every day, my best friend Jenny and I would sit next to each other in class and we'd go to each other's houses on the weekends (a big deal when you remember I lived in country Victoria, so going to a friend's house usually required driving an hour or so). We'd tell jokes and gossip about boys and bands and books. It was great.
That changed in grade 8. Literally over the summer vacation - I came back to school and suddenly my friends weren't my friends any more. They wouldn't talk to me. They wouldn't hang out with me. They'd call me names and give me wedgies and joined in with all the rest of the class in throwing spitballs at the back of my head in History. The abuse was bad enough, but what I could never work out was what I'd done for things to change so drastically. There was no reason, even when I summoned up the courage to ask. If it had been that way from the start, I might have been able to cope with things better, but not this unexplained change, as if I'd done something unforgiveable that I couldn't remember.
There were positives. I learned independence. I learned to write. I read everything I could get my hands on in an effort to forget what was going on around me. I got good grades because I focussed on my work in order to ignore what was being said about me within my hearing. But there were a lot more negatives, not the least of which was the "confirmation" that I couldn't trust anyone not to dump me, that everyone, at one time or other, would let me down.
I still have a lot of trust issues. It hasn't helped that there's been a number of incidents over the past nine months that have touched those old high school scars and reminded me that to some people, friendship is as transient as the next online shiny and that's been a real stumbling block in my progress.
I've improved in one sense, in that I don't blame myself as much as I would have even a year ago, but rejection is a bitch, no matter who you are. I'm working with my counsellor on mutable boundaries - the ability to let people in or keep them out just as much as I need, not the all-or-nothing defensive mechanisms I have at the moment. I'm still scared to the point of inaction about the idea of going out and meeting new people on my own, something else we're working on, and there's a number of emails I should write that I probably won't.
The more things change... Ah well. That's what the therapy's for, right?
Odd, since I was talking about this last night...
Like many of my online friends, I was bullied and ostracised in school. Not straight away, however. In grade 7 I had friends - there were four of us who were as thick as thieves. We'd have lunch together every day, my best friend Jenny and I would sit next to each other in class and we'd go to each other's houses on the weekends (a big deal when you remember I lived in country Victoria, so going to a friend's house usually required driving an hour or so). We'd tell jokes and gossip about boys and bands and books. It was great.
That changed in grade 8. Literally over the summer vacation - I came back to school and suddenly my friends weren't my friends any more. They wouldn't talk to me. They wouldn't hang out with me. They'd call me names and give me wedgies and joined in with all the rest of the class in throwing spitballs at the back of my head in History. The abuse was bad enough, but what I could never work out was what I'd done for things to change so drastically. There was no reason, even when I summoned up the courage to ask. If it had been that way from the start, I might have been able to cope with things better, but not this unexplained change, as if I'd done something unforgiveable that I couldn't remember.
There were positives. I learned independence. I learned to write. I read everything I could get my hands on in an effort to forget what was going on around me. I got good grades because I focussed on my work in order to ignore what was being said about me within my hearing. But there were a lot more negatives, not the least of which was the "confirmation" that I couldn't trust anyone not to dump me, that everyone, at one time or other, would let me down.
I still have a lot of trust issues. It hasn't helped that there's been a number of incidents over the past nine months that have touched those old high school scars and reminded me that to some people, friendship is as transient as the next online shiny and that's been a real stumbling block in my progress.
I've improved in one sense, in that I don't blame myself as much as I would have even a year ago, but rejection is a bitch, no matter who you are. I'm working with my counsellor on mutable boundaries - the ability to let people in or keep them out just as much as I need, not the all-or-nothing defensive mechanisms I have at the moment. I'm still scared to the point of inaction about the idea of going out and meeting new people on my own, something else we're working on, and there's a number of emails I should write that I probably won't.
The more things change... Ah well. That's what the therapy's for, right?
