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My childhood started off normal, from what I can remember. Apart from severe bullying that started when I was about 7. I have a birthmark on my left leg. It starts on the sole of my foot & goes all the way up the side of my leg till it reaches my bum. I was a typical girlie girl who didn’t want to wear trousers at school & why should I?
I hated my birthmark so much that my parents took me to the doctors & I was sent for laser treatment twice a year, for 7 years. The procedure was as painful as hell, even though they used a numbing cream. After a while my body got used to the cream and I had to be put under instead. At 14 the Doctors decided that the treatment wasn’t going to improve my birthmark any more, even though every time I could see a difference. But who listens to a 14 year old? After the treatment my birthmark has really dark spots where the laser hit.
This gave the bullies even more ammunition. One thing that really stuck in my mind was a boy in a different class, he himself was severely bullied but one day in the playground he said I looked like I’d put my leg in the toaster.
I was also getting in trouble at school as the teachers thought I wasn’t listening to them. It wasn’t till I was 8 that my parents realised that my hearing wasn’t quite what it should have been. I had an operation on my ear to try & correct my hearing & according to the doctors my hearing was now fine.
I Was Kicked Out Of School Because I Was Bullied
Eleven years later after me going to the doctors I was referred for a hearing test to be told that my hearing in the right (side I had the op) was really bad. I could only hear the highest tones and the loudest tones. I was then given hearing aids.
It makes me think how different things would of been if I’d of been given them while I was still at school. I also found most of the work too easy & would finish way before most of the other kids. The school never thought of giving me more work or harder work. They just let me sit there, bored.
I was daft enough to think that when I started secondary school things would be different. The schools made sure I was put into a group with a friend. One of the very few I did have. But she went her own way & made other friends, leaving me on my own. The bullying didn’t just carry on, it got worse. The only way I could get positive attention from the other kids was to act up. I acted up so much that I ended up getting suspended.
When I was allowed back they put me in a little room, with just one teacher. It was their way of getting me used to being back in school. There were only ever a couple of kids in there. Meaning I got a lot more attention from the teacher. He saw how quickly I got through the work and made and effort to give me more/harder work. Then gradually I was put back into normal classes & things went back to how they were, resulting in me going back to the bad behaviour, crying out for attention. I’m sure you can guess what happened next. I was expelled before I even finished the first year of secondary.
After that they put me in a pupil referral unit (PRU). It was basically a small school where all the kids had been expelled from regular school. We were in there until they decided that we were “good enough” to go back into mainstream school. Again I loved the individual attention from the teachers & I got given more advanced work. They were even going to put me in for my GCSEs early. Things then took a turn for the worst. I started hanging around with the other kids from the PRU. They introduced me to smoking, drugs, stealing, getting arrested & sex all at the age of 13. My world spiralled out of control.
I ended up pretty much moving out of my parents’ house at the age of 14/15 & living with my boyfriend in Middlesbrough. I didn’t realize it at the time but he ruined my confidence in bed. He was only my second sexual partner & I wanted to do everything I could to please him. Yet every time he ended up having a go at me and telling me I was doing everything wrong & I was a waste of space. That relationship ended after about 8 months with him leaving me for a guy called Angel. I actually laugh at that part nowadays.
My connection’s advisor then got me put into a school out of Milton Keynes & in Bedford. I had to wake up at 5am to catch a train & was at school for 8am. Again the bullying started. Again, to get more attention, I started hanging around with the “bad kids”. More of the same, smoking, drugs, sex. So I decided it wasn’t for me, so I just stopped going. My connexions advisor then suggested I go into college to do a GCSE resit course in order to actually get my GCSE’s. I was 15 by this point. Then the bullying started again.
To top things off my parents split up & my dad moved over 200 miles away from Milton Keynes to Middlesbrough. Being a daddy’s girl I refused to stay with my mam. I never got on with her. She was the reason my dad was suffering so much. Or so he said. So a few weeks later, I left my mam crying her eyes out & off I went to live with my dad. It didn’t take long for things to go downhill again. My dad was always on at me about my weight & how much I was eating.
When he was around I refused to eat just so he wouldn’t get mad at me. The nights he would go to stay at his girlfriends I ate and ate as much as I could and then locked myself in the bathroom to make myself sick. I had no idea this was the start of my on-going trouble with food.
This inspirational post was written anonymously by a mom who is a member of my Facebook mums group. I have full permission to share her story. If you can relate to this post and would like to share your own anonymous post please contact me.
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