On my way back from the store just now i started thinking about my old school.
My best friend's daughter is 6 years old now and has started something that i would translate to play-school, a school you go to before you start actual school at age 7.
When i think about when i started going to school i don't feel happy.
I am hoping that she is very happy in school and has lots of friends and that everyone is nice to each other.
I was bullied from the first day of play-school... The nickname i hated and that followed me from age 6 to about age 12 was so wittily thought up on my very first day... It was a word that started with the same letter as my last name. My last name is Finnish so it sounded strange to the other kids so a boy thought it was hilarious to give me a nickname.
It started with that and then it just developed and got worse and worse. I had no friends, had no voice and i was more bullied than the kid who would pick his nose and put his hand down his pants in class.. At some point it was decided that i was gross and that you couldn't sit in a seat where i had been sitting.
I don't remember very much from school because my mind has blocked all of those bad memories out, but some has stuck with me. I remember the time the guys was teasing me and calling me a pig, which still to this day i do not see any reason for at all seeing as i do not have an up turned "piggy looking" nose, i was a very skinny girl (one of the smallest in class actually) and not smelling bad or anything like that. When they were calling me piggy and making pig noises at me i shouted at them to stop, like a normal person would when being attacked. I yelled at them to "Stop!" and my teacher answers by telling me to keep my voice down... This is when i lost faith in my teacher, because it was so unfair, and i never stood up for myself again, since i was the one apparently who was going to be in trouble and not the person making me scream.
Another time was when a guy was picking on me, i don't remember all the details but i remember running away from him through the hallways and i close a door behind me and his foot got stuck under it and he got pretty hurt.. He was chasing me, tormenting me and he got hurt. What happened next? All my classmates blamed me and treated me like a villain, eventhough everyone knew he was a troublemaker and that he was chasing me when this happened.
I was in this class from age 6 to 12, suffering worst part of the bullying with them during the earlier years. Not that they stopped later on, it just stopped being as intense as it was when i was 6-9 years old.
In middle school (högstadiet) everyone got new classes with a mix from people in their old class and people from other classes and other schools. I was assigned to a class where i funny enough had no actual friends? I don't know how that happened since we got to write a list of people we wanted to be in the same class as in order of priority.. i got put in the same class as the last person on my list and we were not friends, i just thought he was alright.
To keep this story i'm about to get into a bit shorter i will not give all the details but i then met some girls in another class who had went to another school than me before and we became friends and i asked to be transferred to their class instead.
After some time one of the girls wanted to shut the other one out and so we did (yeah awefull i know), we phased her out of our group. This girl changed so much and was treating me worse and worse also, but she was my only friend. Then later on this girl from my old class (who is a bit crazy also btw) asked me about her and i said something about her not being nice and then she went and told her about it. My "friend" confronted me about it, basically asking me if i had called her a bitch. I was honest but she wouldn't really listen to what i had to say and decided to hate me with a burning passion from that day on. She would send me notes with threats on them in class, flip me off in the hallway and wrote profanities on my locker.
I was met with a lot of "girl hate" all through middle school, which i am sure a lot of other girls can relate to aswell because teenage girls are horrible to each other.
I did, however, start to stand up for myself more during middle school. One time one of the girls who was very popular in my old class came up to me and told me she was doing her internship at my boyfriend's job (he was 5 years older than me). She told me i shouldn't worry about her stealing him from me... I quickly responded that i wasn't worried about it. Her friend then got angry and asked me if i didn't think she was hot and i just said, i just don't think he wants you.
I bet if i hadn't been the athlete i was she would have wanted to kick my ass at that moment, but if she did she knew she would be the one ending up hurt as she would be no match for me so she just huffed and puffed and stormed off.
That moment felt great. Not letting her scare me anymore and standing up for myself.
That is some of my bully history in school, i don't remember much as i said but i was bullied from age 6 to the year i was turning 16.. 10 years of bullying.
I know other kids go through similar things, but i still hope that the kids at my friends daughter's school treat eachother with kindness and respect and that they have teachers who work actively against bullying.
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