50 Day Question Challenge 2016 - Day 7

[changeling67]

7. What was the worst phase in your life?

Between the ages of 13-19, so pretty much wraps up my teen years.  I was a quiet, pretty unassuming kid and therefore a target for being racially bullied at school.  Let me tell you - that kind of shit can leave scars miles deep.  I was not allowed to fight back either - I grew up in a home which did not encourage me to complain about such things, lest their involvement made things ten times worse.  Hence my reintroduction to Higher Education over the past five years.

There have been some immensely rocky times since, but nothing compares to being a scared and lonely (and eventually pregnant) teenage girl. Since then, I have been involved with teens and young adults that have been through the same and have managed to guide them back on the  right track.  I have done this because I know what it is like; I do it because someone has to care and I remember what it was like when there was no one there for me.

Comments

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

You are an incredible person and to offer yourself to these kids take that out a whole new door.

I had a friend who was abused as a child and she knew she had a safe house with us. She practically lived with us during the summer. We are still very close.

So proud to know you.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I think that I am a product of the time - very much the children were seen and not heard. My parents were well-read, reactionary and loved to challenge the status quo but quashed that element in their kids. It was a colourful, yet unconventional upbringing that unravelled in my mid teens.

Still, here I am. I have to see myself as working against the odds and making the best of it. Survivors are rarely ambivalent characters :-)

[spikesgirl58.livejournal.com]

Hmm, my folks were just the opposite.

Well, I think you kick ass!

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

Thank you :-)

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I think that I am a product of the time - very much the children were seen and not heard.

Really? That wasn't how I was brought up! I was able to talk to adults and give my opinions and be taken seriously by them in a way I wasn't by other children.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I wish that was the case for me. I came to the conclusion long ago that a) my folks shouldn't have had kids b) the teachers who were meant to teach the feral kids could have shown up more often.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I was bullied from 5-15 at every school I attended because of my abilities and interests, and the way I spoke. Luckily, I had my escape at home into my books and my own studies, and my Aspie-ness served as a defence from a toxic peer-culture. I was able to flourish in the 6th Form and at university. My career may not have been the brilliant success I hoped for, but I have a doctorate and a well-furnished mind, and I am pleased that some of my persecutors ended up as junkie prostitutes and are now dead.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I think that's the kind of place that I am coming from. I derive pleasure from adult higher education and just love learning new stuff.

Re my bullies - I found from a friend that that one arch tormentor turned up on 'Jeremy Kyle' as a coke head junkie, another I know of has had to have her nose remodelled as she burnt her old one out with sustained cocaine abuse.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

In low-achieving, low-aspiration communities (I grew up on council estates in Hull), there is a nasty atmosphere of "not getting above yourself". Anyone who is different, anyone who wants something more from life intellectually, is seen as a threat to be trampled down. It's self-policing, keeping people "in their place".

I was lucky in not having that at home: my Dad had studied at Ruskin and then Salford, and became a probation officer (which also meant I was targetted by kids from criminal families); my maternal grandfather had been something of a working-class autodidact with a Shakespeare obsession, some of which had rubbed off on my mother, although in conflict with her mother's "It's not for the likes of us" fatalism. Also, my brain-wiring made me pretty immune to peer-pressure, even in the face of having to dodge bricks being thrown at me or being punched in the face.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

Mine were very pro education; I went to a supposedly good school, but was dumped in a class of disenfranchised sink estate kids, who were frankly quite feral.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I had that, especially at the second junior high I attended, after we moved from Bransholme back into the city centre to be nearer my elderly Nanna. I was called a "lez" because I wasn't interested in sex acts (at 12-13). I then went to a decent girls' high school, but unfortunately, so did a few of the worst girls from the same junior high. One of them told a friend of hers (whom I didn't even know) that I was a good target, and this led to my being punched in the face when I was 15.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I had the same treatment at 12-13 - I was bookish but a bit naive. So many of the girls were 'putting it about' at that age. Some of it was probably bravado, but sheesh!

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

I'll let you read my Life Stories if you want to know my start in life, when then only began when I got to 82!!!!! Now THIS is a decent sort of adolescence! tehee.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

I think you are Wonderwoman, Looloo - I want to be you when I grow up :-D xxx

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

Aaawww, yer grate daftie!

that list is becoming quite long! What a smashing bunch of old hags we'll be!!! Bless you... and now I am listening to Stevie Wonder, and 'I just called to say I love you! - for YOU! xxxxxxxx

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

Xxxx