Bullied As A Child

[Anguish]

Now I'm 55 years old, and I still have never gotten over it.

It's as if one day my world was perfect--loving parents, tons of friends, doing well in school, everything rosy. I was happy and I loved life and people. Then one day, without warning, I got out of bed and everything was different.

Not my parents. Not (for a long time anyway) doing well at school. I even had my "own set" of friends left.

But suddenly we were isolated. The rest of the kids--formerly my friends, or so I thought--were no longer our friends. They started laughing at us, calling us names, excluding us from parties, etc, ignoring us on the playground.

We had no idea what caused this sudden change--I don't really know to this day. It hurt, but having my parents' support, being a good student, and esp. having the support of my best friend (from first grade) did help.

It got worse as we got older. WE were the ones never asked out on dates. The boys joined in on the mockery and name-calling (which before had been almost exclusively female). If any boy had asked me out, I would have refused, certain it was part of a cruel trick--because trust me, that kind of thing happened. I witnessed it myself.

But the final, intolerable blow was when I was about 16 and my own best friend abruptly "dropped" me. She told me (thru another friend, as she was no longer speaking to me!) that it was all my fault that she was unpopular--that if I were not "forever hanging around her", she'd have tons of friends--including, of course, the popular clique which had always despised us--at least since about 3rd or 4th grade.

I do know what happened. The same clique cornered me in the gym several weeks before this and told me that my best friend was the problem--they liked me, but not her. If I would only dump her, we could all be bestest friends...sound familiar??? :mad: I told them where they could stick their offer; I wasn't so stupid that I couldn't recognize the old ploy of "divide and conquer". Clearly when the trick failed with me, they took it to my (ex) best friend, who fell for it with enormous enthusiasm. She didn't "know" the damage she had done until I dropped out of school--and later was admitted (not for the last time) to a psychiatric hospital.

And you wanna know the funny part? My ex-best-friend, altho she cried tears of "guilt" afterwards, only visited me a couple of times. After that, she vanished. She's now living in Texas and to this day refuses to have ANYTHING to do with me--even tho I have tried reaching out to her.

Guess it's all my fault after all. My mistake being born.

I now have no friends, never married, never had children, have no job....and NO self-esteem. I am basically a recluse.

For some strange reason, I just do not trust human beings any more. NO ONE gets close to me.

The human race isn't worth it---screw 'em all.

[rjridley]

I am sorry to see that this is how you reacted. From reading your story it sounds like the problem wasn't so much that you were bullied, it was that your friend turned on you.

It sounds like you are a woman. I've never understood how the whole clique thing works with women. I did watch a movie called "Mean Girls" a few years ago, and it's kind of amazing that the way high school girls are depicted in that movie, and the way you describe your experience are so similar, since you lived it so many years ago.

I can relate to being bullied, because I was. I can't relate to being bullied but having friends to soften the blow.

It doesn't sound like your parents were abusive, and even though you were being picked on, you weren't being singled out, you were part of a group getting picked on.

You actually had it made because even though you and your friends weren't popular, you still had friends. You weren't facing the whole school alone. There were probably kids in your school who literally had no friends.

I have never had a best friend, so I can't understand losing a best friend because they turned on me. But I wish someone had told you that the fact that you had ANY friends put you ahead of the game, because you'd be able to bounce back by turning to the friends you still had, and then finding new people to become friends with once high school ended.

When I was in school, I always looked forward to going to a new school so that I could start over and meet new people.

If someone could have gotten that message to you somehow, you probably wouldn't even need this forum because you would have dusted yourself off. You would have learned that as long as you have friends, they don't need to be the top dogs.

It sounds like you went to school with the same kids k-12. I thank God I did not go to to high school with the same kids I went to elementary school with. Who knows if I would even still be here. Did you leave your hometown after you grew up? If not, a fresh start may have saved you from the pain of the last 40 years.

But if you knew how to make friends back then, odds are you still do, and if you were to go out you would get back into the swing of things. And I am learning as I watch my aunts, uncles, and mother age that being in one's 50's is not the same as when my grandparents were that age, so if you were to start living again now, you could have 20-30 years of fun-filled experiences.

It does pain me to see how someone let one person cause them to lose 40 years of her life, because your story tells all the ways you were ACCEPTED, but you only allowed yourself to focus on the rejection.

I keep coming back to the fact that you were not ostracized. My own bullying experience was not being accepted by anyone, it sounds like yours was of not being accepted by who you wanted to be accepted by, when your description of them made it seem like they themselves should not have been accepted by you.

[somebody25]

That's terrible. I was bullied too, but that's pretty extreme degree.

It's never too late to have friends. There must be at least some online forum/live journal/etc group out there of your hobbies that you could interact with. Online friends can be a poor substitute for people you can physically meet, but it could be a good starting point.

[Aaron.X.C]

I was bullied when I was younger, got into karate (Along with weapons training) at the age 12, been kicking ass ever since then. Though I'm still a total outcast, regarded as a pscho who would kill for fun. What a nice rep eh? So I'm excluded from everything, I only had 1 friend, and he graduated high school last year. So this year I'm taking the school alone. I wish you luck. Theirs always a reason to be born and to live. Try and get into something that makes you happy and if not that. Get into something that isn't miserable and passes time. Oh and rjridley, I also watched mean girls. Good movie. Though my school doesn't work like that. To add to somebody's post, you could try video chat, its a bit closer than text and VOIP. Just be careful out their, very hard to trust people.

[hidinginthatcorner]

I know I'm totally necro-ing a thread, but I guess...better late than never?

I'm with you, Anguish, always bullied and never had gotten over it...and if you would like, I can be your friend...we could get through all of this together even though our ages are different...

Like stated before, it's never to late to make any friends.