The paradox of being a bullying victim
By: Blake Wolf
Tags: Personal, Paradox, Life, Bullying

[CW: there is a quick mention of suicide]

Photo by Pixel Talkies on Unsplash

Hello, my name is Blake and I was a bullying victim. This isn’t an easy subject for me to write about (and I’m sure I’ll be crying while I write this, because it’s probably the first time I ever wrote it down), but it’s something I have been ruminating over and over and over in my head recently, even though I don’t know exactly why. At some point, I’ll have to talk about it.

I never considered myself popular, but I thought I had friends, because I would be invited to their birthday parties, I would hang out, play and etc. with them. But then, it all changed and I saw all my friends turn either into bullies or people that didn’t do anything to help me, turning a blind eye to what was happening to me or the “innocent” ones that would laugh with the bullies thinking it was just a big joke. And I spent a long time wondering why this happened.

I was an extrovert, outgoing, I loved talking with people, had absolutely no problem making friends and so many other things. But since them, I have become introvert, have social anxiety, depression, am a suicide survivor, hate making friends, hate talking with people on real life and so on. I became used to my own loneliness and have no problem in being alone. I don’t have many friends and to be honest, I’m not even sure if I truly call them friends or if it just became a mechanism to fool people into thinking that all this damage never happened and that I’m popular, full of friends.

I remember I would wake up every day, look at myself in the mirror and ask myself “What is wrong with me that nobody wants to be my friend?”. Or sometimes I would ask “What did I do to be punished like this?”. At the time, I couldn’t understand why or what happened. It took me a bit, but finally I realized that it was mostly because I was disabled, I was the different one, I was the one who didn’t fit in the standard. At some point, I even thought that it was my fault being disabled, that I somehow did it to myself and I was being punished by it.

Some of the bullying years overlapped the years I was the only one known disabled in my school. There wasn’t really anyone else that could be considered different, I was the one that made the teachers show movies with captions (they hated it), I was the one with a different accent (they hated it too), I was considered smart (they probably hated it too).

I started hiding during the breaks in the library or in a sports court that rarely was used. I knew where were the best places to hide in the breaks, because I spent time mapping out my entire school trying to find safe places where I could just be me and have some peace.

I remember a mother telling me that it was because they were jealous of me. That I had something they wanted too. At the time, I already knew that wasn’t true, and in my mind I would think “huh, no, actually they are assholes” but most of the time I would just smile, nod and pretend they were right. And I think that mother never found out that her son was one of my bullies.

The bullying rarely was physical, but it was always psychological. I heard things I wouldn’t wish even on my worst enemies, no one deserves to hear what I heard. It got to a point that I was slowly isolating myself, becoming a ghost and giving up my identity. Meanwhile, they were having the privilege of being in the process of figuring out who they were (gender, sexuality, who they liked or wanted to date, but hobbies, interests, etc.). It’s because of them that I only started doing this process when I started university. And that was 6 years ago. I’m still discovering and figuring out stuff about me, because of them.

They took that from me. And the unfortunate thing about being a bullying victim is that at some point, you realize you’ll always have a missing part in you because your bullies won’t ever apologize or recognize the damage they did to you, mostly because they don’t remember it. They don’t remember it because at some point it was so usual for them their brain stopped storing it as memories.

We don’t remember banal things. If it’s a routine, you rarely will remember it, because nothing different happened. This is basically how our memory function. But for us, we remember it because it was always different every day. We didn’t know if we were going to be slammed into walls, or if we were going to hear some hateful comment, or if we would have to hide somewhere new or different, there are so many different ifs that can happen to a bullying victim that we rarely will forget it ever happened. A day would never be the same as another day.

I’ll never receive an apology from them. I’ll never be recognized by them as their victim. I’ll never be able to fully move on, while they will move on as if nothing happened. I already made peace with the fact I’ll always have a piece missing in my identity and that I’ll never be able to recover it or even rebuild it. But I would like to look at photos from my childhood and not remember what happened with that kid that didn’t deserve what happened to her. I would like to be able to visit my school without looking at places and think “Oh, this is where I hid on that day” or “this were my usual spot during breaks, especially on Wednesday”.

I’m open to forgiving (I wouldn’t forget neither pardon, though), but it won’t ever happen, since they don’t remember all of it. And even they did, it’s already been years since it last happened. Only one apologized and I forgave him to the point that I mostly don’t have any negative feeling about him. But the others? I don’t want to be in the same room as them ever again.

I barely have people from my school on my Facebook, and it’s because I refuse to see them going happily with their lives as if nothing happened, while I’m here having to deal with all the damage they did to me for years. And even the ones I still have, I haven’t talked with them in years. Sometimes I’ll comment in one or other post they did, but have long chats about stuff? No. It’s because of them I’ll never go to a school reunion. They were the majority of my grade and they absolutely ruined my school years.

That’s the sad paradox of being a bullying victim. In the end, it isn’t a matter of forgiving ourselves for doing what we had to do to survive (it isn’t like we had an actual choice in that matter), but having the damage fully recognized by the responsible. Not having the acknowledgement that they were responsible and are aware of how much it damaged me means my damage isn’t completely valid or recognized. I don’t get to look at my damage and say “Yes, it hurt. Yes, it destroyed me, but it’s real, it’s valid, it exists”.

I don’t have any hope that they will come forward and apologize. At this point, after so many years, they had many opportunities, but never did. I don’t expect this to change. However, all I can do is to try move on as best as I can, fully knowing that they took away the opportunity to fully move on and that isn’t fair.

But then, when is life fair?