First Attempt

I was 11 or 12, it was the first year anyway.
It had been a hard day. To be honest,  every day was hard. But that day had drained me. I was in bed,  keeping quiet, waiting for lights out and sleep.
Maybe tomorrow the nightmare woukd be over. Maybe tomorrow people would be nice to me. Maybe.
He came running in from Blue Dorm. JD, a year older than me. He was laughing hysterically and carrying something. He threw it, it landed square in my face. A bag full of water.
I was soaked, my bed was soaked, our dorm was full of people laughing and pointing. And then the chant started. I fucking hated the chant.
"Hugh, Pugh, Barney Magrew. Cuthbert, Dibble and CHUBBY MAGRUBBY!"
Seems like nothing now but it was constant. All the time. They never fucking let up.
Our dorm was only on the first floor but it was a long way down to the ground. The window was open and I was sick of life. The bullying I thought would stop after primary school had just carried on and now I couldn't even go home to escape it. I wanted it to be over and over for good.
Suddenly I was out of bed and running to the window. I was half out, I could see my escape from the taunting. But they had hold of me. They wouldn't let go. Then the prefect came and hauled me back. I fought as hard as I could. I bit and kicked. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't let me go. They all seemed to hate me so much.
Eventually they had me inside and were holding me down on the floor. Shouting at me to calm down.
Matron A. Came in and took me to dispensary. Gave me a sleeping pill and a lecture on what an awful person I must be to consider suicide.
They left me alone for about a week.

Music

Music

Music won't lie to you

Music won't cheat on you 

It won't let you down

It won't leave you

Music will hold you

Music will love you

Music will make you feel safe 

It will protect you

It will hold you

It will make it alright

When there is nothing

No one

Music will be there

When you are at your lowest ebb

Music will lift you 

When you have no one 

Music will be there

Music is life

Life is music

Music won't hurt you

Music won't let you down

Music won't break a promise

Music won't rip you off

Music is pure

Music is love

Love is music

When you are lost

Music will find you

When you are broken

Music will fix you

When you have nothing

Music will cost you nothing

When you feel you have nothing

Music will give you everything 

Some Days Are Hard

Some days I just want to scream. I feel it like pressure in my chest, at the back of my throat. It sits at the front of my head, scratching the inside, searching for a way out. Not just a shout, or a bad impression of Faye Wray in King Kong, but a raw, animal, uncontrolled gutteral scream. Incoherent, Uncontrollable. The problem is though, aside from the normal constraints of society kind of frowning on that sort of thing, emotion in public and all that. The thing is, I worry that if I start, I may be unable to stop. That I will just keep screaming until my throat bleeds and my vocal cords snap, and even then still be hoarsely trying, wheezing and cracking. And all the while, if the scream takes hold then I feel I'll be clawing at myself, ripping my hair out, scraping the skin from my cheeks, digging at my eyes like some fucked up tribute to that scene in Poltergeist when the guy starts picking at a spot on his face and ends up tearing his whole face off. All just trying to get the scream out from this place in my chest where it lurks. It's always there, just some days I feel it more than others. Some days are just so fucking hard.

Plug

He'd decided I owed him some cigarettes, I don't know why, but he had, and every time he saw me he'd demand them. It was usually done in a jokey way, and I wasn't too worried about it. Every time he shouted, “Where's my fags?” at me, I'd respond with the same answer, “I'm twelve, where am I going to get cigarettes?”. It felt like it was just maybe a running joke.

Our dorm was just sitting about chatting one evening when somebody suddenly said that Benny Hill was on TV and we should go watch it. There was 7 or 8 of us, running down the front stairs to the cellar common room where the TV was. At the bottom of the front stairs, on the ground floor, there was a hall, where the payphone you could call home from was, there was a radiator either side of the hall and kids would often be hanging about there. T, and some other kids from his year were there, and as I ran past, the familiar shout rang out, “Oy, Robinson, where's my fags you owe me?”

I stopped, gave my usual response, “How am I going to buy fags? I'm 12.”

Usually this would be the end of it, he'd shout “You owe me 30 fags,” and I'd carry on, but this time he responded, “Come here..”

I went over to him, he was much taller than me, being 3 years above me at school, he was skinny, buck toothed and trophy eared. His peers called him Plug because of his resemblance to the character from the Bash Street Kids in The Beano. He was staring down at me, half smiling, half angry.

“You owe me 30 fags, why haven't you got me them yet?”

“Why do I owe you fags?”

“You just do, where are they?”

“I don't smoke..”

“Where are my fags?”

“How am I supposed to get them? I don't have any money and anyway I'm too young to buy them.”

The back and forth went on for a while, with a couple of dead arms and stomach punches thrown in for good measure, then it was time for the actual torture to start.

He put me in a variety of stress positions, I guess he'd learned them from older kids or from scouts or cadets, they were all fairly regular things to happen, I'd been put in them before. First there was 'Ninety-degree wall-sitting' where you lean against a wall in the position you would be in if you were sitting on a chair, the pain kicks in quite quickly and soon becomes unbearable, you would start to wobble uncontrollably and eventually fall. Every time I fell, I would receive a few kicks and then be put back in position, all the time it was happening he was verbally abusing me too.

Next he put a dot on the wall that I had to keep the tip of my nose on, to do this I had to stand on the furthest reach of tip toes, if I moved, a punch to the kidneys, a slap across the back of the head so my nose smacked into the wall. All the while he was snarling in my ear and kicking me in the backs of my legs. This went on for quite a while, and by the time he was bored of that, we were alone, all the other kids had moved away while I was facing the wall.

Now he was right up in my face, he had hold of me by my jumper and was snarling and shouting at me about how much he fucking hated me and how dare I be so fucking rude to him. I don't think I said anything back now, I was crying too hard, and scared.

He dragged me across the hall and into a room at the top of the cellar steps that had been a sixth form common room but was now unused, bare walls, a few chairs, hard lino floor. He started to throw me around the room, picking me off the floor and throwing me back down, kicking, punching and shouting. I remember a big trail of snot and tears flying off my face onto the floor and he held me down and made me lick it up, then he flung me around some more, all the while kicking me if I was down, hitting me, all the while shouting obsceneties at me. I remember looking at his face, just terrified, there was foamy spit at either side of his mouth, pure hatred in his eyes. Eventually he picked me up and held me against the wall and screamed in my face,

“Spread your fucking legs! I want to kick you in the bollocks!”

There was no way I was going to do this, no way at all.

“No..”

“Spread your fucking legs you cunt!”

“No.. I won't.”

Punch in the head, drop to the floor, picked up, slammed against the wall.

“Spread your fucking legs you little cunt, I am going to kick your fucking bollocks off”

I kind of believed him, things had gone so far now that I was scared for my life, I didn't think he would ever stop, and I was sure that castration was in my future. I have no idea how I managed it but I slipped his grip and bolted for the door, he almost had me again as I was trying to open it but then I was through and running down the hall. All I could think was that I should get to the headmasters house, that that would be the only safety.

He looked genuinely shocked when he opened the door, I had been hammering on it right up until he did though.

“Help, I've been beaten up..” was all I could say.

He took me back into the boarding house, to the Housemasters office and they both quizzed me at length, he kept saying that I was making a very strong accusation and asking if I was making anything up, I was so distressed I was practically hysterical. They looked for T but he'd run off, for now. Eventually I was sent back up to my dorm, I just went to bed, exhausted.

The next day was when things got bad.

There was an ancient system at the school called 'Form Privilege' or 'Form Priv' for short, basically it was a licence for older kids to use younger kids as slaves. The older kids would push to the front of the queue in the dining room, and would also shout younger kids to get them cups of tea, slices of bread and butter etc.

I realised that the situation wasn't over as every single boy from T's year and some from above punched me, hard, as they pushed past, every one of them hissing “GRASS” at me as they did it, when I eventually got my breakfast, as soon as I sat down, “ROBINSON!” I went over to their table, one of them asked for a cup of tea. I got it, went back to my table, sat down, “ROBINSON!” Someone else wanted a slice of bread. This went on until breakfast was finished and I had to throw mine away uneaten because it was time for school.

At lunchtime it happened again.

Then again at teatime.

Then again at breakfast the next day.

And on and on for a couple of weeks.

I remember sitting on the window ledge in the dining room one lunchtime with my uneaten meal on my tray on my knee, crying, big painful sobs full of despair, just thinking, “Why?”

Every register that was read by a prefect, my name was substituted for Grass, everywhere I went at school it was shouted at me, random punches constantly. T didn't even get suspended or anything, he was gated for two weeks, ie he had to stay in the boarding house after tea.

One of his friends, A.H., spent a year making it his business to punish me. He would come and find me every day and as well as the daily beating he would make me change my t-shirt if it was one with a band on. If he saw me wearing it again that day, well that was the end of that shirt and also a further beating, I can't imagine how much effort that must have been for him, because he did manage it every day. A few years ago I got his email address from the Friends Reunited website and sent him a long email asking him why and telling him how his actions, had affected my life since school. He wrote back, which surprised me, but just to say that he didn't remember any of that and that I must have him confused with someone else, which didn't. When he left school he joined The Met, good to know that such people are looking after us.

Primary School

The Heart

At the heart of it all, at the very centre of everything, is a boy.

He is seven or eight years old, and he stands in his accustomed position, facing the wall with his hands over his face, wishing it would stop.

Through his tears and the gaps in his fingers he looks at the pink, sparkling granite, the ridge of mortar between the irregular shaped blocks of stone, the sandstone window ledge just above his eye level and tries to block them out.

He has no idea when it started, or why, just that this is where he stands every day whenever he is in the playground, while everyone he knows in the world who isn't either an adult or a relative stands around him in a semi circle, chanting, laughing, occasionally pushing or kicking him.

He doesn't understand why everyone seems to hate him, he never does anything but try to be friends, to fit in, but every little attempt is seized upon and turned around, twisted to make him once more the target.

If he should dare to lash out, as he occasionally does when it all gets too much, it is greeted with wild laughter and cat calls, intensifying the torture even further.

If one of these wild flails should actually connect then he is plunged into an even deeper hell of recriminations, calls of,

“What did you do that for?!” or,

“You can give it but you can't take it.”

All he wants is for it to stop, but it never does.

Muncaster Church of England primary school was exactly a mile from my house, uphill all the way except for the last hundred yards when the road sloped down again briefly before a last climb to its peak, about 50 yards beyond the school. The school itself was part of a small row of buildings along the left hand side of the road, beginning with the local Police Constable’s house which backed on to the infants yard, and finishing with two semi-detached cottages backing on to the juniors playground. Also adjoining the juniors playground was the headmasters house. Across the road from the school was the gatehouse and entrance for Muncaster Castle, our school was part of the Castle's estate.

I have vague memories of my first few days there. Because we were a rural community, there was no such thing as a nursery school, instead you started at Muncaster aged three and went two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The infants classroom was divided into three tables – Big, Middle and Small, which was the table you were on until you graduated from Nursery status to Infant status aged five and moved up to Middle Table.

My first real memory of the room is me standing next to Small Table in some confusion as to what is going on. My birthday is in June and so I must have been one of the last to arrive that year, I don't feel like I know anyone in the room at all and a girl called S. who is Canadian and lives on a catamaran on the estuary is telling me it's time for maths. I don't even know what maths is.

The first year must have been ok, however, as at the end of it I told my parents I wouldn't go back unless I could go full time. The county council were approached, and a special dispensation was made for me to go to school every day of the school week rather than just the two.

The two classrooms at Muncaster were joined by a large central room which served multiple purposes. Assembly, PE, music, TV, school plays and of course lunch, served by the cook through a hatch from the kitchen and distributed by the dinnerlady to the various tables of children.

Assembly was held every morning by the Headmaster in front of the whole school, a massive twenty-three children when I first started that slowly dwindled to just seven by the time they closed the school when I was nine. By that time we were all in the juniors classroom together and the cook and dinnerlady were long gone, leaving the one woman who had been a constant throughout my time there, Mrs B., as our sole adult supervision.

Mrs B. was a tall thin woman with one kidney. Her husband worked for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd at nearby Sellafield and she would constantly rail against the people in the media who dared to criticise the safety of Nuclear Power. If one of the children dared to repeat something they had seen on TV or that their parents had said that criticised the industry then she would treat them to the full extent of her wrath, scorn and sarcasm.

When I arrived at Muncaster, Mrs B. was the infants teacher, replaced occasionally by supply teachers when she had to make trips to hospital for the treatment of her kidney disorder, there were three or four of these ladies, one of whom, Mrs C., a kind and loving, nurturing teacher, is the only adult I remember from the school with any degree of affection, other than the cleaner.

The headmaster taught the juniors, and while I progressed from table to table we went through three such men, Mr F., a classic British teacher with half moon glasses and a quick temper who cried during his retirement ceremony in the dining room; Mr Fr., tall, dark haired and ultra strict, who made all his charges start any statement addressed to him with “Please Sir,” and finish with “Sir.” (“Please sir, yes sir, it did sir”); and Mr R., tall skinny and bald with a friendly smile.

After the departure of Mr R., Mrs B. was elevated to the position of Headmistress and moved to the Junior classroom, coincidentally at the same time that I and my class mates from Big Table moved through there too. Leaving one of the supply teachers, Miss H., short and rotund with mousey, bobbed hair and a lovely temperament, to look after what remained of the dwindling infant class.

During the years in the infant classroom Mrs B. had shown her temper and intolerance to us on many occasions. She ruled by embarrassment, and the fear of it. If you found something difficult to grasp she would eventually stand you up and tell everyone in the classroom how stupid you were. If a child were to commit the cardinal sin of wetting themselves at their table, usually out of fear of asking to go to the toilet, then she would vent her anger by telling the classroom what a baby they were, sometimes even questioning the ability of their parents to bring up their own children.

Once, when one of the boys from the village was taken out of the school by their parents and sent to the Catholic school in nearby Seascale. Mrs B. dedicated weeks to the constant slandering of both child and parents, along with the school and Catholics in general.

I. B. was two years older than me, his mother was the dinner lady and he was my first bully. I have scattered memories of encounters with him while I was in the infant classroom, by the time I was on middle table, he had moved up to the juniors so I only saw him in the dinner room or outside school, and that was infrequently as I lived in Ravenglass and he lived in Broad Oak, a hamlet several miles away. I once stood up to him, it was in the infants room, he was pushing me and saying mean things and I just lashed out a punch that landed square in the middle of his face. There was a split second of abject terror while the shock of what had just happened registered across his face and then suddenly he was shaking my hand saying, “Good punch mate, brilliant.” and then he left.

I'm pretty sure he was the ringleader when I moved up to the juniors, certainly once he left for secondary school, the torment ended, for a little while.

I can see, smell, feel even taste the wall in my mind as clear as if it were yesterday, the ridge that ran through the middle of the mortar between the granite blocks, the pink and black facets in the granite that made it sparkle even on a cloudy day, the sandstone lintel that made up the bottom of one of the classroom windows.

We would be sent out to play and the taunting would start almost immediately, sometimes I would chase the entire group around the playground, crying and lashing out but never able to actually catch them while they all laughed hysterically, sometimes we might actually be able to play some game or other where I was able to join in but invariably I would say some innocent thing that one of them would seize upon and then I would end up by the wall, two or three inches away, with my hands over my face, just waiting for playtime to be over so as I could return to the relative safety of the classroom. Sometimes, now that I have started to think about it properly, I step outside the boy and look at him from above or from the road that runs along the edge of the playground. He stands there looking so small and helpless and I just cry and cry. I wish I could step in, to tell them to stop, to hug him and tell him it's ok. But I can't and the pain is unbearable.

Whenever I visit my parents as an adult, I will invariably end up driving past the school, now a country guest house, a number of times. Every single time, my eyes fix on that one spot on the wall where I would stand and my heart will fill with sadness as I mourn that child’s happiness.

Whenever things get difficult in my life from this time onwards. Through the hell of secondary school, throughout all my relationships, throughout all my work, whenever there's an argument or I feel under pressure, then in my minds eye I see the wall through my tear stained fingers and I freeze, hoping it will all go away, that if I just stand here quietly, it will stop. This is why I don't do well in arguments, particularly domestic ones.

In the infants, my mum would take me to school and pick me up, usually pushing her bike on the way there in the morning so as she could free-wheel back to the village on the way home. In the afternoons at the end of school, there would usually be a group of mums from Ravenglass all together, and a big gang of us would all walk back down the hill, it was almost always a happy and carefree time, where the kids would walk along the top of bankings or down our own secret paths at the edge of the woods next to the pavement. I remember laughing a lot.

By the juniors, I was walking or cycling to and from the school by myself. I would set off alone and walk the mile to the school with an ever increasing sense of foreboding, wondering how long I would have before somebody would begin the chanting and I would end up at the wall.

Once, I set off from our house with such dread, that I couldn't even start up the hill. I couldn't go, I felt physically sick with the prospect of another day of abuse looming over me. I couldn't just go home and say I didn't want to go, I had tried telling my parents I was being picked on once and it hadn't worked, so, about 50 yards from the end of our path, I saw a concrete fence post planted at the side of the road. I went to it and scraped from the bridge to the end of my nose up and down it until blood began to flow and then turned around and went home, telling my mum that I'd tripped and fallen on the way. It hurt like hell but at least I didn't have to go to school that day. I was no more than eight years old.

The junior classroom, like the infants, had three tables, these were named, in a rather more grown up fashion, Bottom, Middle and Top. By the time I reached Top, there were only seven children left in the school and we were all in the one room. When I was on Bottom though, the room was still relatively full and every person in it, excepting Mrs B., would be in the semi-circle around me at the wall at playtimes.

It was regularly remarked by all the children that Mrs B. had gone power mad when she became headmistress, someone had heard the word, 'megalomaniac' and it was bandied around a lot. Certainly her outbursts of public humiliation grew worse and worse. One boy, A. G., of whom I was terrified, was stood up by her almost daily so that she could tell the class how “stupid” he was, how he “refused” to learn, how getting him to work was “like getting blood from a stone”. Poor A. would be kept in at playtimes and made to do extra work, we would look in through the windows to see the two of them physically fighting. One day, as the end of his last year at Muncaster approached, she stood him up and told us all how she was having him sent to a “Special School” rather than Millom, the school everyone else went to, it was a school for other kids who “refused to learn”. A. stood there, bright red, staring at his feet while she looked on with her hateful smile, clearly relishing her victory over this insolent ten year old child. Within the first term of his time at the “Special School”, A. was diagnosed as being dyslexic.

At some point during my time on Bottom Table, a new girl arrived in the village, S. H.. She was red haired, with freckles, very pretty, with a beautiful smile and a slight lisp. At her previous school she had already learned to do joined up writing in a cursive script that Mrs B. was extremely impressed with. She went on about it so much that one Friday I decided that I too would learn to write joined up before Mrs B. had taught us to and therefore impress her and be praised in front of the class like S. had been. I made it my mission to have learnt how to do this by the time we returned to school on the following Monday.

All that weekend I had my parents show me how to join letters together and I practised and practised. It wasn't quite the fancy cursive style that Susan had but I was sure that my initiative would impress Mrs B. still.

On Monday morning we had some piece of writing to do and I of course set to with my new grown up style. I handed my piece in with everyone else, smiling and excited about the congratulations I was surely about to receive.

This wasn't, however, how things turned out.

A look of utter fury crossed Mrs B.’s face before she commanded me to stand up.

“And what is this supposed to be?” she sneered at me.

“Umm, joined up writing Mrs B.,”

“Who do you think you are? Really, who do you think you are? What do you think you were doing?!” (big grins and barely muffled sniggers all round the class)

“...”

“This is nothing more than joined script, not cursive. This is common, and badly done, you think you're all big and clever don't you? Well this is terrible and you are not big or clever. SIT DOWN!”

I sat down, with tears running down my face, numb from the shock of my good idea going so badly wrong. I looked around the room and all I could see were people looking at me and laughing while all I could hear was Mrs B. re-telling S. how wonderful her writing was.

The way in and out of the school, to the car park which served both it and Muncaster Castle, was through the gate at the top of the infants playground. To get to this from the juniors you followed a path around the edge of the school furthest from the road, not very long, but considerably longer than the patch which went up the other side of the school, between the kitchen and the wall that ran along the road. This directly connected the two playgrounds but was, for some unspecified reason, forbidden.

For a little while L. D. and I took to ducking down beneath the windows when we left school in the afternoons and running up the forbidden path, thus beating everyone else to the car park by about twenty seconds. We got away with this for a while until one day, as I rounded the corner of the building, Mrs B. stepped out of the kitchen doorway to catch us, obviously having got wise to what we were doing. L. was lucky enough to realise what had happened before he got to the corner of the building and so wasn't caught, he turned and fled the proper way. I stood there while Mrs B. hissed that she would deal with me later, then walked dejectedly around the other edge of the school. This was going to be bad.

The next day at assembly, I was brought to stand at the front, facing the rest of the school. For what seemed like hours Mrs B. stood and told everyone what a bad person I was, how I felt I was “better than everyone else in the school”, how I felt that “Rules don't apply to me” and how I needed to be “Taken down a peg or two”. She went on and on while I stared at my feet because every time I looked up, all I could see were gleeful smiles. My cheeks burned, tears pricked my eyes. Eventually I was told to sit back down. My punishment for this heinous crime was, as I clearly felt I was above them in some way, to be separated from the rest of the juniors. I was banished back to the infants classroom where I sat by myself on a small table in the library part of their classroom. I wouldn't have minded this at all, but for the fact I was regularly summoned down to the juniors for humiliation and also that play times were still spent in the juniors playground, facing the wall. The humiliations would usually take the form of one of the kids from Top Table, being sent to tell me “Mrs B. wants to see you”, a message always delivered with a big grin. Often it was for the weekly spelling or multiplication test, but they always neglected to tell me this. I would arrive in the juniors class room to a statement along the lines of “Here IT is at last” from Mrs B., she would then say it was time for the test. I would then say I had to go back to get my pencil which would infuriate her still more, commanded to run I would hear her telling the rest of the room how useless I was and how she didn't even know why she bothered with me. I would return and after another bout of abuse the test would commence, followed by playtime. Obviously everyone would have plenty of ammunition from my recent public humiliation to keep me facing the wall throughout the playtime.

I've no idea how long I spent on my own table in the infants, it seemed like a year, I guess it was probably about a term.

Outside of the school yard, things were generally ok, for some reason the abuse only ever took place within the confines of the school. This was maybe partly due to I. B. living far enough away from Ravenglass for him not to be a part of our regular social circle, although I don't know this for sure. Anyway, as an only child, I was more than able to entertain myself and if things started to take a turn for the worse I would play alone. I had several dens that were mine alone, that I never even told anyone else about, mainly near to my house and the station of the narrow gauge steam railway that I lived on. I would play out imaginary games which usually involved me suddenly discovering that I was actually a prince or even a king or that I was a knight of old or lived alone far from any other human contact. I was also exceptionally good at playing board games by myself, some times playing Monopoly as four separate players usually on behalf of various stuffed toys, generally I would have a favourite in any game that I would pretend I wasn't helping to win, but I could happily play board games by myself for hours on end.

I would also wander around the various sheds and offices of the railway, looking for 'jobs' and ways to 'help' people. Most of the people who worked on the railway had known me since I was born, my mum and dad had met working there and indeed my mum still ran the stores for the two gift shops that were at either end of the seven mile line up to Eskdale. Our house, the station house at Ravenglass, came with her job and we lived there from when I was about eighteen months old until she quit her job when I was about twenty-three.

By the time I reached Top Table, my penultimate year of primary school, There were just seven children left at Muncaster. Ravenglass seemed to be a village in it's death throws. As the older generations slowly died off, their houses were bought as holiday homes that were lived in for two weeks a year, the community was dying and there were less and less kids. It was decided that Muncaster would close and that the remaining children would move to Waberthwaite, the next nearest school. During our last summer term at Muncaster we would be driven up to Waberthwaite a couple of times a week so as we could integrate with all the new, unknown children. There were forty-two children at Waberthwaite and it seemed massive, especially as everyone shared the same playground. The noise was unbelievable.

We had our last days at Muncaster, a school photo taken in exactly the spot where I had spent all that time facing the wall, and we were presented with a Bible to help us through the rest of our lives.

I never saw Mrs B. again, and never wanted to.

The headmaster at Waberthwaite was Mr D., a lovely man with a kind smile who was both easy going but commanded a deep respect from the children, he rarely got angry and on those times when he did, we would feel bad for having upset him. The only time he would talk about you in front of the class would be if you had done well. If you needed a reprimand, it would be done quietly but firmly by his desk so no one else could hear. That year at Waberthwaite was one of the happiest of my entire school life.

An Explanation

I was bullied from the age of seven to seventeen, lots of people have had a worse time than me, but experience is subjective and personal. As an adult you're able, sometimes, to step outside your own world and problems and see that, comparitively speaking, things aren't so bad. But as a child, particularly a young child, that's impossible. The things you go through as a child affect you for the rest of your life, I have been struggling to come to terms with how my being bullied has affected me psychologically for over 25 years now and it is a long and slow process. It has affected every part of my life. Personal relationships have suffered, I spent years in an abusive relationship, I have struggled with low self opinion and self hatred. Even now, in middle age, I am prone to self harm. I struggle to believe that anyone would like me, I am always surprised when people remember me.

I'm not totally innocent either, sometimes at your lowest point you kick down, I kicked down more than once and hated myself for it then and now. And there are also the people I let down by not stepping in, not stopping their torment, often for fear it would be turned on me, sometimes out of relief that it was someone else for a change. I witnessed some horrible things and these have stayed with me just as much as the stuff that happened to myself.

This blog is not a cry for help or sympathy, it is a healing process. As I slowly write stuff down that happened, maybe I can begin to let go of it, because I am sick and fucking tired of carrying it around with me. Maybe if someone else reads it who is feeling the same, they might realise that they're not alone. Maybe, we can all begin to heal our hurt together.

Although the first proper post deals with primary school, this is not a chronological story, it's going to be as and when I feel like or feel up to writing some memories down, it will dot about from year to year.