Happy Hour!

http://wherewelove.blogspot.com/

Today, I am participating in Joelle's Happy Hour Blog Hop party, so to anyone who happens accross my little log of adventures I'd like to offer a big welcome :)

This month I've been participating in National Blog Posting Month, a challenge to post a blog entry every day of the month, and unless something majorly exciting is going on in my world, most of the entries have been based around the NaBloPoMo writing prompts. Today I'm afraid is another such day. February, despite being the shortest month of the year, is still happy to drag its feet. People are still recovering from the Christmas excess of spending and we're all quite house bound. Add to that the flurry of birthdays, Valentines and my wedding anniversary (only a week and 3 days and we will have been married for two whole years!) and February is a very tight month on the purse strings. There's been nothing much to report so far, and so NaBloPoMo in a way has been a bit of a blessing :)

This month's theme is "Character" and today's writing prompt is something that I think has effected most people one time or another, and has definitely had an affect on my own character.




Friday, February 11, 2011
Tell us about your first encounter with a bully, then tell us about your last one.

I couldn't tell you my definitive first encounter. Kids are cruel, they always will be, it's part of growing up that they should learn to treat people with respect but until they do learn this vital lesson, they will point out every little thing that is different or unusual or ugly to them, and they will take glee in being as mean spirited as possible. I've not spoken to anyone who hadn't at some point been victim of school ground teasing. But is this synonymous with bullying?

I think the one thing that sticks in my mind is the first time someone called me fat. When I told my parents they replied instantly with "you're not!" and when I look back at my school and childhood photos, they're right, I wasn't. What I was, was the tallest and bulkiest child in the class until the boys hit puberty, but it's something that I've never been able to shake off since, especially since in my teenage years I really did start to pile on the pounds. A stone for every year of my life!

My last encounter was, as you can probably imagine, much more vicious, cruel and calculated than kids teasing each other over being fat in the playground. It took a year and a half to build up to those levels of cruelty and would you believe it started out as a camraderie amongst a group of us who had been brought together by a passion for the subject we were studying? Somewhere, someone upset someone else, and even then I couldn't have told you what it was that caused the initial offense. It descended into a campaign to ostracize me and another friend of ours not only from their own clique (trust me, we quickly gathered we weren't welcome there and left them be) but from everyone else in our class.

It all came to a head about two weeks before we were supposed to go on a residential field trip to Spain for a week. I was getting anxious...after an incident on another field trip which I care not to get into, which had been reported to a number of my tutors, I was getting exceedingly nervous about having to spend a week sharing a big dorm style room with these girls (all the girls in one room, all the boys in another). I had no desire to stay locked up with these people in a foreign country for a week. All of these worries playing on my mind and still having to face the constant cold shoulders, sneers, cruel words and taunts every day in the meantime, I eventually decided to completely remove myself from the situation so it would no longer be a problem, in the most final and absoloute manner.

Thankfully it didn't come to that. After Ben put a firm and final stop to that nonesense, and a day spent completely in tears, I got the courage to call my parents and ask for their blessing to leave university alltogether. They knew I was on anti depressants and I made up a cock and bull story about not being able to cope with the pressures of the course, I didn't want to admit the real reason. My tutors said if I wished I could defer the year and come back, but I didn't want to put that kind of financial burden on my parents. I chose to leave and go to work instead, which I did, and I can tell you this - I missed studying like I'd never missed anything else, I missed my tutors who I had formed strong bonds with, I missed learning about things that I'm passionately fascinated by, but I have never ever felt a greater sense of relief. It really was like the weight of the Earth was taken off my shoulders.

Now I said before that these things have had an effect on my character. I believe I'm stronger for it. It has strengthened my resolve to help any and all who find themselves being ostracised and bullied, as if someone had stood up for me then maybe I'd still be there, who knows? I know that I don't want to return to study what I had been, because I just get upset thinking about it. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it really was that stressful for me at the time. What I want to do is help other people in whatever way I can. I've been seriously thinking about counselling as a career, and have been looking into the courses I'll need to take to do this. Thankfully there are some part time courses for adults near where Ben and I are hoping to move to, so my plan for now is to find work up that end of the world, then enroll in such a course.

Either way, I think it all has a happy ending. I'm making moves to carry my life ahead in a meaningful direction. We can't be bitter about these things forever after all, and life is nothing if not there to be lived through a full range of emotions, you have to take the good with the bad :)