I only stayed at the shoe shop for a couple of months after that incident, but right up until the day I quit, I could swear my locker was looking increasingly ‘kicked in’ and every so often my packed lunch seemed to go walkabout. Whatever was actually going on, all I know for sure is that Mel and I were never able to get on – and after I quit, we never spoke again.
Now, perhaps that’s not real bullying, you may be saying. You annoyed her and talked back to a superior. Perhaps she was trying to prove that she could be trusted, and your incompetence was stressing her out. Well, it might just (definitely) be down to my personality, but I don’t think I’ve had a ‘real job’ wherein I haven’t felt hated by a manager – the worst example being when I worked in a fast food restaurant when I was seventeen to eighteen. I’ll go into that story a little bit later.
Fact is, as the Bowling For Soup song says, high school never ends. There will always be gossiping, teasing, superiors that take advantage of you, superiors that treat you like dirt and, sometimes, confrontations. You know when people say it gets better? They’re wrong. It doesn’t get better – you get better at dealing with whatever it is. So, as someone who has dealt with verbal and physical assaults through different stages of my life, what would I suggest in order to make it stop?
Making A (In) Difference
I’m fairly sure at this point I am obligated to give you the same spiel you’ve heard countless times before – tell a teacher, tell a parent, don’t suffer in silence, count to ten and walk away. There you go. However, in my experience, there is a better way. Bear in mind it takes a while using this method, but in my experience, it does work about ninety-nine per cent of the time if you persevere. The trick is to be more stubborn than the bully and simply not retaliate. (Please remember that this is from my experience and every situation is different – above all else, you absolutely must tell someone if you are being bullied, even if you are scared of being a ‘grass’ or a ‘snitch’. Make those at school, home or work sit up and listen to you. You can even contact the police if no one else is willing to help – your right to live without harassment is protected by law.)
Wow, I sound like I’m forty. Well, it’s true, all right? There is an art to giving a bully nothing to work with. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. Zilch. Nada. There is one magic word that holds the key to beating your bully: Okay.
Ah, ‘okay’ is such a wonderful word! ‘Okay’ simmers so many arguments, because how can you fight someone that’s in agreement with you? Just make sure that when you say the word ‘okay’, you’re saying it in a neutral tone. Do not sound sad, or angry, or even really happy – you must remain completely indifferent to whatever someone has said to you. For example:
‘Ugh, look, girls, it’s the emo! Wash your hair, emo!’
‘Okay.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, keep walking, minger! You reek of dog shit, does your mum smell like that too?’
‘Probably.’
‘Ha, she just admitted it! Her mum smells of dog shit! That’s not very nice, is it?’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘Whatever, fuck off, weirdo.’
‘Okay.’
All right, so at first you have to deal with a little hassle – remember that your bully is trying to get a rise out of you, stooping to levels such as trying to publicly humiliate you and insulting your family. When you give them nothing, they get desperate – and look desperate, too. At this point, your bully will probably tell you to ‘fuck off ’, or something similar, and that’s when you know that they have run out of steam. Keep walking, with your head high, and don’t look back.
It may not be over after just one attempt – your bully may try again the next day with the same techniques, trying to embarrass you or insult you in a way that they think will hurt you. Remain calm, detach yourself from the insult – anger and hurt show on your face if you let their words get to you. Keep at it, day in, day out. Eventually, they will get bored. Simply ‘walking away and counting to ten’ (as we’re so often told to do) and ignoring your bully will actually make them feel as though they’re getting to you, and the insults may continue – or worse, escalate the situation into something more violent. If you find yourself alone at lunchtimes, as I often was, try to hang around places near members of staff. This, combined with the most neutral reactions you can offer, will help to shut your bully down very quickly.
Physical bullying is a little different – I would genuinely recommend walking away from someone trying to assault you. Whatever the kind of physical confrontation, I don’t recommend trying to fight back. It is always best to back away if possible, even if you feel a bit cowardly. Do not do anything that could threaten your well-being. If someone is shoving you, or in any way trying to incite you to attack them back, walk quickly towards an area that has an authority figure to monitor the situation. Remember that any physical provocation is assault in the eyes of the law. If your school or workplace does not do anything to remedy the situation, call the police. At the very least, with witnesses or CCTV, the school/workplace will be forced to act, and your bully cautioned. Your school/workplace will be under a ton of pressure to prevent further attacks, and that bully isn’t going to want another caution. If you fear that you are going to be physically attacked once you are alone, ensure that you can be escorted to where you need to be by someone else. Ask a friend to walk with you, or if you are at school/work, explain your fears to a teacher/colleague and get them to accompany you. Whilst physical bullying at a workplace is rare (and often rectified much sooner), it is sadly a lot more common in schools. If you tell a teacher that you fear that you will be physically assaulted once you are off school grounds, they should do everything in their power to help you avoid that situation. If you are being physically bullied, you absolutely must not stay silent. Sometimes a bully may threaten you with more violence if you tell an authority figure what they are doing, but that is because they want to get away with their bullying for as long as they can. Tell a parent, tell a teacher, or even tell the police if you believe it is necessary – whatever you do, do not suffer in silence.
Hopefully this last part goes without saying – if you see someone being bullied, do something. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know them. One of the quickest, simplest solutions to defusing a situation, whether it’s bullying at school, or racist abuse on public transport, is to step in and strike up a conversation with the person being picked on – and completely ignore the bully’s presence. Ask the victim if they’re okay, talk about the weather, ask who their teacher is for geography, ask them if they’d like you to walk them to a classroom (or anywhere away from their attacker) – the person on the attack will have absolutely no idea what to do. Anything they shout in an attempt to regain control should be ignored entirely, and remember – bullies target people who are alone. By keeping their victim company, you are removing the bully’s power. Make sure they are okay and then report the incident. If you do not feel comfortable getting this close to confrontation, immediately tell a member of staff what is happening. We all have a responsibility to reduce and eradicate bullying from any environment – remember that doing nothing is just as bad as being the bully.
4
Parental Controls
The Madonna
When I was sixteen, I got kicked out of my house.
Okay, maybe a little dramatic. I was threatened with being kicked out over the phone for a period of about ten minutes. Things sound better when they’re sensationalised, all right? The Internet is seemingly ninety-nine per cent clickbait for a reason!
Let me set the scene: 13 November 2007, two days after my sixteenth birthday. A few days before, my friend Lucy had walked into our class with a nose piercing. A nose piercing! Immediately, without doubt or quarrel, she was the coolest person in our year.
‘Yeah, I got it done in Southend,’ she said, referring to the next town over. ‘You’re sixteen now, it’s legal. You should get a piercing.’
Ah, youn
g, impressionable Emma. I nodded eagerly, imagining myself walking into class the next day with a Madonna piercing (a ‘Madonna’ is a stud above the right side of your lip, where Madonna’s beauty mark is. All of the coolest kids on MySpace had one. Now that Lucy had a piercing and knew a good place, surely this was a sign that I should get one too?!).
After school was finished for the day, I texted my dad asking if I could go to Southend with some friends. The truth was, I was going alone, and straight to a piercing parlour. I knew exactly how my dad felt about facial piercings: ‘Not under my roof.’ My dad loathed facial piercings, always referring to them as ‘ugly bits of metal in the face’. Maybe when he sees that I have a Madonna piercing, he’ll actually quite like it, and I won’t be in trouble, I foolishly thought, trying to convince myself this was a great idea. To my surprise, he agreed to let me go, under the impression I was finally hanging out with other people. My plan was in motion.
On the train ride to Southend, I started to feel nervous. I knew in the back of my mind exactly how my dad would react if I came home with a Madonna piercing. Not only was I getting a metal stud in my face, but I was also lying to him about what I was doing. I wasn’t sure which action was going to make him angrier. It is worth noting that I wasn’t doing any of this to spite him – it wasn’t a case of teenage rebellion, as you might expect. My desperation to fit in at school by getting something ‘cool’ like a piercing simply overrode my logical thinking. Whilst I definitely knew it wouldn’t go down well, I was holding on to a slither of hope that I’d created in my head that maybe – just maybe – he’d be okay with my choice once he saw it.
I’ll save you the long, dramatic walk to the parlour – I got the piercing. It hurt. Have you ever heard your top layer of skin snap? It’s gross. I walked out, nervous but triumphant – I finally had a Madonna piercing like the cool kids! I knew it would be better to call my dad and warn him about what I’d done rather than simply turn up at home with some metal in my face. Perhaps in the time it takes to get home, he will have calmed down! With a deep breath, I dialled my dad’s number.
‘Hey, pup!’
‘Hey, Dad!’
‘Had a good time in Southend?’
‘Yeah, I got an upper lip piercing.’
Silence.
‘What?’
‘I got an upper lip piercing.’
Click. He’d hung up on me. Oh God, it’s worse than I thought, and I quickened my pace back towards the train station. I’m in for it now.
Before I could conjure up any worst-case scenarios, my phone rang. It was my mum. Despite the fact that my parents had separated years before, they were still close friends – but Mum and I never phoned each other. Something serious was going down.
‘Hello?’
‘Emma, what have you done?’
‘Uh, I got an upper lip piercing . . . why?’
‘Right, get it taken out. Dad’s about to throw your stuff out of the house.’
‘What?!’
‘Just get it taken out. I’ll tell him you’re getting it taken out and try and smooth things over.’
He was kicking me out? I’d known he was going to be upset, but never had I been kicked out of my house. I didn’t dare try to phone him back – instead, I caught the train back to Basildon and went to our local parlour and got it taken out. (I know what you’re thinking – if my home town had a piercing parlour, why didn’t I just get the piercing done there? To this day, I don’t have an answer for you. I just didn’t have much common sense.)
When I got home, my face free of metal, I crept in, sheepishly walking into the living room where my dad was sitting. Clearly, my mum had worked her magic in calming him down. Instead of yelling, he simply ignored me as I said hello and went up to my room. I breathed a sigh of relief. He continued to be mad for a couple of days, communicating only in grunts, but eventually he began to forget the whole thing happened – up until now, that is. Sorry, Dad.
What’s interesting about this story to me is that, a few years after it happened, I brought it up in conversation, and he told me why he was so angry. It wasn’t that I’d got the piercing (although he still wasn’t happy about it), it was because I’d gone behind his back and lied to him about going to Southend to get it done. If I had done the right thing and asked him, and he’d said no, I should’ve respected that – I was living under his roof, rent free, with meals cooked and clothes paid for, and lying about something was not the way to show gratitude.
So after reading a chapter about carving out your own path, and then one about doing as you’re told – where is the line? When do we need to respect our parents’ wishes, and when do we need to make our own decisions?
Who Do You Answer To?
As I said previously in this book, every so often in your life, there will come a time – whether it is far off in the future, soon, or even right now – when you will have no one to ask permission from, no one to ask an opinion from, and no one to answer to but yourself. This is why I always urge people not to follow in their parents’ footsteps unless they are truly happy to do so – because one day, they won’t be around, and you will be left with only what they wanted for you, and perhaps not what you wanted for yourself.
However, until that time comes, many of you reading this will have at least one parent that is trying to push you in a certain direction – whether that’s forcing you to join after-school clubs, or telling you what to study, or that you need to work in the family business. Now, I’m not trying to tell you to rebel against your parents – they are people too, just like you, and I’ll talk more about that later on in this chapter. However, it is important that, as you’re beginning to find out who you truly are, you stay loyal to your own passions and aspirations. I didn’t always do this growing up, in the form of not asking my parents if I could audition for school plays, and not studying the courses I would’ve enjoyed. There is a big difference, though, between living for yourself and disrespecting your parents. Sometimes all it takes is a little conversation. Communication is key.
Say that there is something you really want to do, such as join a club. Firstly, you have to communicate that to your parents. Sit them down, give them a flyer for the club if you have one, and tell them you really want to join. If they say yes, that’s great! However, if they say no, let’s say because it’s too far away, calmly ask for a compromise. Do you have a friend who is willing to join the club? Does that friend have a parent that could take the both of you? If not, would your parents be willing to let you join a club that is similar, but more local? Is there a way of promising to help around the house in exchange for a ride? If you’re old enough to get a part-time job, could you go if you got a taxi there and back, or could you pay your parents to make the trip?
Sometimes there may be unavoidable reasons for why you can’t go, such as the club being too expensive. In those scenarios, it’s important to realise when something just cannot happen at this time in your life. Shouting and storming off will achieve nothing – and that goes for any dispute in your household. The way to get the best results from your parents is to treat them like humans, with their own lives and their own problems, all whilst trying to take care of the family. More on this later.
Let’s go back to my Madonna piercing. Instead of lying to my dad about getting it done and then going behind his back to the next town before cowardly confessing what I’d done over the phone, I should have instead sat him down and asked him if I could get the piercing. He definitely would’ve said no, and I should’ve accepted that and not got it done, no matter how much I wanted it. The piercing wouldn’t have affected my future, and doing something he was so against would’ve been disrespectful. No matter how cool I would’ve looked to my peers, it would never have been worth going behind my dad’s back and damaging that relationship like I did.
However, there is a MASSIVE difference between a Madonna piercing and your entire future. If there is a certain dream you have, then you owe it to yourself to chas
e it down as hard as you can. This means doing things such as joining clubs, doing auditions, writing novel after novel, studying as hard as you can, volunteering at places simply for experience – whatever needs to be done to get closer to your dream job. Sometimes, your parents will not understand or appreciate what you want to do for the rest of your life. Perhaps they’ll tell you it’s unrealistic, and that you’d be safer working in an office than trying to be your own boss. Remember that, as hard as it is to hear it, your parents will only be saying that because they want to protect you. They want the best for you, and don’t wish to see you as a ‘starving artist’ or unsuccessful and disheartened. However, if you work as hard as you can, and for as long as you can, you will begin to reap the rewards for your time and effort, and eventually your parents will be behind you every step of the way. It can be hard feeling as though you are doing something that is disappointing them in the short-term, but in time, they will realise that you have always been the master of your own destiny. No one on this planet really has that long – so you have to spend what little time you do have doing what you love. If that means going to university, or not going to university, or not joining the family business, or not doing a career your parents approve of, so be it. One day, you will be the only person you answer to. It will always be better to say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ than, ‘I wish I’d tried that.’
Parents Are People, Too
Oh great, you’re thinking. I fight with my parents all the time and now Emma’s defending them. Listen, I’ll start off by saying that I don’t know your parents. They may be lovely, or they may be complete arseholes who never listen to you. They could be wonderful to you and spoil you rotten, or physically and/or mentally abuse you. I do not, nor will I ever, know what hand you were dealt. However, I can guarantee one thing: your parents are human beings. Complex, troubled, stressed human beings, with thoughts, feelings and flaws. Once you begin to see them not as parents, but as adults, you can begin to change your relationship with them, and understand them on a completely different level. Once your parents become your friends, your life will be one hundred and ten per cent better.
Feel Good 101_The Outsiders' Guide to a Happier Life Page 8
