21

Letting the past go & pouring my heart out.

Photo by Smit Patel on Unsplash

Writing is cathartic for me and a great way to get the tangled mess in my brain, out, so that whatever is in it at the time, doesn’t stay with me. But writing for me is like a time capsule. If I go back and look at stuff I’ve written in diaries or notes, things come flooding back to me. I can remember how I was feeling, which is a great thing for me, but knowing the power that holds for me makes sense why I never wrote any of this down. Probably as this was a painful time I didn’t want to remember and promised myself that I wouldn’t say any of this outside my immediate family.

But, looking at pastures new, college-wise that I’m going to be diving into rather soon and with my 21st birthday in early October - I see both of these things as milestones and I just want to do this for myself so that when I hit both of those milestones - it’s me confronting and closing the door on that chapter, and on the off chance if it does help somebody else, wonderful. I know this may also trigger others, so please don’t worry if you want to pass on reading this. It’s not a cheery subject. I can’t remember everything that happened as I think I’ve tried to block it out, but this is what I do remember. What I’m writing is as events as they happened, but again - the order in which they happened, may vary.

It’s about my experience in secondary school and subsequent bullying, loneliness and everything that comes with it.

I started secondary school back in August 2016, this was a change in my life that was going to happen and I went with one school because it was where two people (out of 19 in my class) I was friendly with in primary school went, but we fell out of touch afterwards — so I was very much on my own. I can remember my first day, only certain years were in so the school bus I took had hardly anyone on it. It was me and one other boy, whom I’ll call ‘Damien’ for this. Damien was one year above me. I sheepishly said hello and introduced myself and he seemed friendly. We were chatting and things seemed to be okay. So me being me, I naïvely thought — maybe I’ve made a new friend?

But sadly, as time went on - I would realise things weren’t as they seemed and I was a fool.

It was lunchtime and I went to find a quiet place to have lunch because I was trying to process the new environment myself. I walked into one classroom and in walked an SNA (special needs assistant) and a student. That’s when I met Ms. H - the only person who helped me get through the four years I was at this school. I was walking towards the door realising it was in use, but Ms. H was happy for me to stay. So I stayed and chatted with Ms. H and the student and little did I know, that was my routine for 95% of my time there. I’d chat with them in the morning before classes and at lunchtime.

As I started to talk to Damien more, it was giving him more cannon fodder for him to use against me. Neutral conversations turned into sessions where Damien would start to pick on me, picking on me for my looks and my interests. Things that aren’t that much of a deal for me now, but for 13-year-old me, they meant everything.

Left: Me, 2018 & Right: Me, 2024

The first tipping point, I was coming back on the bus - this was a few months into the first year and one time I was getting near my stop and Damien and another student were talking to me and were mocking me. Just before I got up, I had the contents of a water bottle thrown down the front of me. I was soaked. I confronted them and just gave me a lousy reason amounting to the effect that it was an accident. I went bright red, embarrassed as I got off the bus while I could hear the students laughing. I ran to the car where Dad was waiting for me, he looked confused wondering why I looked like I just went for a dip in a lake in my school uniform. I told him what happened and Dad urged me to tell him which student did it. Fearing that it would just be asking for more trouble and encouraging them to pick on me more if I blabbed to my parents, I was stubborn and I refused. Dad, who at this point, was irritated at my refusal gave up and drove us home.

My parents told me to report this to management, and I did - reluctantly. The deputy principal commended me for telling him and stated he’d do something about it. To my knowledge, he did - but it was futile.

One of my ‘faults’, you could say was that I acted more mature for my age - it’s the way I’ve been, always have. One of the things I never liked to do was swear and for some reason, seemed like the perfect invitation for some people down the hall from where my locker was to just hurl a ton of profanity at me. I also didn’t understand half of the lingo / phrases my peers used - it was almost like hearing a listening comprehension and being asked to translate word for word what they said, it was entirely alien. My other fault was I was probably the most trusting and gullible person you’d ever met. I’d always try to see the good in everyone, but the only reason people would be friendly with me would just be to catch up on notes / homework they missed for a class. That was the most interaction I tended to get.

But it wasn’t only Damien who picked on me. Due to my appearance (I hadn’t changed much from the photo above) - I’d be impersonated on social media — specifically, Instagram (and Google Plus of all things) and I’d be added to chat groups on Snapchat where it would just be people sending things with my face photoshopped onto them. I knew the photo used was one that was taken without my consent. I saw the person take it and I told him to get rid of it. He did. But not without posting it to his Snapchat story first.

Then came January 2017, when my granduncle Pádraig died and we went up to his wake in Dublin and questioned my parents about just how much we knew about our family - if this part sounds familiar, this was when my love of genealogy was born.

The antics on the bus would just get worse and worse, from Damien trying to show me adult content I did not want to see to having verbal abuse thrown at me or just general teasing.

Around this time, my grandfather Colum was in and out of hospital and over the next few months he got worse. I remember one time in either March or April 2017, I was in English class knowing that my grandfather was not doing so well having just seen him in the hospital hooked up to so many machines the previous day. I broke down, crying hysterically and I was brought out of class to calm down and couldn’t focus on anything - I was worried sick about my grandad. That’s where Ms. H helped me because she was the only one who knew about my grandad, I’d tell her stories about him and she was with me as she knew I needed someone to talk to.

Sunday, May 14th 2017 - it was a miserable day. We had been going up to Dublin every weekend to see my Grandad in the hospice he had been moved to. By this point, it sunk in for me that he was not going to get any better. My parents, before we left had told us to say goodbye to Grandad as we did not know when we’d see him again. He passed the following night.

On the Tuesday, I went into school as normal still wondering if we’d be seeing Grandad this Sunday - thinking that we’d see him again. Mum had called the school to talk to Ms. H to tell her that Grandad had passed Monday night. I can’t imagine how she felt knowing that he was gone but I didn’t know yet (Mum would tell me that afternoon) and I was talking about him, about how I may see him again on Sunday.

This time was one of the most vulnerable times of my life, it didn’t take long to tip me over the edge and I do remember breaking down on the bus a few times but refused to say why because I knew that Damien would find some way to use it and I would not let him use my Grandad to break me down.

Late 2018 was a blur as Damien would just relentlessly keep picking on me daily. Nothing immediately stood out to me until one moment in early 2019, I came home after just taking and taking more abuse from Damien and I got into a shouting match with my parents where we were both getting hacked off with the whole situation with Damien and the management doing nothing about it. They both asked me, exasperatedly what I wanted them to do and I screamed at my parents two words: “Switch school?!”. The room went so silent, you could hear a pin drop, I never did that before and I spooked myself. I apologised and went upstairs to just cry, something that was second nature to me, bordering on a routine.

The following morning, I was chatting to Ms. H as I’d done every other day before that but she sensed that I was more quiet and withdrawn than I usually was around her. When the bell rang, the other students in the room left to go to their classes and Ms. H asked me if I was ok. On the verge of tears, I weakly responded saying ‘yes’. She knew something was up, so she shut the door when everyone else had left and I just lost it. I eventually (in between the crying fits) told her what was going on and said to the effect “I don’t want to go to this school anymore, I want to switch”. She had known about every single run-in with Damien and knew this because of him. I had never been in this state, a mentally tortured person. She told me she was going to do something but told me to go to my classes and someone would want to talk to me. I was in English class when my year head knocked on the door and asked to speak with me, my class doing the childish taunting thinking I was getting into trouble. She had asked me about Damien and how long it had been going on. She had asked me why I never reported it, not realising I had been but gave up as it never amounted to anything. No amount of disciplinary action seemed to bother Damien.

She told me, she was going to bring me into an office for me to talk to Damien and the other deputy principal. [Our school had two as it had a lot of students] I immediately clammed up and was afraid as I was already with him over 2 hours a day with the commutes so I tried to get out of going into the office. She told me the deputy principal had talked to him and wanted me to go hear what Damien had to say. I walked in expecting to get a dirty look from Damien realising I was going to face consequences later. But, this time - he had his head in his hands and was the one crying. It was unusual, I felt sad as I hate to see people upset, but at the same I felt conflicted as this was my bully, seeing him the way I had been on an all too regular basis felt like a form of justice. Then it crossed my mind, it was a flicker of hope realising that this might be the end of this chapter and the start of picking up the pieces of me. Mind you, I have no idea what the deputy principal had said to him to reduce him to this.

On the bus home, I smiled to myself - Damien never said a word to me. I got off the bus, and got in the car smiling - Dad couldn’t believe what had happened. Got in the door and told Mum the same thing, that was the first good day I can remember in secondary school.

Sadly, it was short-lived. Damien started up again the following day and things went back to normal. I lost that smile very quickly.

Then came the summer of 2019. June 15th 2019 — the day after my Junior Cert exams finished, I embarked on the journey that has led me to the point where you know about me, follow me on social media and are reading this blog - Daniel’s Genealogy, the pseudonym I went by for a good few months — the sole reason was so that Damien wouldn’t know it was me.

That didn’t last long. A few weeks into D’s G - I got a DM from him on Instagram. My heart sank, but he was cordial. So, I (gullibly) thought that he didn’t realise it was me. He wanted assistance trying to find more out about his grandfather or something and kept insisting on meeting me. I told him I couldn’t because I was out of the country (a white lie on my part). He tried a couple more times to convince me to meet up with him, which I swiftly declined and after a while, it became clear that he knew it was me the whole time. (And I’m well aware that it wasn’t like a top-secret thing) - he hurled a torrent of abuse and his last message to me before I blocked him was C U Next… well, I’ll let you finish that yourself. At the time I didn’t realise what it meant until Mum helped me put the pieces together.

I almost stopped D’s G altogether, until I joined Twitter which became my outlet where I could be myself. And I clung onto that, for dear life. (Still do a bit today…)

On the first day back at term, I told the head of my class about the online harassment from Damien but was told that nothing would be done as it happened outside of school. (And reporting to Instagram does bugger all as well, so…)

So I just took it & while I appeared happy on social media, in real life - I was not, I was miserable. I’d also found out over the summer that the school I was hoping to transfer to wouldn’t take me that year as they were full which meant I had to go through another year before we could try again.

In early March 2020, we had a mindfulness day - we had done different activities throughout the day and we wrapped up the day on one activity that was dedicated to writing anonymous positive messages to each other. I looked at my sheets with messages intended for me & it broke me. There were so many messages appreciating what I did, but evidently, these were ones, not many people wanted to come up to me and say, I still keep them in a safe place and treasure them. It just felt nice to not read or hear nasty things, even if it were only for a few minutes.

Then came March 12th, 2020 — the day everything shut down in Ireland. It was a bizarre day, the intercom system had never been used so much as it was a ton of cancellations for events and other things in the school and everyone was thinking it was going to be over in a matter of weeks. Boy, did we have no clue? I remember it rained heavily that day. We were told to bring as many books as we could home as no one was sure when we’d be able to go back to get any. So I took as many as my bag and arms could carry and waited for the bus in tipping rain trying to shield my books from getting wet. It marked the start of online school, which I loved as it meant I didn’t have to see Damien every day.

One day, Mum sat me down to tell me the other school would take me. I didn’t believe it at first but it quickly sunk in that this was very true and very real. I hugged my mum tightly as we both cried happy tears — this was a period of my life that was over. I’d never have to go back. I’d never have to see Damien again. But then I realised I wouldn’t see Ms. H, the one person who helped me through that school. I emailed her to tell her and we’ve kept in contact ever since. She made such a positive impact on my life, I don’t know if she knows just how much.

But, that’s not to say it didn’t affect me, I’m a very anxious and shy person who will likely beat himself up over nothing. I find it difficult to talk to people and that school left me with some trust issues to a certain degree, but since then I’ve been working on myself to try and reduce them. But I think no matter how much I do, there’ll be a mark from that school that won’t quite buff out. I knew I was going to have to channel and let go of this & I definitely feel better after writing this, there definitely was a level of inspiration when actress Katy Wix wrote “Could you forgive your bully?”. I don’t think I ever could. Not after every single thing he did to me. I know we joke that if we had a time machine we’d go back and quiz a certain ancestor about something that would help us to find them. If it were me, I’d go back just to hug my 15-year-old self — and to tell him that it all turns out okay in the end, it’s just really flippin’ bumpy.

If you’ve read this far, please know I appreciate you so much - for taking the time to read my story. It means so much. Not to mention, I’m no longer suffering in silence.