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hey
It's hard to stand up to bullies when your self esteem has been eroded that badly. It takes confidence to stand your ground, and when you have none you don't know what to say do you? I remember I would try and try to stand up to them, but I would just clam up and talk a load of rubbish and ultimately be about as threatening as an angry pomeranian! :P I still struggle with that now, 12 years later. In a conflict I clam up and spend the whole time concentrating on not crying, and then I walk off burst into tears and think of all the awesome kick ass things I should have said :P
Anyway, eventually I twigged that it was my reactions they were feeding off. So in my head I took a vow of silence, withdrew into my head and cut myself off from them all entirely. I refused point blank to respond to ANYTHING. At first the bullying got worse as they tried harder to break me. But I was stoic. Even when a lad called Dean spent a whole hour hitting me over the head with his bag I just ignored it.... I acted almost like I was autistic... just shut them out. But eventually, it got boring for them and then I got less abuse and more ignoring which I was a lot happier about. But I had to spend nearly a whole year in silence...Year 8 was that bad I have no memories of it.....
What I SHOULD have done was when it began in year 7 I should have swallowed my pride and told people. But pride and shame stopped me. As well as that annoying bully behaviour where they will alternate between being awful, and every now and again really nice (a tactic to keep u on your toes and think maybe they're not all bad.... so you don't tell...) So although it is the best thing you could do, I understand how sometimes telling is an impossible thing.
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