how bullying shapes friendships
a story i want to share: being bullied in year 7/8 by people i thought were my friends but being unaware of it
why i want to share it: awareness about how this can affect children, change the perspective on ‘weird kids’, inspire similar stories to be shared and related to
i’m writing this from: a time where bullying is rampant, taking lives, and individuals aren’t cared about when the political environment is so tense
emotional tone to use: rage from the version of me who’s 7 years older
memories of the events: being kicked/tripped by a girl in my form, asked if i like a guy in my class when they’d heard so, comments made about my child body when we were all in a classroom at lunch with so called friends, told not to follow someone who i thought was my friend around, my best friend at the time calling me ugly, made fun of my facial hair in front of the whole class, a girl telling everyone about it to make fun of me and act like friends with me, my so called friends confronting me and nearly orchestrating a fight, me being constantly confrontational at the time due to that
people who shared my experience: my friends at the time and my form
i will share all of that except: times when i victimise myself too much if i don’t have anything to show i could’ve been in the wrong too
outward topics relevant to this story: bullied kids, broken friendships’ effects later in life, kpop stigma
https://verdemagazine.com/kpop-the-stigma
https://kprofiles.com/forums/threads/that-weird-stigma-around-k-pop.42388/
Same with making fun of the idols, saying the boys all look like girls, look gay, they all look the same, etc. People are just being anything-phobic and racist but hey it's okay it's just kpop right??
https://thewestottawan.com/13749/opinion/the-bad-stigma-around-k-pop/
https://open.substack.com/pub/lovelearnedlater/p/you-stole-my-childhood?r=645ufu&utm_medium=ios
“You stole my childhood. The boy you tormented has grown into a broken man.” (Monk, season 7, 2009)
Bullying rarely announces itself honestly.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hollywilson86/p/bad-friends?r=645ufu&utm_medium=ios
None of us are really taught how to deal with those feelings, so they end up showing in quiet ways instead.
https://open.substack.com/pub/violetsummersby/p/youre-probably-a-bad-friend?r=645ufu&utm_medium=ios
Because proximity did the work for us
Bullying doesn’t always manifest itself in typical ways. Getting shoved into lockers, forced to hand over lunch money, being laughed at. Sometimes it’s even worse. There are countless videos out there of bullies essentially becoming murderers. One of the bone-chilling videos that stuck with me showed them pouring boiling water over the victim’s head. On the other side of the spectrum however, bullying may be something so minuscule. So insignificant, yet able to alter the victim’s brain chemistry forever. Because bullying doesn’t always announce itself in the loudest ways. It can be so quiet that even the victim doesn't realise it’s happening.
It can seem so normal to pick on the ‘weird’ kid. The one that openly shows their interest in non-mainstream music like Kpop. Not showing the same passion for popular culture is a clear sign they want to be tripped, mobbed, and publicly ridiculed. All of which happened to me as an 12 year old girl who openly and shamelessly expressed her love for a music genre.
I was aware at the time that people didn’t like me for what I liked, but I didn’t care. I stayed true to myself, which I’m proud of. I don’t like this notion that people, especially in secondary school, have to water themselves down to become digestible and palatable for the bland tastes of the masses. They can choke. I wore my BTS backpack and Blackpink T-shirt with pride, they stayed away from me like I carried the bubonic plague.
Being an ugly kid never helped. The twenty-first century demands a picture perfect appearance from the ripe age of 10. And so the comments rolled in, one after the other, as if it wasn’t a human with real emotions and pain on the receiving end, but an animal that had to pretend it didn’t affect them in the slightest.
In a way, my childhood was stolen. I moved schools and was never able to make true friends after that. I still question whether I ever had true friends to begin with. It’s hard to assume I did when it was them who were ganging up on me 5 v 1 and comparing my butt to Kim K’s. A 12 year old girl’s, mind you. I read from an article similar to mine: “The boy you tormented has grown into a broken man”. And it’s true.
They shattered my identity into many pieces and I was never fully able to recover it. While I rediscovered a lot of what I truly loved, I don't think I’ll ever be able to share that with anyone. My social bone was snapped and never healed. It never will. Coming out of school, it’s close to impossible to make new friends. The proximity within educational environments did the work for us. It broke the ice, it started the conversations. I don’t have that anymore.
But maybe I could’ve had it if 90% of my interactions weren’t full of insults and mockery. I wish 19-year-old me could do something for the version of me who was 7 years younger. I carry so much rage for everything I could’ve said, everything the people I considered my friends could’ve done for me. Silence would have sufficed to save my confidence, yet they filled it with an insult.
It might not always be the big bad bullies who leave the biggest scars on their victims. Words can cut just as deep. And those deep scars last a long time. How different my life could’ve been had they kept their mouth shut. Held their peace instead of messing with the self esteem of a barely developed tween.