Why am I petrified by teenagers? (WP pt. 2)
“Were you bullied in school? How did they bully you? You are pretty and slim and don’t have any speaking issues, as far as I can tell.”
This is what a friend of mine has recently told me when I expressed that I am not fond of my school years. It’s a solid guess which includes all of the main reasons people may bully you at school, but it has almost nothing to do with me and my experience.
Let’s start off by saying I wasn’t the first beauty in my class, nor had I “the model figure”, but it never bothered me. In my first school I had a solid group of male friends where I considered myself a Mowgli of sorts, a feral girl being raised by a pack of men. I thought this reference was hilarious! And it gave me confidence that I was a part of something bigger, something that would protect me from the dangers of the world. Hm… the best time of my life. Nonetheless, I had a guy who would bully me because of my not very Russian surname because it has plenty of funny similar-sounding words in Russian. My classmates picked up on that idea and a whole genre of “change her surname in the weirdest way possible” started. I had it misspelled so many times that I can’t even recall all the versions. In rage, I think I even had a fight with that guy… and then we started dating, peculiarly.
Nonetheless, this surname problem didn’t originate at school, which was part of the reason I was so easily hurt when it started happening there. The beginning was in my ballet class where we had too many Katies, with me being the only one being called by surname. It had nothing to do with me, everything to do with my parents, I just got caught in the crossfire. But the intention, with which my dancing teacher would call me, was so cruel and rabid. As if having concentrated all the hatred in these 6 little letters, my coach constantly yelled at me, waiting for the next time I would make another mistake and yet never praising me for anything I did well.
Not the surname itself, but the meaning people put into it made me feel like I was an outcast, like I was doing something wrong, as if I was an abomination. I know it sounds pretentious, but my ballet journey started at 6. I was 6 years old! What is it that adults have that makes them think children deserve such treatment? My peers, taking the example from the teacher, obviously, did the same thing and mocked me.
Anyways, when I thought it was over, as I quit ballet, the school stuff happened. Then students, teachers and other community workers would misspell my surname on purpose, or so I thought. It would happen anywhere, at any time. As a result, these issues with my wonderful surname made me want to change it upon my 18th birthday. Gladly, by that time, I got that idea out of my head. But the scar stayed.
The next grand commotion happened in middle school, when my parents decided to send me to a more “prestigious” school with higher standards of education, more demanding teachers and, logically, better results. No judgement on the education part, I really got smarter and had less difficulties studying at university, compared to my peers. The issue was much, much worse. It was a school in a neighbouring town. It was barely 30 minutes by bus — and you are already there. An interesting note though: it was (and still is) a closed town which was highly important and non-existent (as on the maps) during WWII. What this means is, basically, that some extremely smart scientists were sent there from Moscow, alongside with the best products, food, clothes, cars, etc. For a more productive working environment, obviously. This, in its turn, led to the locals being… a little overly confident, let’s say. Their opinion of themselves was over the roof, and can you imagine me, some peasant girl from a poor not-closed town coming to study in their best lyceum? Yeah, we can imagine the scorn directed at me upon my arrival. I am not exaggerating, kids are cruel. There was a girl that was going around as if not noticing me. She would literally sit on me as if I wasn’t there and say “Did you hear something? I heard some noise. Ah, well, not important.” Others would stare at me, judging my fashion choices, of which I had no knowledge, to be fair. Others deemed me not smart enough, not interesting enough, not important enough, not a human being whatsoever, mainly because I wasn’t a local. Their parents raised them with such an idea in their heads, our teachers broadly supported such behaviour, also teasing and making fun of me in front of the class, treating me like garbage. I would beg my parents to let me go back to my old school, but they refused. I was 13 and couldn’t do anything to change it, nor did I know how to cope with it. So for a year straight I cried every day after school. It did change, eventually, when I made friends with a couple of people and when everyone noticed that I was smart and started asking me to copy my homework. But it was, and still is, the worst year of my life.
Just 6 letters. Just a neighbouring town. Just a little girl. But what an outcome.
What I understood from this experience was that bullying comes from adults, but is made a deadly weapon by children. This is why I am afraid of teenagers. You never know what their parents could have taught them and what they could have recently seen in the media. If they feel endangered, they will attack you with the worst vocabulary set they can think of. And we know very well that words hurt more than weapons.
Secondly, societal standards and pressure in Russia are very strong. We are permanently terrified of what “others might say” so that we prefer to harm one person, to choose him / her as a casualty instead of standing up against the outdated rules or stereotypes. This is what happened to me in that last school. Nobody decided to back me up because this idea of supremacy was so deep-seated, so cherished, that there was no possibility for any newcomer to be seen as equal.
Thirdly, I realised that these memories will never go away. Actually, they only get darker with time. So, maybe I did worsen some parts, even though it’s based on what my mind tells me. Moreover, these memories had a huge impact on my personality. I remember myself as a free, confident, joyful spirit as a child, but that place broke me. I became insecure, afraid to speak up, afraid of an authority who doesn’t care and would even punish me for wanting to protect myself. For approximately 6–7 years I was convinced that I was an ugly, stupid, worthless, untalanted person. I still fall into this way of thinking sometimes, but I try to stop me in time.
To sum up, I am scared. I am so scared of those school years, of meeting my classmates on a street, of meeting any teacher. I am afraid that they will remind me of how miserable I was and make me believe those horrible things about myself again.
To all the people out there, reading this, I’d like to say: be careful. You, as a human being, have a huge impact on people around you, your words shape others’ characters. It is in your power to cheer somebody up and help them through dark times, protect them, stand up for them, speak for them when they have no voice. Or, on the other hand, you can make somebody a fragile, unstable, wounded person. Whatever they say that “great character is forged through hardships”, you never know when you go too far with those “hardships”, you never know where the limit is for a particular person.
Image: O’Driscoll imaging / shutterstock
