Bullying Awareness & Story

Since getting great feedback on the Anxiety & Agoraphobia awareness post, I wanted to touch on another subject that not only means a lot to me, but also needs more to be done about it because I feel in this days society people are too scared to do anything or not sure how to talk about it.In the above image is a small portion of words and phrases that I was called on a daily basis.Below I'm going to tell you my bullying story with some main incidents, hoping this will give you some insight on what I went through and also how I got through it too :)

Childhood:


My first encounter of bullying was at the mere age of 4, which I know seems a very young age, but this person does tie in later on in the story for it to make sense.As any other 4 year old, I was playing in the sand pit with some other kids when one in particular decided to throw a whole lump of sand in my eyes, causing them to get very sore and of course got me upset.Again later that day, I was sitting on a small wall when that same child, decided to push me off the wall causing me to land on my face causing a small graze.This person then continued to push me around all the time and left me to be alone in the playground, which isn't nice for anyone, especially for a 4 year old because all you can do is wonder "what have I done?"The next major incident I had, was that one of the boys in the other class didn't like me for whatever reason it was, and one day two of his friends grabbed me in the playground holding me in place, while he booted a football at my face, not only causing agony, but leaving a huge lump under my eyebrow.Of course the school didn't really do anything as usual, and I didn't even get an apology.Up to this day I still have this lump underneath my eyebrow, but luckily its reduced in size for it not to be noticed, and going through primary until heading into secondary left me nervous, quiet and quite scared of people because I didn't know what to expect.

Secondary School:


Most kids look forward going to secondary school, because its the "growing up" procedure, but the only thing I was excited about was getting away from the people that tormented me.Within the first few weeks of starting, I was already getting comments about how ugly I was and mostly negative comments towards my hair.This continued right up until end of Year 11, effecting not only my attendance, but my grades too.People that I called my friends would also be nasty too, which reduced my trust in people.I'm happy to say though there was this one friend called Ellie (and I hope she's reading this) stuck by me being friends since primary right up until Year 11, which I thank for, because not having that one friend supporting me or just looking out for each other could of ended up a lot worse.

What also didn't help the situation, and every year group have these, the "popular people".There's two bands which I've come across:
1.The nice popular people who got along with everyone, are nice, non judgmental and pretty awesome
2.The bitchy, two faced, only use each other to gain reputation (mostly negative) to get noticed.

I'm not going to name these people, as maybe when reading this they will either realise it was them or ask themselves about it, but getting it on a daily basis from them especially first thing in the morning and form time, made me feel like complete rubbish.I could also never understand on how they could bitch about someone, especially as soon as that person entered the room it was "Hi Babe!" or "Its so good to see you!".The torments kept coming, and my self esteem was completely ruined.I started to straighten my hair because people would say my curls made me even more ugly, resulting my hair getting damaged and guess what?I was still bullied for having straight hair.No matter what I done, people would still bully me for it.

Another incident that effected me at the time, and weeks after it happened was a few girls during lunch break outside, decided to walk up to me throwing insults.I told them to leave me alone while trying to head inside, but they circled around me starting to push, pull my hair, spit and slapping me around the face.One of the smaller girls went to go hit me, and I stopped her arm from hitting me, pushed it back and started to walk away.She chased after me, attempting to hit me, again I pushed her arm away with her then yelping "Owwwwww!". Her friends started to come over but were more concerned for there "friend" and I got inside the lunch hall as I know they wouldn't follow me.Within 10minutes of sitting at the lunch table,a teacher came up to me saying that they needed to talk to me privately regarding an incident they were aware of, and a small amount of relief went through me as someone clearly must of seen what they did to me.Sitting in a quiet room with them, ready to talk about what happened to me, they asked " do you know why your here?" to which I responded with a nod, and then "this is very serious Shanise and you will be put into detention with a report card".At that moment, I was completely confused, asking on what exactly has been said, to which apparently I attacked the small girl, and because she was "skinny" (there words") she was bruised a lot easier.I was made to apologise to her, and given a report card for my "behavior".Being in a complete state, I contacted my mum before they did after, and she was up at the school within 5 minutes.The only defense the teachers had was: "there were 3 witnesses and a bruise left on the girls arm", even though they were known to have caused trouble in the past.They took away my report card after my mum said she would take it further, but as always I was left with no apology and further bullying on top.This resulted in me not attending school due to being scared, feeling sick everyday because of it, and not eating properly causing serious anemia problems.

On the plus side, I completed school with a few GCSE's and left to start afresh at college.College was a lot easier, not getting picked on and generally having teachers that cared for you which is a plus.Gradually overtime my confidence started to build up, being able to get into activities that I loved, making new friends, building relationships and most importantly my health.

This blog was mainly to tackle people that want to understand there hair more or build there confidence, because that was one of the main things I was told by people and social media that "curly hair is ugly".Seeing the relation of bullying in this aspect also,I want to help as many people as I can to overcome there bullying like I did, because I am so much happier now than I was back then.I'm also here if you wish to talk to someone about it, whether its you or someone you know thats getting bullied if you don't know how to approache an adult about it.Anything you say to me is strictly in confidence and will not be shared with anyone else.Check out Anti Bullying Pro on advice here too Click Me 

I hope this post helps you or someone in getting the support you deserve and that there is an postive outcome to all of this :)


Shanise              x



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