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Joined: 27 Jun 2013 |
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Location: England |
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Past bullying
At age 5, the last age at which I had a normal weight,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the school football coach son punched me in the face. I have no memory of what prompted this; small boys could be a strange and violent people. I tasted blood before I felt pain. I'm usually quick having a clever line,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], however the perfect comeback always escaped me in those moments. No matter how many times it happened,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I was always surprised, devastated anew through the meanness, through the cutting words, with a classmate fist.
But soon, these were calling me fat. I wore the ugly Catholic school uniform, a brown plaid pinafore having a white blouse and Peter Pan collar. Under this hot mess, I wore cheap polyester pants, also brown. All the girls had them.
pig, fat girl,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], fat thing! This boy never had a name. He was older, in another grade. He threw one of the red rubber balls at me, hitting me in the stomach,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], laughing as the weight knocked the wind from me, leaving me gasping for breath on the ground. Catholic school, that failed experiment during my religious education,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], ended shortly afterward.
Being fat girl happened suddenly. In fact, it happened before I had been actually, medically, fat. When children started teasing me,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I probably only weighed five pounds a lot more than I ought to have for my height. But kids seize on small differences. The tall child is a beanstalk, the short kid is really a shrimp. When my weight became a problem after i actually was the fattest person (adults included) in class I had long since given up weighing myself or caring. Making it through each brutal day had become the only goal. The remainder of it my health,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], my body fell away. By the time I cared again, after I graduated from high school, I weighed nearly 400 pounds.
At public school within the new-money suburb my parents worked so difficult to put us in, the children found a wide array of methods to torture me. I never thought of myself as a child. I i never thought of myself as anything, really. I just read books,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and I learned that girls have best friends. But I had no friends. Kids who liked me when we were alone never acknowledged any relationship with others present. I never really knew who I hated more the ones who hated me, or the ones who liked me,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but only in private.
Moose,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Moose, Moose, MOOOOSE! I sat about the hard, cold floor of the school gym,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], like I did every day, awaiting the bus. Kids chanted, some from my class,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], some using their company grades. Older kids, younger kids, strangers they knew my name, the one which Brad, the sixth grader who lived in the house behind mine, had conferred. I heard this chant in line. I heard it about the bus. I heard it on the playground. I heard it every single day of my life, every school day, for four years.
In sixth grade, the teacher joined in.
you! she shouted,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], taking the paperback book out of my hands. She instructed the category to see silently. I opened a book,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], relieved at the opportunity to go someplace else for a while. She threw the book across the room. I remember her angry face,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the flecks of foamy spit in the corners of her mouth,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], how deep wrinkles framed her nose. Her dentures didn fit properly,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and her mouth never closed completely. She called me and stated the shiny smear of blood the day I got my period in class. She crowed in the discovery while my classmates shrieked with laughter. After i discuss this stuff, I marvel in the absurdity and the shocking level of cruelty. It appears as though something that would happen to some stranger,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], something which happens in a book. All I understand is this fact was my entire life. I was 12 years old, and school wasn safe. I went home and considered how I would kill myself.
I moved from sixth grade to junior high school in a fog. I felt sad and afraid every day. I never had friends who stood by me. Teachers knew I had been smart. They saw the exam scores. They read my papers. Not one of them seemed to wonder why Used to do so poorly, especially in subjects that required verbal ability. I discovered it hard to focus since the fear never disappeared,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], not even when teachers were around. There is a boy in my art class who talked about his crotch hair and all girls he touched. He leered at me and winked after which laughed together with his friends about how exactly easily he could land the whale.
Another boy at our table told me daily just how much I disgusted him. He hated me in a quiet, powerful way. Eventually, out art teacher made us draw pictures of 1 another,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], in our hair. My hair tangled easily and that i never quite managed to get out all of the knots. The quiet boy had talent. He drew my ugly,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], tangled hair perfectly, paying special attention to the frizzy bump on the back of my head where I attempted to cover a particular matted clump.
I longed to become invisible. I worried that anything Used to do that made me stand out even good things, like drawing well or writing a story for that school paper would mean attracting the incorrect kind of attention. I loved to draw and paint, but I stopped taking art class in ninth grade because after our teacher left to smoke,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a junior within the class increased towards the board and drew pictures of me, nude as well as in impossible sexual positions.
One boy stabbed me having a pen,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]. He pinned me from the wall in basic algebra a class for math dummies and told his friends to watch.
bet she bleeds gravy,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he said, jabbing my bare arm. I bled. I cried. I trembled. I know I ought to screamed, or done something else to attract the attention of the wrestling coach responsible for the class,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], sitting at his desk and prying items of black scum out from under his fingernails with a pocketknife,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but I couldn actually believe it was happening until it was over. Even then,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I couldn create a sound. I didn move until long afterwards the bell rang and the classroom had emptied completely.
We heard so much about the tragic consequences of bullying lately. Facebook along with other internet sites have added a brand new, to children attacks on one another. But well before was a national conversation, there have been people much like me. People who faced a gantlet of assault, taunting, humiliation and sexual harassment, people who were denied meaningful areas of the amount. The children who, famously,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], is really so cruel were as advertised. And in my entire life, the adults either didn care, couldn be bothered,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], didn notice or actively participated. My advanced-placement European history teacher,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a self-proclaimed feminist who wore a pro-choice coat hanger on the necklace but never called on girls in class, called me stupid while watching students. After i asked her for help preparing for an evaluation, she explained to get out of her sight. I believe taking a look at me actually made her sick.
People who attempted to help thought the best way to end this daily nightmare could be that i can do the right thing and lose weight. My parents known as the school, complained to individual teachers and gave me bad advice. neglected, they explained, echoing the ages-old bullying strategy that never works for anyone. you ignore them, they stop. I've no clue the things they should done,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or if anything would helped. At the time,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], lectures on my weight just helped me angrier and sadder. Given how intensely miserable I had been, tending my health was beyond my reach. Suggestions like this infuriated me. Despite my classmates best efforts, despite my teachers utter failure to appear out for me personally, despite the callousness of principals and the great distress I caused my own family, I'd this crazy idea that I had a right to courtesy as well as an education regardless of what I weighed. This concept helped me defiant and defiance was the one thing I'd going for me for some time, long time.
I still fat. I peaked at about 600 pounds before losing more than half my body weight. Still,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I not thin,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and probably won't be. One day in the club, after swimming a mile and showering, I heard the noise of teen girls laughing. I saw them behind me, pointing at me as I changed clothes, making whispered comments to one another.
you believe this is bad, you need to seen me before I lost 300 pounds, I told them. I stared them down. There were shamefaced and murmured apologies. At 35,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I finally managed to win a round with some mean girls. Hooray for me personally,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I thought.
But despite it all,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I believe people may be good. The current public outrage over bullying gay teens makes me believe that. Efforts by Dan Savage and others inspire me to keep on to this thought. I have no regrets about not killing myself at 12. I been to Australia, loved good people, had amazing friends as well as written a book. I have the ability to have comebacks all the time now.
baby, a 14-year-old boy in the mall thinks he make a scene and entertain his friends.
me when you grow some pubes, I tell him. His friends laugh. He scowls and tells them to shut up. I overcome a bully. Over a child, really. Yes, it petty, and that I have other reasons to feel good about myself and also to let go of the ugliness of my school days. I know that. However i take what I can get.
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