Bloody Roses

WARNING: THIS DEALS WITH SUICIDE, SEXUAL HARASSMENT, MENTAL ISSUES AND POSSIBLY SOME STUFF I’VE LEFT OUT.

I keep thinking more and more about what my pos school told my mum when she stormed in (I should put here she didn’t yell, she’s a firm woman but she doesn’t make a scene) into the bearded asshole head teacher’s room after I tried to kill myself. She wanted answers.

The answer she got: Emma is overly sensitive, and she took jokes way too seriously.

I’m going to respond by giving you the following examples of what my apparently thin skinned self put up with before I snapped:

Anthony (fuck giving them anonymity, I’m using their first names) thought it was hilarious to start rubbing my shoulders sensually while rubbing up against my chair and telling me how I’m turning him on. Most of the class (I was shit at maths so ended up in the same class with loads of their sorry asses), sans two friends I had there, laughed. Nowadays, you’d get at least suspended for that kind of behaviour.

But that was just me being thin-skinned, I suppose.

Next up: Naomi Smith (yes, I will name and shame her because what she did was evil).

Thr first time I didn’t even know who she was. She sought me out and made an obviously nasty comment before computer class (she held a weird grudge about me getting my computer and therefore she had to share because I got the last one – maybe she should’ve taken it up with the fucking teacher then). I told her to fuck off. She yelled at me that nobody told her to fuck off (chinny reckon) and shoved me into the wall.

I just remember wondering what the hell that was about.

Later on, during a netball game, I learned the stumpy little demon’s name- she name called me and kicked me to the point I felt as though I should leave the courts, get dressed and just walk out of the school. A pretext for what happened at the upper site (our school was split into parts) later on.

I settled with crying by the lockers. Later on, when I was sharing my feelings about her to a friend, one of the people who had comforted me by the lockers screamed at me that Naomi was their friend and while they felt bad because I was crying, how dare I slag her off!? I was utterly baffled. Up until then myself and this person got along well. What the hell did this stumpy little asshole have that made people so loyal to her?

Obviously, I understand in retrospect that she probably behaved very differently with others like my friend. But I also was frequently humiliated in front of her other friends who enjoyed watching me suffer.

I don’t know what Naomi said to her later on, but she stayed friends with me, and she never mentioned Naomi after that. She was a great friend, and I miss her a lot. And I thank her for seeing my side of the story.

Anyway, this time is the one where she genuinely scared me. It wasn’t terribly violent. It was her eyes. I’ll try and explain as best I can.

So, a mutual friend of ours was off sick (it was a small school, everyone tended to know each other). I was chatting with the small group of my only friends when Naomi asked us where [friend] was. I figured she couldn’t get mad at me for answering (oh dear, how stupid was I?). I answered that she was off sick. Naomi shoved me into the lockers for this completely innocuous response, snarling that she hadn’t asked me (she literally walked up to a group of my friends and made no indication she was specifically asking anyone. What the hell?)

What was scary about this was her eyes. The rage in them scared the utter shit out of me. They told me that she would love to kill me if she could. I will never, to this day, know why. I guess one reason I am giving her anonymity is I’d like to know why. Because that day really was frightening. I just don’t understand it. Surely this wasn’t all because of a fucking computer?

That was my breaking point. When I got to the upper site and discovered she was she was still in some of my classes, I snapped completely. Nobody would listen. I was done. Fuck this school. Hilariously, it was a religious school that followed exactly zero of Jesus’s teachers.

I stopped going. For 22 days I just didn’t go. I was tired of being told to just ignore them, filing useless reports that likely got binned. One teacher told me they thought highly of me, so why was I doing this? Firstly, exactly two teacher had EVER given me in the impression they liked me. M former English teacher and my art teacher. I was generally ignored. I had gone from being good at English to being constantly rinsed by my new one. My home ecomics teacher openly loathed me, and I had heard her mocking me with the girls who’s station was next to mine. Give a wild guess who she was friends with.

There was nothing keeping me there.

I was forced back by my abusive parent, which is when I found out the fate of Naomi Smith, the one only I truly believe would have Dylan Klebold me given have the chance (with a knife, not a gun). She was horribly bullied out of school by her own friends.

I suppose many would call this poetic justice. I feel it’s an example of the dog-eat-dog world of the school bully. It is amusing it it’s way that she thought that cruelty would never be turned on her. Shame Thirteen wasn’t out yet. The ending could’ve taught her something.

I will make it clear that my mental illness exist partially due to shitty genetics and living with an Abusive Parent who terrorised us all. I felt weird going to other friends’ houses because they weren’t like that, and, being autistic the change frightened. I apologise to those friend I made excuses to when they invited me to their houses – it was me and my trauma, not you.

Anyway, I have depression, anxiety, PTSD, Epilepsy, addiction issues.

What does that have to with what I just wrote about school bullying?

Because while there’s a lot of issues tthat cannot be blamed on that, my lack of trust in people, struggling to work out if something is just a joke or making fun of me that absolutely is down to them. My intrusive thoughts about all the bad things they did that pop into my head and cause my distress – all of those are absolutely down to them.

I can only remember a few good moments at that school. The horrible negative ones though? I can remember in glorious technicolour. In a way, that hurts the most. I was robbed of good times.

For all that, I’m still standing. You haven’t yet sent me to an early grave mother fuckers.