“You’re so ugly!”
“Rabbit face!”
“Yuck! Get away from me!”
These were the daily mantras of my secondary school life. On a good day, I’d get away with being called a few names, but there were other days. Bad days. Days when I’d be pushed onto the school canteen wall, days when I’d find my locker full of old gum, and days when I would walk around, completely invisible, ignored, and isolated. The loneliness was the worst.
I don’t know how it all started. Why would people do things like this? Why would they want to hurt me? I never did anything wrong, I never hurt anyone. Perhaps I had a huge bull’s eye printed on my forehead; perhaps I just looked like the kind of person that everyone would ignore or call names. Eventually, I started believing that I was simply born to be bullied and that others were born to bully, so I stopped fighting. Instead, I began turning everything inwards, bit by bit, until it became crystallized somewhere inside me. The labels I was given became ingrained in my selfschema, turning into some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. My grades plummeted, my efforts to look good ceased to exist, and any attempts at making any social contact were bleak and without motivation. I felt useless.
Over the years, I began hanging out with people I didn’t quite want to hang out with. Kids who were going in a direction I did not want to go in, whose characteristics clashed completely with mine. What kind of friendship was that? One of convenience. There we were, a bunch of misfits, smoking in the school bathrooms getting in all sorts of trouble as a form of self-medication.
As soon as I left secondary school, I promised myself things would change, somehow. Someone incredibly important in my life introduced me to what became my personal philosophy for years to come: “turn your pain into art”. That is when I took up photography in a desperate attempt to stop bottling things in. Fellow students would model for me, or offer their services related to makeup and hair, and the network grew. Simultaneously, I made some friends who helped me come out of my shell. Things were looking up. The bullying didn’t stop, though. People I encountered in secondary continued to give me a hard time, this time saying horrible things about my photography. This period marked a shift from physical to virtual bullying, although the feelings that stemmed from this experience were equally, if not more, painful.
Despite the wonderful feedback I was receiving at the time for my work, despite the many people willing to collaborate with me and to get to know me through photography, the hurtful words I read on a weekly basis took me right back to secondary school. This is going to sound a little silly, but the few negative comments I’d get would create wounds far deeper than any amount of complements could cover up. I’d get stuck on the negative feedback, desperately trying to improve myself, as if it were possible to make everyone like me through photography.
That’s when I learned that it’s impossible for everyone to like you. These things are going to happen to people, no matter their personality or physical appearance. Que sera, sera. With the help of my friends and my boyfriend, who continuously backed me up when I needed it, I focused on myself and my work. The hurtful words people threw at me started to seem empty, devoid of meaning, no longer influencing the way I thought of myself.
Eventually, the comments subsided, and I started coming out of my shell. Granted, almost a decade of bullying has changed me in ways I cannot even explain. I still get my moments of uncertainty, and some people still enjoy nitpicking my work and my personality. I’ve become a little bit of a perfectionist; driven internally to make everything as neat and nicely done as possible to avoid negative feedback and criticism. Sometimes, the approval of others means more to me than it should, but that’s alright. Sometimes, the walls I’ve built to protect me from the outside hinder others from looking in, and that’s also alright.
The leftovers from those years will remain with me for the rest of my life, but I count myself lucky. I don’t think I’d have worked on myself half as much as I do now if I didn’t experience what I experienced throughout the years. Eventually, I switched from photography to blogging, and here I am now. I’m lucky to have found people who I consider true friends, to have made meaningful relationships that will last a lifetime. Things have a way of coming together, if only you find the strength inside you to carry on, to use the pain in ways that will benefit you and help you on your journey of self-growth.
Bullying happens everywhere. It’s wrong, but it will keep happening to people who deserve far more than to feel hurt and victimized. I’ll tell you one thing, though. It passes. It really does. Somewhere down the line, with enough motivation and strength, you will find that even the most hurtful things anyone can say to you can be used to your advantage. You may not be the prettiest, the slimmest, the sexiest, the smartest, the most athletic, but you’ve got something inside you that is uniquely wonderful. It is this something that you can use to help you find yourself, to channel your pain into something productive. I turned my pain into creativity, into something which makes things (a little) easier, and I have absolutely no doubt that every single one of you has something to work with. Chin up.