Glumlock
Well-known member
My name is Glumlock, and i'm a bully victim
Naw seriously though, i'd like to share my experiences with bullying with the rest of this forum.
First off, some background. i'm 17 and i'm from a poor part of Northern England. I wouldn't say i had the easiest start in life, but i could have had it a lot worse. My dad pissed off when my mum was still pregnant with me at the age of 19, so she had no where to live. Typically he wanted nothing to do with me until he realised he could claim money if i lived with him but that wasnt till i was much older. Anyway, my mum lived with my grandma at the time, and had to work 2 jobs just to keep me fed and clothed. She was a very brave woman - her only concern was that i had a bed to sleep in, nothing else. My granny brought me up.. i rarely ever saw my mother till i was about 4, when she did her nurse training and became a psychiatric nurse. we got our own place to live after that. But my granny was still the main focus of my life.
I guess the earliest of my experiences was when i started school at the age of 4, it was just name calling, excluding me from games, victimizing. That sorta stuff. it hurt me then.. but you just get used to it. My granny would always say that i should just ignore them because they were beneath me.. but they made me feel like i was lower than dirt.
This carried on all the way through primary... but it kicked off to another level in secondary school (7th grade for the Americans among you).
My mum went through several boyfriends till finally settling on one man in particular who will not be named. I was 6/7. she was with him for nearly 4 years. he had two daughters who were a year younger than i was. he was verbally abusive to my mother, but physically abusive to me. he never hit my mum as far as i knew - he took his frustration out on me. he didnt beat the living shit out of me.. but he would victimise me and torment me just as much as the bullies at school. Homelife had always been my sanctuary - a safe haven from the hell that was school.. but now it was just as bad. I'd stay in my room playing on my playstation or reading book after book all day. Locked away from the outside world.. until it invaded my room.
Anyway.. after 4 years that ended. she's now with a nice husband and has had two children with him. I have a nice home life. When i started secondary school, i started it with a posetive homelife. I thought it would be a new start, a welcome change from the bullying i had received in primary school. i thought i would be fine.
But the bullying didn't stop. it just got worse.
People used to take the piss out of me for.. i guess a few different reasons. 1 - my stutter. I have something of a stutter, particularly when i'm nervous. 2 - i used to wear glasses. I wear contacts now.. but i have an aversion to wearing glasses. 3 - my taste in music. I would openly stand up for my taste in rock + alternative, even when everyone else was into rap. 4 - because i did gymnastics when i was younger. The latter never really bothered me.. i didnt care what people said about that. So yeah.. those 4 crimes are the causes of my bullying.
It went from verbal teasing to physical abuse and psychological torment, and it's gotten worse as i've got older. I was always made to feel like shit, like i was nothing. I'd get locked in girls toilets, pants pulled down infront of people, my bag stolen, thrown around the class, my shoes taken, my phone stolen, my ipod stolen, my books ripped up. one particular moment was when my favorite book (1984 by george orwell) that i had taken to school got taken out of my bag and torn up in front of my eyes. I never brought books to school again after that. yeah i know that kind of stuff is petty, but when it's happening all the time it kind of gets to you.
And no, it wasnt the hard people who bullied me - it was the clever shits the people who called themselves my "friends", the "popular crowd" the people who you know are going to go far in life. You Americans may refer to them as "jocks", although i don't like categorising anyone - they're just dickheads to me. So yeah, the cool, funny, sporty gobshites who think they are wonderful, the people who need to feel a moral boost by making someone else's life a shit hole. i always understood why they did it... but i could never work out why it was me? I'd frequently get called "gay" which is a common insult in the North of England for anyone who deviated from the social norm.
Whenever i'd point out that my "friends" were treating me like shit and making me miserable i'd always get "omg you can't take a joke you take everything so seriously". Well maybe so.. but i dont find being kicked in the nuts and having my stuff taken and being humiliated in front of other people funny. And im sure they wouldnt either.
I always found it hard to tell my parents anything.. and i refused to let them do anything because i knew it would only make things worse. I just used my strong will to shrug things off and not give in. From when i was about 12 i was determined to go to University, study psychology and become a psychologist. that was my dream, and it still is.
I'd always been a pretty straight A student, but in the 9th year my grades slipped and i performed poorly. I managed to bring it back around in time for my GCSEs and i did well - A's and B's mostly. But i know i could have done better if i hadnt been bullied so extensively.
My stepdad promised me it would be different in sixth form (like high school. You study A levels before you go to university). Everyone will grow up in sixth form, it will be better, people will like you for who you are. But he was wrong. It was still ****ing torture. It still is infact - even now it's shit. These days i cant wear the right clothes, i never look perfect, i still stutter my words (although it has improved somewhat), i still have an aversion to social activities and i find it difficult to speak to people.
I was able to hold on to everything until march this year, when my Granny died. I can honestly say i would have been less upset if it had been my mother, because my granny was actually like a mother to me. It left a huge wound inside me that will probably never heal. She had always been the most important person in my life, and i felt like she had been stolen from me when i needed her the most. I've just finished my AS (first year) exams. I've done okay (i hope) but i know if i hadnt been so distracted by granny's death and struggling to support my mother. She has been death 2 months today - 19th of may. And it took till just recently for me to let my feelings out. I had to put on a brave face for my mother who was struggling to cope herself.
I'd find it so hard to focus in class and of course the bullying i get on a day to day basis just made things worse. i'd sometimes just run out of lessons to cry in the toilets because i would just feel so shit. Even now i struggle to motivate myself to go to school because every day its the same.
But life's not always easy is it?
I've coped with sadness and bullying all my life - i hope it will stop when i go to Uni. I'm on my way to achieve my dream, im studying psychology at A level and i'm doing better than most of the people in my class. I've got one or two friends who i can rely on and i've still got my mother. Even if the whole world turns its back on me i still have my mum.
To anyone who sat and read the whole thing, thank you.
Naw seriously though, i'd like to share my experiences with bullying with the rest of this forum.
First off, some background. i'm 17 and i'm from a poor part of Northern England. I wouldn't say i had the easiest start in life, but i could have had it a lot worse. My dad pissed off when my mum was still pregnant with me at the age of 19, so she had no where to live. Typically he wanted nothing to do with me until he realised he could claim money if i lived with him but that wasnt till i was much older. Anyway, my mum lived with my grandma at the time, and had to work 2 jobs just to keep me fed and clothed. She was a very brave woman - her only concern was that i had a bed to sleep in, nothing else. My granny brought me up.. i rarely ever saw my mother till i was about 4, when she did her nurse training and became a psychiatric nurse. we got our own place to live after that. But my granny was still the main focus of my life.
I guess the earliest of my experiences was when i started school at the age of 4, it was just name calling, excluding me from games, victimizing. That sorta stuff. it hurt me then.. but you just get used to it. My granny would always say that i should just ignore them because they were beneath me.. but they made me feel like i was lower than dirt.
This carried on all the way through primary... but it kicked off to another level in secondary school (7th grade for the Americans among you).
My mum went through several boyfriends till finally settling on one man in particular who will not be named. I was 6/7. she was with him for nearly 4 years. he had two daughters who were a year younger than i was. he was verbally abusive to my mother, but physically abusive to me. he never hit my mum as far as i knew - he took his frustration out on me. he didnt beat the living shit out of me.. but he would victimise me and torment me just as much as the bullies at school. Homelife had always been my sanctuary - a safe haven from the hell that was school.. but now it was just as bad. I'd stay in my room playing on my playstation or reading book after book all day. Locked away from the outside world.. until it invaded my room.
Anyway.. after 4 years that ended. she's now with a nice husband and has had two children with him. I have a nice home life. When i started secondary school, i started it with a posetive homelife. I thought it would be a new start, a welcome change from the bullying i had received in primary school. i thought i would be fine.
But the bullying didn't stop. it just got worse.
People used to take the piss out of me for.. i guess a few different reasons. 1 - my stutter. I have something of a stutter, particularly when i'm nervous. 2 - i used to wear glasses. I wear contacts now.. but i have an aversion to wearing glasses. 3 - my taste in music. I would openly stand up for my taste in rock + alternative, even when everyone else was into rap. 4 - because i did gymnastics when i was younger. The latter never really bothered me.. i didnt care what people said about that. So yeah.. those 4 crimes are the causes of my bullying.
It went from verbal teasing to physical abuse and psychological torment, and it's gotten worse as i've got older. I was always made to feel like shit, like i was nothing. I'd get locked in girls toilets, pants pulled down infront of people, my bag stolen, thrown around the class, my shoes taken, my phone stolen, my ipod stolen, my books ripped up. one particular moment was when my favorite book (1984 by george orwell) that i had taken to school got taken out of my bag and torn up in front of my eyes. I never brought books to school again after that. yeah i know that kind of stuff is petty, but when it's happening all the time it kind of gets to you.
And no, it wasnt the hard people who bullied me - it was the clever shits the people who called themselves my "friends", the "popular crowd" the people who you know are going to go far in life. You Americans may refer to them as "jocks", although i don't like categorising anyone - they're just dickheads to me. So yeah, the cool, funny, sporty gobshites who think they are wonderful, the people who need to feel a moral boost by making someone else's life a shit hole. i always understood why they did it... but i could never work out why it was me? I'd frequently get called "gay" which is a common insult in the North of England for anyone who deviated from the social norm.
Whenever i'd point out that my "friends" were treating me like shit and making me miserable i'd always get "omg you can't take a joke you take everything so seriously". Well maybe so.. but i dont find being kicked in the nuts and having my stuff taken and being humiliated in front of other people funny. And im sure they wouldnt either.
I always found it hard to tell my parents anything.. and i refused to let them do anything because i knew it would only make things worse. I just used my strong will to shrug things off and not give in. From when i was about 12 i was determined to go to University, study psychology and become a psychologist. that was my dream, and it still is.
I'd always been a pretty straight A student, but in the 9th year my grades slipped and i performed poorly. I managed to bring it back around in time for my GCSEs and i did well - A's and B's mostly. But i know i could have done better if i hadnt been bullied so extensively.
My stepdad promised me it would be different in sixth form (like high school. You study A levels before you go to university). Everyone will grow up in sixth form, it will be better, people will like you for who you are. But he was wrong. It was still ****ing torture. It still is infact - even now it's shit. These days i cant wear the right clothes, i never look perfect, i still stutter my words (although it has improved somewhat), i still have an aversion to social activities and i find it difficult to speak to people.
I was able to hold on to everything until march this year, when my Granny died. I can honestly say i would have been less upset if it had been my mother, because my granny was actually like a mother to me. It left a huge wound inside me that will probably never heal. She had always been the most important person in my life, and i felt like she had been stolen from me when i needed her the most. I've just finished my AS (first year) exams. I've done okay (i hope) but i know if i hadnt been so distracted by granny's death and struggling to support my mother. She has been death 2 months today - 19th of may. And it took till just recently for me to let my feelings out. I had to put on a brave face for my mother who was struggling to cope herself.
I'd find it so hard to focus in class and of course the bullying i get on a day to day basis just made things worse. i'd sometimes just run out of lessons to cry in the toilets because i would just feel so shit. Even now i struggle to motivate myself to go to school because every day its the same.
But life's not always easy is it?
I've coped with sadness and bullying all my life - i hope it will stop when i go to Uni. I'm on my way to achieve my dream, im studying psychology at A level and i'm doing better than most of the people in my class. I've got one or two friends who i can rely on and i've still got my mother. Even if the whole world turns its back on me i still have my mum.
To anyone who sat and read the whole thing, thank you.
