Week against bullying 2018
The week of 17-21 September is the annual Week against bullying in 2018 in the Netherlands. I want to have a small contribution too. During therapy, I remembered two cases of bullying where my teachers just reacted in the most ridiculous way.
The first one was during middle school and I think I was about 7 years old. The teacher actually joined forces with the bullies and they all worked together to make my life miserable. At the time, I already lost hope in humanity. The whole world is evil, why would I even bother? Now that I am older, I understand that human beings are weak and we are nowhere near rational. When the whole or a majority of the group is hating on someone, it is really hard to go against the flow. The teacher also needs the support of the class to do his job properly. It is especially difficult if the victim is so used to the victim role that she is already getting ready to be mocked or get beaten. I now understand why teachers keep telling me that I am asking for it and that it is my fault. Before people hit me, I already cower at the raise of their hand. It is like when I was training my lung capacity at the sink in the school toilets (Which happened to be already filled with water and with a stop inserted? A mere coincidence or a trap by my bullies or teacher? I still haven't figured it out). Since psychos kept drowning me to traumatize me enough for amnesia to kick in and I saw on TV that divers could hold their breaths up to 10 minutes just by practicing a lot, I decided to practice whenever I got the chance. The girl in my class that was my biggest bully instinctively pushed my head into the water to drown me, when she saw me with my head in the water. She even enjoyed seeing me fight again her grip. It is the same with bullying. You feel really powerful and better than someone else. I think it is some kind of animal instinct, as cats like to play with their prey first, before they eat them. The true horror was when I heard the teacher say that he and the whole class would deny bullying me, whenever I tell others about it, and the whole class agreed to lie about it.
The second time was when I made it to a top high school, where none of my bullies could go, and a girl from one class higher at middle school deliberately asked to be put into my class just so that she could bully me. She somehow had the little lumps of paper shooter in her hands that I made to hurt my bully with during middle school, as I could barely defend myself due to being tortured every day, having a painful body, and lack of sleep. I was really inventive, as I cut off the wide plastic straw inside of a pen and made mini lumps of paper that had extra hurting power by covering a sheet of paper with adhesive tape and cutting and wrinkling small lumps out of that. It is one of my first inventions and I am very proud of it. It is pretty long lasting too, since the bully and her friends stole that from me and used it against me during high school and university too. But on that day in high school, the girl used the shooter to shoot at me during class. Everybody saw it and did nothing. I thought it was pretty funny and used a book to block it. But after a while, I started to get annoyed and exhausted from holding the book left and right and just moved my chair to somewhere else. Since she kept shooting and everyone kept ignoring it, I then moved my chair next to the teacher. Now that I think back to it, it is pretty hilarious, as I deflected the mini lumps of paper and it kept hitting the face of the teacher. He stayed quiet for a long time until he bursted out in anger. He then explained to me that this will be his last time to defend me and I needed to handle these kinds of things on my own from now on. It was school policy for kids to solve this among themselves. I have always been alone in any battle my whole life, so it didn't affect me much, but someone else might feel lonely and abandoned.
Not all teachers were like this, I had a female gym teacher who did her best to help me as much as she could (but for whatever reason, it was kept to the bare minimum) and an inspiring Latin language teacher, who was able to convey her love and passion for her course very well. From when I was a little child, I loved fairy tales of all kinds and the Roman mythology was really similar to those stories. I think it was a way to escape reality. Although the gods showed a lot of (stupid) human behavior and emotions, there were enough elements that made it like a fairy tale world. I was especially comforted by the story of Hercules. He was a man of strength and witt and even though, he killed his first wife and children with his own hands in a crazy fit, he went on adventures, slayed monsters, and did all he could to save the world. It gave me the courage and hope to live on, even though I could not protect the person I loved the most when I was 12 years old. Just like Hercules, I wasn't strong enough, but the challenges and adventures ahead of me would make me stronger. I still feel bad that I didn't get a 10 for her course at the final exams to repay her kindness and support, but nearing the end of the course, we studied philosophers and speech writers, which was so close to reality that I lost some interest. Maybe, it was the child in me, who wanted to keep believing in fairy tales. I still got a really good end grade, but a 10 would have been the cherry on the cake.
The first one was during middle school and I think I was about 7 years old. The teacher actually joined forces with the bullies and they all worked together to make my life miserable. At the time, I already lost hope in humanity. The whole world is evil, why would I even bother? Now that I am older, I understand that human beings are weak and we are nowhere near rational. When the whole or a majority of the group is hating on someone, it is really hard to go against the flow. The teacher also needs the support of the class to do his job properly. It is especially difficult if the victim is so used to the victim role that she is already getting ready to be mocked or get beaten. I now understand why teachers keep telling me that I am asking for it and that it is my fault. Before people hit me, I already cower at the raise of their hand. It is like when I was training my lung capacity at the sink in the school toilets (Which happened to be already filled with water and with a stop inserted? A mere coincidence or a trap by my bullies or teacher? I still haven't figured it out). Since psychos kept drowning me to traumatize me enough for amnesia to kick in and I saw on TV that divers could hold their breaths up to 10 minutes just by practicing a lot, I decided to practice whenever I got the chance. The girl in my class that was my biggest bully instinctively pushed my head into the water to drown me, when she saw me with my head in the water. She even enjoyed seeing me fight again her grip. It is the same with bullying. You feel really powerful and better than someone else. I think it is some kind of animal instinct, as cats like to play with their prey first, before they eat them. The true horror was when I heard the teacher say that he and the whole class would deny bullying me, whenever I tell others about it, and the whole class agreed to lie about it.
The second time was when I made it to a top high school, where none of my bullies could go, and a girl from one class higher at middle school deliberately asked to be put into my class just so that she could bully me. She somehow had the little lumps of paper shooter in her hands that I made to hurt my bully with during middle school, as I could barely defend myself due to being tortured every day, having a painful body, and lack of sleep. I was really inventive, as I cut off the wide plastic straw inside of a pen and made mini lumps of paper that had extra hurting power by covering a sheet of paper with adhesive tape and cutting and wrinkling small lumps out of that. It is one of my first inventions and I am very proud of it. It is pretty long lasting too, since the bully and her friends stole that from me and used it against me during high school and university too. But on that day in high school, the girl used the shooter to shoot at me during class. Everybody saw it and did nothing. I thought it was pretty funny and used a book to block it. But after a while, I started to get annoyed and exhausted from holding the book left and right and just moved my chair to somewhere else. Since she kept shooting and everyone kept ignoring it, I then moved my chair next to the teacher. Now that I think back to it, it is pretty hilarious, as I deflected the mini lumps of paper and it kept hitting the face of the teacher. He stayed quiet for a long time until he bursted out in anger. He then explained to me that this will be his last time to defend me and I needed to handle these kinds of things on my own from now on. It was school policy for kids to solve this among themselves. I have always been alone in any battle my whole life, so it didn't affect me much, but someone else might feel lonely and abandoned.
Not all teachers were like this, I had a female gym teacher who did her best to help me as much as she could (but for whatever reason, it was kept to the bare minimum) and an inspiring Latin language teacher, who was able to convey her love and passion for her course very well. From when I was a little child, I loved fairy tales of all kinds and the Roman mythology was really similar to those stories. I think it was a way to escape reality. Although the gods showed a lot of (stupid) human behavior and emotions, there were enough elements that made it like a fairy tale world. I was especially comforted by the story of Hercules. He was a man of strength and witt and even though, he killed his first wife and children with his own hands in a crazy fit, he went on adventures, slayed monsters, and did all he could to save the world. It gave me the courage and hope to live on, even though I could not protect the person I loved the most when I was 12 years old. Just like Hercules, I wasn't strong enough, but the challenges and adventures ahead of me would make me stronger. I still feel bad that I didn't get a 10 for her course at the final exams to repay her kindness and support, but nearing the end of the course, we studied philosophers and speech writers, which was so close to reality that I lost some interest. Maybe, it was the child in me, who wanted to keep believing in fairy tales. I still got a really good end grade, but a 10 would have been the cherry on the cake.
