In the Past
Next Entries »Fame and fortune is not enough
Friday, February 18th, 2005At the terrible school where I was bullied, there were various offspring of famous people and some pupils who have subsequently become famous. It was that kind of school. One girl went on to be a successful Hollywood actress. She had an older sister whom I barely even noticed. But the younger sister was an actress even then; loud, raucous and playing to the crowd.
On my birthday I had a cake. It was a special cake firstly because it had been sent by my parents who I didn’t see much, secondly because we didn’t get much good food at boarding school and thirdly because as anyone who knows me knows, I LOVE CHOCOLATE CAKE. I LOVE CHOCOLATE CAKE SO MUCH THAT SOMETIMES I CAN’T BREATHE JUST THINKING ABOUT IT. My friends and dorm-mates (roomies) shared it (and some illicit Cinzano as I recall) and played 45s on our record player over and over.
When it was all over, the two sisters, who I had barely ever spoken to, came to my dormitory and asked me for some cake. They knew that it was worth trying to scrounge a piece of cake off someone who they probably saw as an easy touch. I should have lied and said that the cake was finished. But instead I gave them each a slice. Then they ran off laughing without even saying thank you. All I can think now is WHAT A BLOODY WASTE OF CHOCOLATE CAKE.
As I said, the younger sister has gone on to become a famous Hollywood actress. But I can see in her performances, interviews and general deameanour that she is still the loud, selfish, grabby person she was back then. I would envy her her success except that she seems to be missing the very thing that really makes a person successful in life. Fame and fortune are not it. She simply lacks any grace and nothing is going to give her that.
Not that I’m jealous or anything.
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Bullying and the cruelty children can bestow on each other
Thursday, February 17th, 2005My Eldest Son, Harry, who has just turned three experienced his first minor incident of bullying today. Because he is three and I am his mother, I did what any self-respecting mother would do and stepped in to stop the situation. When he is older, I won’t be there for him in the same way: a mother can’t fight her son’s battles forever. When he is older, if he is being bullied, I may not even know about it.
When I was twelve I was seriously bullied at school.
I haven’t told many people about it as it smacks of a sort of weakling thing to say, even to me as a victim of bullying. “I was bullied.” “There was something so wrong with me that other pupils at my school couldn’t be nice to me.” “I must have been less of a person that others felt able to pick on me.”
Since leaving that school (I was transferred before the end of the first academic year was up), I have not had a problem with being bullied. To this day, I still don’t know why I was a target. I suspect it was because I was a bit of a naive, shy girl who had come from a rather protective junior school to a progressive school where most other pupils were street-wise before their years.
I was subject to prolonged psychological torment.
I had a small group of good friends but even they couldn’t protect me from the majority of it. Because it was a boarding school, I could never really get away from it. No wonder I never wanted to go back after exeats and holidays. This was when music became everything to me. The music practice rooms would offer some sort of solace and listening to music offered a psychological escape.
But I don’t think I was the only one suffering. A writer for a Sunday broadsheet from time to time chronicles her torment at the same school. She has written how she was held down while some of the pupils cut off her long hair. If it hadn’t been so awful I would have almost rejoiced in our shared misery. One boy hanged himself, I think in a toilet stall, shortly after I left and a live-in teacher committed suicide in the year I was there, although I am absolutely not saying that either of their deaths were related specifically to their experiences at the school.
To my knowledge bullying is rife in many English schools, independent schools included. One of the reasons that ChildLine has been so inundated with calls over the years is that people just haven’t been aware of or acknowledging the problem of bullying.
I caught ‘flu in my second term at the school and had to go to the sanatorium. I left my Physics notes and pencil case outside the dining hall in my semi-delirious fever. When I went to retrieve them ten days later my pencil case was missing. At chapel, I saw a classmate with my pencilcase. When he gave it to me, it was missing my valuable ink pen. I could see he had it in his hand, but he denied that it was mine. I never got it back. I don’t know really why I am including this story as it is more an example of stealing rather than bullying, except that the situation kind of sums up the powerlessness I felt, how no-one was there for me and how badly I felt about myself as a result of the bullying. I brushed this and every other situation under the carpet. But as a victim of bullying I also brushed a part of me under the carpet each time as well.
I wonder how I will teach my children to avoid being bullied.
Isn’t it a sad indictement of today’s schooling and a sad legacy of my own school experiences that I feel the need to teach my children such a thing?
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Labelled
Friday, December 17th, 2004If somebody had told me that the anxious feeling I always had a a kid would persist as depression in adulthood I would have wondered what was the point of such an existence? Not as in “I can’t continue”, but as in why would God or whoever put someone on this earth to suffer a miserable life.
I don’t get up each day thinking desperate thoughts. I have periods of mild depression interspersed with a general persistent feeling of being “down”. Of course I have periods of happiness, but the periods of melancholy often outweight the happy times. Is it right to feel like this? Am I just burdened by modern life, with too much time to reflect on being unhappy? What makes someone see the same situations happily and someone like me see them as adding to my gloominess?
More importantly, what do I do to be happier? This goal has plagued me throughout my adult life. Despite all the work I do to change my mindset, to make myself happier or to perceive life more happily, I do think that this is a persistent state, unchangeable except through medication, which I am not prepared to do. I fear being labelled, although I have already labelled myself.
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