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Warning: this may be a long thread. 
The one thing you an say about lockdown is that it certainly gives you extra thinking time. I've used the time to heal myself but I feel that I need to reflect about a few things here as well. My parents would have been horrified.
The one thing you an say about lockdown is that it certainly gives you extra thinking time. I've used the time to heal myself but I feel that I need to reflect about a few things here as well. My parents would have been horrified.
Neither of them believed in "venting their spleen" as my dad called it; they were more 'stiff upper lip'. They would have been even more horrified that I am doing this to people who are, in all fairness, relative strangers. But it is a place where I can reflect & feel supported.
Recent posts have made me realise that it is okay to speak out. I haven't done so because my bits and pieces were so long ago and I have busily been trying to move on from them. I need to let them out in the light of day in order to do so. First though I want to say
that I am okay. This isn't easy but I am okay. Hubby is always very supportive - it took him best part of the 30 years we've been together to get me this far. He has gone through so much with me and I am so lucky to have him. I have been gaslighted about things so often
that I sometimes wonder if it's all real. Then my cheekbone gets twitchy and I know it is. For the entirety of my school career I was mercilessly bullied; including by people I considered to be my friend. It was primarily name calling and being 'sent to Coventry' but it gets
under your skin nonetheless. On one occasion my cheekbone was broken (hence the mention earlier). Nothing was ever done to stop the bullies but I was treated as 'the problem'. My mother did nothing. My father didn't know - he was in the middle of a breakdown himself
at the time and my mother never told him. Three times I ran away from school. By the time I met my (now) husband I had zero self-confidence and wore nothing but black in the hopes that I could just hide away unnoticed. He has put my pieces back together bit by bit until
I have learned to believe in myself again. Maybe I shouldn't have cried. Maybe I shouldn't have been a 'good girl'. Back then it was 'okay' to ping bra straps and grope someone at a party who didn't want it or run your hand down a girl's leg. How far we have come!
Thank goodness. Yet bullying is still rife. In amongst everything else, bullying remains swept under the carpet so often. It somehow seems less important. Please everyone. Keep your eyes open. Stop the children in your class - or your own children - having to heal scars 30 old.
