BULLY 4 U

Hola,

Right now, its 3:14am and I cannot sleep, no matter how hard I try, and believe me I've tossed around for a good couple of hours my lack of sleep lead to the creation of this...

 So I've been thinking alot, as I do, and reminiscing about Highschool, but not in a nostalgic sense, to be honest, thinking about my experiences in highschool makes me feel a little queasy. So this post may or may not resonate with you, the following is a collection of thoughts and memories...

Highschool, I feel is one of the most pivotal parts of your life,  in terms of cognitive development, because in a way you create the foundations for the essence of your being. Your social interactions and experiences are so different from that of primary school, you transform from pre pubescent child to gawky hormonal teenager, and experience new emotions and desires. I firmly believe that had I not gone through the experiences that I did when I was in high school, I wouldn't be the person I am today and in some ways its a great thing and in others obviously not so great. In primary school I was this confident young girl, I finished primary school as school captain, house captain, I was a library monitor, I got the Citizenship Award, I was in the choir, I'd been to nationals for athletics. I LOVED my primary school, I was friends with everyone and never really had a problem with anyone.

Then my family moved from the Inner West to the South, and shit got real..bad.  I hadn't wanted to move from a secular school to a Christian one, but my parents thought it'd be an ace idea so obviously I had no say in the matter. I remember Orientation Day and thinking, man everything is going to be sweet, after meeting some people and having a semi decent time with them, I'd also gotten into all the top classes and was eager to learn about stuff because I was your textbook nerd back then.

But then obviously shit went awry, once I started school I didn't fit in for a lot of reasons because I had never heard of brands like Roxy or Billabong, and coming from an area where there wasn't really any water, I wasn't down with the surf culture, I could barely swim. I got bullied for a long while, by some of the most popular girls and guys in my year, I had no friends, I tried sooo hard to be friends with people and they used that against me, I HATED my life, I begged my parents to let me move schools, my parents put me in therapy.

I went from a confident, bubbly girl to a withdrawn shadow of my former self,  spending recess eating l in the bathrooms between tears, keeping my head down most of the time. My sanctuary was the school library, the library Teacher Ms W was a soft spoken saint to me when I was in the early years of High School. Reading from a really young age has always been one of the things that calms me down and keeps me grounded, imagining that I was in another place other than school is probably one of the only things that kept me sane.

Shit was bad, but one day I just had enough and snapped. By this point, I'd dropped down to the intermediate levels for all classes because I wanted to fit in, and to this day I regret not just sticking it out and trying to do my best instead of succumbing to peer pressure and the need to fit in. But yeah I snapped, and decided it was time to fucking snap necks -not literally, of course- but,to basically do something about the bullshit that was my life. I started standing up for myself, and for others who were being bullied.

One of my favourite (only good) memories from high school, is when I played a prank on one of the then popular girls from my high school. Everyday my ma would pack me a water bottle with frozen water in it, and throughout the day it would slowly thaw so that by lunch time you had sweet,cool water to drink. Everyday she would fucking drink it, and I would let her because I was afraid (Of what? I couldn't even tell you now). Anyways, one day I'd had enough so I put vinegar in my water bottle, and that day I eagerly anticipated her drinking my water, she drank it and choked and it was hilarious. Needless to say, she never drank from my water bottle again.

Eventually in year 11 &12, I for some twisted reason became friends with the popular girls, the girls who once bullied me to shit, and to this day I dont know why I became friends with them. Obviously now having been friends with them for so long we do have a genuine friendship, and I love them all, but I still wonder why I chose to be friends with the girls that contributed in making my life a living hell, maybe I was being strategic by keeping friends close and enemies closer, or maybe it was sheer desperation/being eager to please. In retrospect, I'd probably say a bit of both.

I could go into waaaay more detail about my high school experiences but Im not going to, I just wish there was a way to change the way some things were. I know that because of my experiences in High School I find it hard to communicate with some people,  I can be a little defensive at times and I can be very insecure, awkward and shy if I feel people are above me, which I know no one is and sometimes when I'm out I may drink a little too much to overcome that. And  as I said before, I know that If it weren't for the way my experiences in High School, I probably wouldn't be the way I am today. But having said that, now I'm a fairly confident, proud person and I embrace being different, I no longer TRY to fit in. And yeah this is a fairly cheesy post, with the generic message BE YOURSELF. But I wholeheartedly believe that you should be yourself, fuck labels and stereotypes and all that bullshit.