Bullying

If there is one thing I hate reading about it’s bullying, regardless of the ages of the victim and the bullies.  Of course, many of us can recount times when we have been picked on, punched or intentionally left out of the social loop and if you genuinely can’t, you’re lucky.  Reading the story of poor Amanda Todd brought tears to my eyes and made me feel sick.  It’s not so much the fact that a few people called her names and generally made her life a misery.  Like I said, that kind of thing happens to the best of us and usually resolves itself one way or the other.  It is more the fact that EVERY SINGLE PEER (or a significant number of her peers) clubbed together to make her life a living hell, to the point where the poor girl thought that committing suicide was the only way out.

I don’t want to meter out judgement to these people because, hey, I can be unpleasant and it’s not my place to go around making judgements about people I have never even met.  I don’t know who these people are or how their minds work.  What I do know is that people are capable of being extremely cruel and seem to possess something of a pack mentality.  I witnessed it at my own comprehensive.  Basically, if you weren’t sporty, rough, pretty, wearing the latest sports gear (this was in the nineties and trashy sports labels were all the rage back then), you were fair game.  Amongst the bullied were those of us who were also too tall, too small, too fat, too thin, too quiet, too weird, too sober, too nerdy, too bright, not bright enough...you get the idea.   The form of the bullying seemed to vary according to the bullies and their targets.  Some were very physical with their prey.  By physical I mean their preferred method was to kick the living shit out of their victim whilst most of the school watched and cheered (usually for the bullies) before leaving the poor kid lying there rolling in a pool of their own blood.  Others preferred to target people emotionally.  By this I mean name calling, taunting, purposeful social exclusion and other non-physical forms of bullying.

 The teachers weren’t much nicer.  Whenever you raised concerns about bullying you were told not to tell tales and to maybe consider what YOU might be doing to entice the bullies...what?  This is very much in line with an article I recently read, which discussed how some professor of psychology (always a bad start) has come up with some sound advice aimed at making weird kid be less...well, weird.  It talks about cultivating social awareness and learning not to talk about things that other people may find bizarre or inappropriate.  Both very useful.  I mean, you don’t want to be making a habit of talking about your piles to complete strangers.  However, what happened to teaching self love and tolerance.  How exactly does this work when we are also telling children that they are just too weird to have friends.  It’s as though we have developed some pathological obsession with fitting some socially cultivated ideal of “normal” and “perfect.” 

My issue is that “normal” and “perfect” are just too narrow, not to mention boring.  By way of confirmation, I just have to look around my circle of friends and colleagues.  Most of them, if not all of them, would struggle to appear anything but weird.  One of my friends enjoys providing graphic details of her bowel movements to anybody-ability to listen and not being grossed out is not essential, you just have to be there-she is twenty six.  Then there is the friend who can down neat vodka, whilst listening to Iron Maiden and painting war hammer models.  I have a friend who likes to make random animal noises.  Others who will discuss their intimate lives in lurid detail with complete strangers.  There are also those who dress a little funny, have piercings in interesting places and listen to heavy music.  So, whilst none of them would win most conventional person of the year, they are my friends and I love each and every one of them (cue vomiting noises).  Maybe it is their inherent weirdness that makes me enjoy spending time with them.  Not only do I find their antics entertaining; I think that their bizarre behaviour gives me a sort of licence to exhibit my own brand of strangeness.  I know that I can come out with random stuff and they wouldn’t think anything of it, whereas other people may mock or avoid me altogether.  When in their company I feel completely accepted, as though I can say or do anything without being made to feel stupid or freakish.  A feeling I never really had at school.  At school I was always on my guard, careful to appear normal (and never succeeding) only to find myself the butt of everyone’s jokes anyhow.

If somebody had told me at fifteen that as an adult I would find a group of people who would accept me as I genuinely was I would have snorted with laughter.  I thought I was the only person who wasn’t into boy bands (I forced myself to listen to them in a stupid attempt to fit in.  Hearing the Backstreet Boys still sets my nerves on edge to this very day), sports, looking pretty or trying to bed as many boys as I possibly could.  Five years in my scuzzy comprehensive taught me that spending my nights alone and reading was somehow inferior to sitting on a freezing cold park bench necking white lightening and contracting every STI you possibly could!  The relentless taunts of the bullies had somehow convinced me of this.

Yet, here I am.  Several years later.  Not entirely normal or, indeed, very sane.  I have now made a career out of my book obsession.  The books stuck around much longer than the evil bitches with their fake tans, inane gossip and stupid hair extensions.  I have my own home and a group of very accepting friends.  We spend a lot of time having strange conversations (who would win in a fight; Elmo or David Cameron) and being generally, well, weird.  I will NEVER, EVER be one to conform to the cultural ideal of normal and that’s ok.  If anyone out there is being bullied or marginalised; it gets better.  I know it probably won’t feel like it at the moment but it does.  One day you will leave school and the bullies behind.  You will make friends who are genuinely interested in who you are rather than in how they think you should be.  Believe me, when I was being bullied I thought that I was the only one and that no matter how hard I tried I would never make friends.  But not everywhere is like school.  School is a small place inhabited by small people, many of whom follow the crowd because they are alone and scared too.  When they pick on you for being different just remember that you are perfect the way that you are and don’t let anybody ruin your life!  You don’t have to change for anybody.