When I was nine...

Bullyingbullyingbullyingbullyingbullying.

For those who were lucky enough to escape being bullied when you were younger, I'm grateful it didn't happen to you. For those who were bullies when you were younger, I hope you've reconciled with those you targeted. For those who are at this very moment being bullied, I hope you realise that you are not alone.

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Bullying cannot be quantified. Don't let anyone undermine your experience with bullies. I consider bullying to be any form of intended harm towards another. I don't differentiate between overt and covert forms (in terms of one being more serious than the other) because I feel that they are equally damaging to the individual. Even transient instances of meanness, I would consider to be bullying. For instance, when I was in primary school in year 4, there was a girl with red hair who seemed to dislike me for no apparent reason. There were two instances of "transient meanness." Firstly, when I was following her out of the girls bathroom, she intentionally pushed the heavy door closed into my face even though she was aware that I was following her out. Secondly, when she invited all the girls in my friend group to her birthday party, including my best friend, handing the invitations out to them in front of me, and then telling me I wasn't invited. This to me, is a form of bullying. I say this because I remember when I told a close friend of mine about my experiences with bullying. They had been there at the same time, in the same place, but had 'witnessed' a completely different thing. They denied the very existence of bullying in my past, and this upset me to an incredible extent. I had been living with it for the past 5 years, and it was my daily horror. Yet they claimed "it didn't happen." To isolate someone, and to undermine their worth is a very damaging thing, and it was a very real experience that occurred during the later years of primary school and the early years of high school.

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When I was 9 years old I made a promise to myself that I would become the next Prime Minister of Australia. To me, being the Prime Minister was the height of excellence, the top of the top. What was my motivation for being the Prime Minister? It was the fact that I was being bullied. I remember walking to the bike locks after school, when everyone had left, and reciting in my mind: "I'll show them, I'll become the Prime Minister of Australia and kick them out of the country. I may be the underdog now, but I know I will make something of myself in the future." I lived by this mantra on a day-to-day basis, until the day came when the bullying ceased.

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What was this bullying I speak of? As I said before, I don't feel it's right to judge someones experience of bullying as "not serious enough." The following instances may not seem that detrimental or "dangerous" - but they were to me, emotionally. When I used to recollect them, my eyes would well up with tears and my heart felt like it was being crushed by a heavy weight. Fortunately, the trauma I experienced has healed over time, and I am able to address these instances without becoming emotional. I suppose the stress of it all has been blocked out for my wellbeing. Anyway, I wasn't the most sociable or physically attractive girl in primary school, and the bullying only started when those kind of things became important (due to sexual maturity approaching). It's probably hard to believe, but even as early as kindergarten, girls become enamoured with the notion of having a boyfriend, and many games of "married life" and "family" are played out. In years 4-6, being pretty was an asset. It meant that boys would be nice to you because they "liked you", it meant that you were popular and in general treated better. Unfortunately for me, I was a minority at my school, one of only a few (perhaps 3) asians. I was a bit chubby (most probably due to the large meals my parents fed me and the inability of me to stop eating when I'm full so that I don't waste food) and larger than most of the girls there in mass and frame. Because I was asian, I was "cursed" with black hair, meaning that the hair on my arms, legs, and upper lip was very apparent. I also had untamed eyebrows that seemed to grow into a slight monobrow. All of these factors contributed to the "fat asian" and "you're an ugly man" comments that would pop out of my peers' mouths. The latter was most common, which at the time I found to be extremely upsetting and offensive. What upset me the most was that I had done nothing to anyone, I always kept to myself and worked hard at school. I was always nice to people, and when I felt like they had accepted me, they would "betray" me by turning on me, and ridiculing my appearance. Because of this, I grew to hate myself. I fell into despair and became extremely self-conscious. I never knew when someone would say something about my abundance of "arm hairs" or my "hairy legs", or "moustache." I took to scrutinising myself in mirrors, attempting to pull out hairs with my fingers. I managed to find my mum's razor and took to shaving my face, arms, and legs. I remember she found me in the bathroom shaving my upper lip and told me that it wasn't a good idea since girls don't shave that area. She helped me wax all of these areas instead, however, I don't think she knew why I was so intent on removing these naturally occuring things - I was a mere child. I was also "cursed" with Keratosis Pilaris, otherwise known as "chicken skin," which afflicted me on the sides of my cheeks, upper arms and upper thighs. I felt like my body was messy, and unclean all the time. I literally picked myself apart, opting to get rid of the KP on my upper arms by picking away the skin and leaving small slightly bloodied holes where the KP had been. I longingly just wished to be normal looking. I felt inadequate, ugly, and repulsive. The bad thing about all this was that nobody knew. Nobody ever knew about this internal struggle I had. I felt helpless, and hopeless. You couldn't tell the teacher, they wouldn't understand. Their way of "dealing with the issue" was to tell the individual student off, who would then concentrate harder at making your life worse. You couldn't tell your parents, because they would give you advice that doesn't apply in these situations, because they've forgotten what it's like to be a child (i.e. "just ignore them, or tell them to stop"). You couldn't tell your friends, because they would most likely not intervene in fear of becoming a target themselves. This is what life was like.

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I was starting my first year of highschool, and year 7 was a big time for me. It symbolised a transition from being a child to officially becoming a teenager. I looked forward to getting up every morning, organising my bag and dressing in my smart attire - a white button up shirt, black pants and my hair tied in a pony tail. I was extremely excited to learn, to be independent and excel at my classes. I joined the school band and was assigned an alto saxophone, a step up from the clarinet that I had been playing in primary school. I remember walking home after a fulfilling day at school. I bid goodbye to my new found friends and carried my big black saxophone case down a small hill underneath the school. I was just about to cross under an underpass when two "popular" boys yelled "HI" to grab my attention and commenced to wave. One of them had been a "popular" boy from my primary school, and I thought they were genuinely being friendly. So I looked up at them with a smile and waved. They then leaned over the edge and spat at me. I felt so betrayed and helpless. I had done nothing to these people, I had done no wrong to anyone, and yet they targeted me. They laughed as I walked on and on until I reached home. I remember putting my bag and saxophone down and heading over to my desk to find a notebook. I was devastated. My face was hot from the embarrassment and my eyes were sore from the crying. My nose was completely blocked and a combination of fat tears and runny snot ran down my face and splattered the page I was working on. I don't know why, but I was intent on drawing a recollection of that event. However, in place of the "real me," I drew a more attractive face, and beside the entire picture I wrote "why can't I be beautiful?" Somehow I thought all my problems would be solved if I were like the pretty girls at school, or the pretty girls on the television and in magazines. I turned to magazines for guidance. They fed me with false promises, advertisements of beauty products with beautiful faces plastered beside them. My impressionable mind believed that if I purchased the particular product, I would look just like that beautiful smiling girl on the page. And so I used my purchasing power, raiding Priceline for the catalouged items, abusing my hard earned reward money from my dad for getting good grades. I was trying to buy my happiness, I was trying to buy beauty - but not for beauty's sake, it was all so I could fit in, so I would stop being called a "man", and so I could prevent others from finding something mean to say.

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The last example I'm going to talk about is by no means the end point of the bullying. This had been an ongoing thing until year 8-9, when puberty hit me like a wall of bricks and changed my entire physical appearance. Anyway, I wanted to include this instance as an example of the pure helplessness one can feel when being bullied, and the inaction of others around you who see it happening, but do nothing to stop it.
I was sitting in english class and we were all privileged with the opportunity to watch a movie that loosely touched on some themes we were studying, rather than do actual work. There was an excited feel in the air as we all grabbed our chairs and stationed them around the small television set next to our friends. I remember the "popular" girls sat with each other on a table, while the rest of us sat on chairs. As I was watching the movie, I felt a small painful peck on my neck, then on my back, and on the back of my head. The "popular" boys were sitting on the left hand side of the room with the back of their chairs leaning against the wall in a "cool" manner. They had been picking up pistachio shells from the floor and balls of blue tac, and were throwing them at me and snickering. The room was quite dark, and the teacher walked in and out of the room, only briefly staying inside. I was the only one they were targeting. My friends were sitting beside me but said and did nothing. I tried to shrug it off and ignore it, but they kept on throwing things at me. When anyone looked their way they would pretend to watch the movie. The popular girls on the table took notice, and one piped up and said "don't, that's tight (slang for mean)" in a soft manner, but they contined, and she stopped standing up for me. I just gritted my teeth and repeated my mantra in my mind. "These people are going to amount to nothing. If we have a reunion, they are going to be losers, and I'll be successful. Then they'll get what's coming to them." I was so relieved when the lights were finally switched on, and I was no longer the silent sufferer. I could move on with my friends and leave them behind for a few hours, until I saw them again in another class. I could only hope that they wouldn't antagonise me again on that next meeting.

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To finish off, I just want to say that I've learnt a lot of valuable lessons. The main one being that bullying doesn't last forever - simply because highschool doesn't last forever. That small sphere that becomes your entire world completely bursts once you leave. There is no more oppression, and no more peer pressure. You will rarely see the people who you once tried so hard to fit in with. I've escaped from this sphere and I'm happy now. I'm surrounded by like-minded people who I choose to be around. If bullying were to occur again, I have the choice and the strength to leave the situation and discard the people forever. I am more than what they make of me, I have my eyes set on bigger and better things - I only need to focus on myself, and to work hard toward the goals I want to achieve. There is a happy ending to the bullying, and you just need to find your inner strength to stay above water - and to realise that you will achieve greater things.

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A strange thing happened the other day. I met one of my bullies from highschool at my front door. It had been 4 years since I had last seen him, and he was knocking on my door to notify me "the resident of the house" that the water was going to be turned off for 10 minutes for building purposes. There was a strange moment of recognition, which neither of us would admit to. I thanked him for the notification, and shut the door. He left, and I doubt I will ever see him again. I guess he became a plumber, and I, a University student studying the very thing I had always said I would become in the future.