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My Experience with Bullying

djoiPosted for Everyone to comment on, 5 years ago3 min read

Going down memory lane, I’d say the most important challenge I faced in Secondary School was that of bullies and fitting in.

I was (am) overweight, spoke fast (still do), didn’t have pierced ear lobes (still don’t) and was stubborn on some level, so I was a target for anyone who hated ‘different’.


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A particularly severe period of this challenge, which is burned in my memory, was when I had an injury somewhere close to my anus, which got infected without my knowledge, and so I stank. I remember a particular girl (I went to an all-girl school) who took it upon herself to shame me and reveal to everyone that I was the source of the stink. I was the laughing stock of my classmates, and so I avoided classes.

I was in JSS 2.

Somehow, I overcame that, but soon I decided that I would join a clique, and I began following the most popular girls of my set around. These were girls whom every other girl wanted to be like, and I was almost something no other girl wanted to be like and so I felt out of place with them. It was so obvious that I was following them and was not a part of them.

All these happened in my JSS classes.

Today, if I am mobilizing and raising awareness about the challenge of bullying and fitting in, I’d use what I think helped me overcome.

  1. I am a reader, was more voracious then, and so I focused on reading. Blessed with a sharp mind, I read my books to escape, needing minimal efforts to understand what the teacher taught. Soon, I was the girl who knew something. I was not the best student, but I knew enough to earn myself some respect. Bullies usually need something to respect in you for them to cease their taunting, and so I tell youngsters to discover their strength and walk therein. Trying to be like someone else makes you common and so you have no unique value which is to be respected or wanted by the cliques you try hard to be a part of.

  2. Be relevant. It’s one thing to be gifted, and a possessor of something good, and it’s another to be relevant. Relevance is what breeds respect and regard. The bully and the clique knew I could understand things easily, and could teach them, so they had to change the way they treated me. If I had no relevance to them, they’d never had changed.

  3. The teachers should have done better. Because I was a victim of bullying, I am always alert to the slightest sign of it in any of my classes. I don’t tolerate it in any form. Teachers should encourage healthy relationships among the students so they learn to earn and give respect.

Today, I preach respect as I preach love. I believe respect is a constituent of genuine love, and without it, love is merely a dicey, shallow emotion.

Curbing bullying starts with teaching the children to recognise their self-worth, then those who experienced bullying should kill it in its formative years in children everywhere. Bullying is a universal problem which won't leave until we fight it.

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