Bullying For Otherness, Is It Difficult To Be Different?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Every experience of being bullied is scary, especially in a community where the power paradigm is violated. If you are “different, different, different”, then you can go through hell without understanding: “How to stop this?”, “Why, are they doing this to me?”, “What am I to blame?”

"They began to poison at once and for everything, for a book at recess, for glasses, for a difficult speech …"

This is the story of a girl named Anna *. Her otherness lies in her highly functional autism, with which she had to befriend and walk side by side on the difficult path of life.

Autism is difficult to describe. This is partly due to the fact that researchers do not yet know what exactly causes it, and what processes in the body and brain lead to this condition. Another reason is that the huge variety of symptoms and manifestations is in itself a feature of autism spectrum disorders.

As a result, it is impossible to give a universal definition of autism. For example, one person with autism may have many sensory problems, including increased sensitivity to loudness and high pitched sounds, while another person may not have any sensory sensitivity at all.

Anna 35 years old, high functioning autism:

“When I was in kindergarten, I tried not to interact with the children, because all my attempts were somehow strangely perceived. Recently, my mother told me that educators from about two years old complained about me for "deliberately difficult speech" and "she is trying to present herself as the smartest" and "the children do not understand her." From my side, it looked like, I want to be friends, I go up to any child I like and start sharing with him something very interesting, some information, and he turns away and leaves. I stopped doing this, began to sit in the corner and play myself, if they tried to touch me or take something, even snapped with a request or fell into a meltdown (autistic hysteria) I became very afraid of children. From about five years old, my parents sent me for a walk in the yard from our one-room apartment, I went out and climbed the tallest tree in the yard and spent about the whole day there. During this period, except for the children of parents' friends (with whom it was a job to be friends during visits, and I did this work honestly and diligently) I did not have.

My first friend appeared at school, in the first grade, she came up to me herself and asked "do you want me to tell you about horses?" And began to tell … She had a bunch of books about horses, all the toys in the horse house and we played with her into horses, of course. I got carried away with her, although my "special interest" was somewhat broader, all animals in general, but I still treat horses with special warmth. It was very good with her, but at the age of nine my parents changed their apartment and transferred me to another school. It was necessary. I would probably yearn for Olya * if the very fact of changing the house did not come as such a shock to me. The autistic state, when something in his life changes dramatically without preparation can be described with the phrase of my three-year-old son, who woke up in bed without me (I walked away for a couple of minutes), he sobbed and shouted "I can't live when EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT." The very fact of the move was so painful.

As a result of the educational reform from the third grade, I jumped straight to the fifth, and then a disaster struck, the classes were reformed and I was transferred to another, where I did not know anyone.

They began to poison at once and for everything, for a book at recess (I have been reading from the age of five and from the same age I sat with a book all the time in any free minute), for glasses (I wear it since the second grade), for a difficult speech ("the smartest -or "), for the inability to use this speech at a time of stress and resentment (I could not utter a word, I became numb and only opened my mouth like a fish, gasped and sobbed, which made everyone very amused).

I told my parents about this. More precisely, I did not know the word bullying, I said that everyone was laughing at me. Mom said sacramental "you behave in such a way that they find it funny, cry, they need it, but you don't pay attention." It was bad advice, at that moment, as I diligently began not to pay attention, gasping with anxiety (now I know that these were panic attacks), they began to grab me, push me, and pull me off the stairs by the scythe. The biology teacher became a witness to the pulling off, she beat me off, she, as I understand it, contacted my parents, insisted that the matter was very serious and they managed to transfer me to my old class, more precisely to the one where after reforming most of the children from it studied … Everything there became "as before," that is, neutral. Nobody bothers anyone, we go home with the girls. The whole story lasted five months, but it seems that these were the years of hell. By the way, my only attempt to fight off someone even before school in the courtyard was stopped by my mother (to whom they rushed to knock on the window and complain (first floor), my mother appreciated how "fu, how ugly to fight, you're a girl" and "I'm ashamed of you, I thought you were a good kind child, and you are dangerous for others! ", therefore I did not even allow myself to think about answering someone at school. It was from the category of" upset my beautiful, loving and so trusting "parents Since the time of this 5th grade, my feelings have changed. If before it was "the world is too painful" there is a lot of him, he "throws" sounds, smells, sensations, and at some point it becomes so unbearable that I just want to " cut out "nafig. Now it has been added to this, I am so different, different, wrong, bad, unbearable, ill-mannered that without me everyone will only be better.

I regularly felt myself "killed" by the surrounding reality and did not want to live, another thing is that the idea that you can do something yourself in order to stop, and not passively not want to appear around nine years old. I decided to start taking real steps in this direction even later, clumsy and clumsy. Usually it boiled down to sitting on the railing of the walk-through balcony from the staircase to the elevator on the 11th floor with your feet outward and persuading yourself to let go of your hands at last and not clinging to this thin iron pipe. But I also cut my hands. There was no Internet then, at least in our home (I was about 15, 90 years old), and I had no idea how to do it, because as soon as it became very painful, I stopped wrapping myself with a bandage and lied something to my parents with inspiration. Like most autistic people with a safe speech, I generally did not know how to lie, and the very fact of lying was unbearable for me, another thing is an invented alternative story for my parents, so as not to worry.

This otherness was bad for me and I tried to get away from this "intolerance of being". When I later studied psychopathology (in preparation for a second degree in psychology, which, in the end, I never finished) I even believed I had borderline personality disorder (and wrote a term paper on it, within which I gave up the idea of looking for myself there.), remembering precisely these inept childish attempts.

I'm not sure if I'm a very good example of how people get up and move on. Still, I go more now out of a sense of responsibility towards the child, which is my copy and is now officially diagnosed in the spectrum."

Bullying should not be part of a person's life. Otherness does not give “others” and “right” permission to persecute at all. This process is very painful, confusing, scary for a person who is faced with such an injustice in life, and we, as a society, can change such a system by working with schools, classrooms, telling living stories and showing the consequences that the ill-considered or directed actions of the Bullers can lead to. per person.

* Names and some actions have been changed to maintain confidentiality.