This is a rewrite of an older blog post. I think it flows better and truly hammers home the points I wanted to make.

I’ve never understood the phrase “life is a gift”. A child is something wanted, desired and treasured. A child is created without their knowledge or consent, brought squalling into a world of frightening brightness and disorientating noise.

We are forced to grow up in a world of rules that make no sense. If you are lucky, you can fit in. If not, you are ostracised very quickly, the kid hiding under their coat hood at break time, wishing to be invisible. The one people kick, toss chewing gum into their hair, the one who dreaded going to school. Eventually you just stop going altogether. You’ve tried telling teachers what you are going through and they shrug, they don’t care. They deny it is happening at all.

But of course, the teachers care about your sudden absences. They don’t give a fuck about your suffering, but truancy? That’s a big deal. Truants mean lost funding. Truants hit them where they hurt. 

Everything you do is wrong. You can’t escape this prison, this torture that is is allegedly a rite of passage, but feels more like a form of the most thuggish hazing. You are smart enough to pass your GCSEs. When you go to collect your Record of Achievement though, your’s isn’t there. The girl with a similar name clearly took it, she being one of my many tormentors. One last kick in the teeth. They probably burned it in a field somewhere. They couldn’t resist taking that last shred of dignity.

And all the school staff could offer were condescending sneers and indifferent shrugs.

That’s school. After 20 years, I’m supposed to have let go of all this. Let go of my distrust, my flinching at loud noises, my shaking whenever around strangers, especially loud strangers. 

society believes I should be able to simply find and retrieve my mental stability, sense of self-worth and social skills after years of torture as though they were nothing more than lost soft balls in a field.

Do you think those former kids feel that way? Are they terrified of loud noises, paranoid of others, live alone because their own company is the only one they can feel safe in. Do they take drugs to cope?

Doubt it. Their lives are just fine. Mine isn’t. I am their legacy. Not that they even remember my name, let alone have any concept of the shame they should feel.