“This is hell”: 3 honest stories of people who were bullied at school
Miscellaneous / / October 18, 2023
Our heroines still feel the consequences of bullying.
By according to UNESCO, around the world, almost every third child aged 9 to 15 experiences bullying at school at least once a month. In Russia, the situation is even tougher: 42.5% of our students are bullied.
Bullying can take a variety of forms: from simple name-calling to real humiliation and severe physical injury, when not only the psyche, but also the health of the child is in danger. Often children cannot fight back against offenders and are afraid to tell adults about their troubles, so they suffer in silence.
"I didn't want to live"
Lisa
21 years old, Tyumen.
Start
In first grade, I started wearing glasses, and I was bullied, first by a small group of kids, and then by the whole class. Most often it was just name-calling, but there were also physical attacks towards me. For example, my glasses were often taken away and broken, but they were expensive, it was expensive to change them every time. I could have been pushed or even beaten. They didn’t want to sit or talk to me, they said: “Don’t come, you’re wearing glasses.”
And I was very little and did not understand why exactly I was hate. Gradually, I developed the belief that glasses were terrible and that there was something wrong with me. And this feeling grew until the end of school. I didn't have the courage to fight back, I just got upset and started crying. And I cried until the ninth grade without stopping. It was not customary to complain at home, so I kept quiet.
I tried to be friends with a classmate whom I was very attracted to. But she kept me close so that mock. She would take my things and throw them back and forth with the other children until I became hysterical.
Every day, or in the best weeks every other day, I heard from my classmates “scary”, “fat”, “fat”, “standing next to you is disgusting”, “being like you is disgusting”.
Peak
One day a classmate pushed me into the wall during physical education so hard that I broke my head and a huge sore formed on my forehead. The teachers shrugged it off and said that it was easy to get injured in physical education. And before verbal insults they didn't care at all.
Naturally, I was going to school like I was going to hard labor. Every day I got up with strength and trudged there. And I left there with wild happiness that I was going home. I felt very sorry for myself, throughout the years I wondered: why me? For what?
As a result, in the ninth grade I reached a nervous breakdown.
I was shaking all over, I didn’t go to school for a month. The strangest thing is that I don’t remember what exactly happened; it was as if this episode had been cut out from my memory. But I felt really bad, and my parents took me to a psychologist. The classes helped me for exactly a year. I even started enjoying life. My classmates continued to pick on me, but I didn’t seem to react to it.
A year later, everything returned to normal, and the depression became even stronger. I gained a lot of weight, but they continued to bully me. Moreover, at home my parents constantly argued. From one hell, at school, I returned to another, home, where all the time there were screams.
I didn’t want to live, I had suicidal thoughts because I wasn’t happy anywhere. I constantly thought that I simply didn’t want to do anything and didn’t want to live at all. And I dreamed of dying as soon as possible. But I still didn’t have the courage to do anything with myself.
I didn’t know how to throw out all my resentment and aggression, and I was doing unconscious selfharm: I picked my lips and hands until they bled, bit off hangnails, tore apart sores so that they did not heal and scars formed.
Bottom line
And this continued until graduation. When I graduated from school, I felt such a relief that it is impossible to convey. It’s as if I’ve been carrying an impossible load for 11 years and now I’ve dropped it. I was incredibly happy that I would never see my classmates again. And I immediately felt much better.
All this bullying took a toll on me. I’m already an adult, but I still don’t perceive myself at all.
I don’t have a sense of confidence and love for myself, it’s very difficult for me to cultivate this in myself, at times I even hate myself.
I have trust issues, it’s very difficult for me to open up to people. Sometimes I am afraid to tell my friends something because I worry that they will laugh at me or use it against me. And I still don’t fully know how to deal with all of this.
Now I feel good when I make music and perform on stage (I'm a drummer in a band). Especially in those moments when you go on stage, you are greeted with applause and you start playing your favorite songs. I also feel better when I start taking care of myself, putting myself in order, in order to refute all those name-calling in my direction.
“Several people dumped their leftovers on my plate.”
Ira
31 years old, Kirov.
Start
Primary school went relatively smoothly. Yes, someone bullied someone, the boys could have stolen my shift and thrown it into the men's room, they could have thrown a stationery object at me or pushed me during recess. But either my memory works very selectively, or it was not aimed only at me. It was as if all the kids in my elementary school interacted with each other like that. Perhaps that is why I had a clear feeling that this norm.
The hardest part began in fifth grade. We moved, and I went to a new school with wild excitement. I have very strict and demanding parents. I was scolded for my bad grades and what they thought was my unkempt appearance. Therefore, since childhood, I tried to do everything to please. I came to the new class with such attitudes.
I still don’t know what my mistake was. Maybe in softness, in excessive diligence in studying, in silence. On the very first day, my classmates surrounded me, pinned me at my desk, not allowing me to leave, and began bombarding me with questions. From the usual ones like “Where do you live?” and “What do you like to do?” they went on to some sarcastic ones from the series “Why Is your skirt so stupid?” and “Why do you have such a strange voice?” I was confused then and couldn’t do anything worthy answer. She lowered her eyes, remained silent, or quietly muttered something.
From that moment on, they sensed weakness in me. There wasn’t a day when one of my classmates didn’t snatch my things, push me, call me a loser, pull my hair, or slap me on the head. Not playfully, but with all his might to make me cry out in pain. The more they attacked me, the more I cowered. I wanted to justify myself to them all and say that I was actually normal.
At home I didn’t complain because I was sure that my parents wouldn’t help me and would consider it nonsense and not a problem.
I really liked the clothes. I wore not the newest sweaters, unfashionable trousers, dark colors. Not because we didn’t have money, but because my parents thought that school was not a fashion show and there was no point in pampering me. Once they pulled off my cardigan, tossed it around for a long time, and then threw it into a bucket for washing the floors. Another time classmate raised my appearance makes me laugh in front of the boys. The more she said that I was a dirty slut, the more everyone laughed. In the end, she also spat on me. I just burst into tears and ran to the toilet.
There was also an episode when in the school cafeteria several people dumped their leftovers on my plate, saying that this was the food just for me.
Peak
The worst thing was in ninth grade, when I accidentally ran into a classmate in the hallway. She didn’t like it, she hit me up after school near the garages. I couldn’t help but go because I was sure it would get worse. And when I walked, my legs were like stone, I thought that they would beat me there.
They didn't beat me. A whole crowd had gathered there. Someone threw small stones at me, someone threw bullseyes, someone just laughed and imitated my voice and the way I cried. And this girl was screaming that I was a vile creature, that people like me belonged in the trash heap. I stood there and didn’t dare say anything. Gradually they became bored, and the crowd dispersed.
The teachers seem to didn't notice. No one ever interfered with these attacks, and I never complained. Partly because I knew that they wouldn’t help me, and partly because they told me directly: if you complain, we will turn your life into hell.
Although for me it was already hell. From 5th to 11th grade, almost every day I suffered humiliation, cried and became withdrawn. I have had no friends, I almost never walked in the yard. I always rushed home to hide in my room with a book. Books were my world of salvation.
Bottom line
At some point in eighth grade, I became interested in fan fiction and started it myself write. I found friends on the Internet, people who read my stories and with whom I could discuss, it seems, anything. I never saw them, then there were no video calls, no social networks, only forums where we chatted about everything. And, as strange as it may sound, it helped me not go crazy. My stories and my virtual friends who gave me support and praised my creativity. So I felt needed.
I was at graduation for a very short time. I didn't want to celebrate with these people. I ran away from there and didn’t save almost a single photograph, not a single notebook as a keepsake, nothing.
Everything related to school still disgusts me.
Now I work a lot with a psychologist. I am still wildly unsure of myself, and it takes me a lot of strength and courage to start communicating with someone. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and I think I'm a freak. Many years have passed, but the child in me is still not cured, and I often want to hug little Ira and feel sorry for her, to say that everything will be fine.
“Bullying drove me to anorexia”
Nastya
21 years old, Yekaterinburg.
Start
I started being bullied when I was five years old, and it went on for so long that I began to think it was normal.
In kindergarten, I was transferred to a group with older children because I was a bright child. And there they immediately attacked me. They constantly called me a snot and did nasty things to me. This went on for a very long time and only ended when I was seriously injured.
One girl thought that during a walk I knocked an icicle onto her. For this she me grabbed, hit my head against a brick wall and broke my eyebrow. I was taken to the hospital and stitched up.
The doctor said that I was very lucky: I could have lost my eye.
Only after this episode did the adults become alarmed. The teachers asked the parents not to bring the matter to court and not to write a complaint, but in response they still tried to make sure that no one bothered me. After that they didn’t touch me, but they never accepted me.
There was nothing terrible about elementary school. They teased me because I came from a large, poor family; they could call me names and bully me in some way. Sometimes I was offended and cried, but no more.
But in the fifth grade I moved to another, stronger class, and there were strange guys there. A favorite thing to do was throw a briefcase out of the window, throw a pencil case in the trash, or take a photo of someone in the toilet and show it to everyone.
I was not particularly accepted in this class, because I was new, a stranger, and they shunned me. But I didn’t want to intrude and didn’t really make contact myself, I sat quietly.
Peak
But in the sixth grade I acquired “girlfriend». I only recently realized that everything she did to me was abnormal. At school, I didn’t suspect that anything was wrong. For several years that we were friends, she regularly bullied me. I could tell the whole class that I was growing a mustache or that my breasts were too small. But especially often she paid attention to my weight. Constantly, when there were more people around, especially boys, she said that my butt was too big, my legs were too thick, my sides were hanging down.
I was not thick. I was tall and danced, but I was never really tall or fat.
Looking at her, my classmates also began to pick on me. Some people started saying that I had very thick legs and teasing me for eating buns in the school cafeteria. They lifted my skirt and grabbed my butt. Once they lifted my skirt like this in front of the boys so that everyone would laugh. I turned around sharply, stumbled, fell and broke my leg. This calmed everyone down a little, and they began to treat me a little less aggressively.
In eighth grade, I lost 12 kilograms. My hair started to fall out and my periods disappeared.
And even so, it seemed to me that I was fat, although I practically stopped eating and became study more intensively dancing. I constantly weighed myself and measured myself, counting how many grams and calories I ate.
And when did it start for me RPP, my girlfriend stopped commenting on my appearance, they began to pick on me less. But inside I didn’t feel relief, I constantly thought that I had to lose even more weight. Because of this bullying, I couldn’t build a healthy relationship with food for a long time, only recently I stopped being afraid to eat.
Bottom line
In the tenth grade, it somehow happened naturally that my social circle changed, I began to engage in social activities, and this helped me get behind myself and start eating again.
But now my relationship with my body is still difficult. I sometimes get upset about the numbers on the scale, I often think about my weight, about whether I look good enough. And the path to self-acceptance is just beginning.
Find out what to do🧐
- What to do if a teacher bullies a child
- What is cyberbullying and why its danger should not be underestimated
- The main thing is to accept yourself and not whine. Opinion of model with prosthesis Veronica Levenets
- What you can and cannot do if a child is being bullied at school: advice from Lyudmila Petranovskaya
- How to help your child develop self-confidence