Contending With The Bully Inside

I first experienced bullies at school when I was seven years old. There were two of them - a girl who was ‘my friend’, and a boy I had a crush on. The boy had just one strategy - he would call me a ‘fat moose’. 30 years later and it still hurts to acknowledge that taunt. I had no conscious awareness of my weight or size before this started, and it was the beginning of decades of self-loathing associated with my weight. The girl never commented on my size. She never called me names. She was never obvious. She whispered things to others while looking at me and then laughed. She would lead the charge among our ‘friends’ of ignoring me for days on end. She would invite me to sleepovers and then try to embarrass me. She would be nice just long enough for me to let my guard down and then start the cycle again. I’m not sure anyone believed that what she did was bullying. I remember the phrase ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’ being used a lot. We were just another pair of squabbling girls, because, ‘that’s what girls do’. I knew the parents of both children. The girl’s dad was uninterested, abrasive, dismissive. Her mum was superior and judgemental. The boy’s mum was smiley and kind to me. When I saw his dad, he seemed distracted and grave. I heard rumours that he beat his wife. We are being raised in systems of harm, and some of us are taught to be cruel very early on.

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