The truth about resilience
A childhood memory reminds me I'm tougher than I think.
Content warning: violence against a child (a younger me)
The longer you stick around, the more chance the strangest thoughts will drift into your mind, usually while you’re doing something mundane. Echoes of your old self, sounding through time. I was hanging up laundry – the worst household task, surely. Just so boring. As with all dull chores, I have a system to get through it as quickly as possible. Separating it all, matching the socks, sorting the remaining clothes into categories determining their slot on the airer. I pretended, as always, not to be repulsed by the feel of damp washing between my fingers, and ignored the pull on my back muscles as I reached over with a pair of my underpants that definitely need replacing. My mind wandered, and a memory came to me of being 12. A strange age to go back to, nothing really happened that year, except a slight change in routine. Maybe it’s because I’ve read two Anne Tylers this week.
I was bullied at school. At that particular time, it was rarely violent. I was adept at sticking to shadows or knowing when to quieten myself in a threatening environment, but it was an everyday thing I had to deal with. Schools run on impenetrable hierarchies, and I occupied the lowest rungs on most of them. I wasn’t sporty or beautiful. I was small and weedy. I had freckles. I wasn’t rich, and my parents were divorced. And there was my voice, the way I moved, everything. So I was an easy target. I was clever, thankfully, but careful not to be too clever, for fear of attracting too much attention. A lot of it was low-level. Sniggering when I spoke in class, name-calling, shoving in the playground or the dinner queue, a stray kick as I passed, laughing at my uselessness on the football field during the much-dreaded PE lessons. Even my friends would shift their chairs slightly, or step away from me, when anything started, one asking me once: ‘Why can’t you just be normal?’ As any queer child will tell you, your days are spent self-editing, presenting versions of yourself you hope will allow you to survive undiscovered, unharmed. I was not entirely successful. Not remotely, in fact. Every breath gave me away. By the time I was twelve, however, I’d been at school with these people for seven or eight years, so most of them knew me and just let me get on with it, unless they’d had a bad day and were looking for a release. I had my allies. Some of the girls would stick up for me, and there were boys who tolerated me. For a period, I walked to school with three of them, as they all lived nearby. Three of us would meet at the top of my road and we’d collect the fourth on the way, then walk through the park, or sometimes collect a fifth boy. I don’t remember much of what we would talk about, but I had a smart mouth and I remember making them laugh. It was possibly the most ‘normal’ part of my day. They didn’t speak to me at school, really; we went our separate ways, to our own echelons.
The thing I remember so clearly about growing up was feeling I couldn’t go anywhere by myself because, at that time, there’d be kids roaming round looking to beat up anyone who wasn’t familiar. I had a few safe routes that I stuck to – usually longer, and possibly even more dangerous, familiar to many queer kids, I’m sure – that got me to places like my nana’s or my grandma’s, the local shop, that kind of thing. Sometimes, adults would ask me why I didn’t go out and play, as I sat with my nose in a book I’d read 1,000 times before. I couldn’t explain to them that it wasn’t safe for me. Their generation had climbed trees, pilfered wood from rival streets’ bonfires, gone on adventures; they had been popular and sociable and free. They couldn’t see the invisible cage I carried with me at all times.
So, the change in routine. There was a boy from another school. Typical, really, that I’d just about got everything ‘under control’ with my own classmates, when some other bastard turned up. He lived near us. He wanted to violently assault us. That’s it, really. The reason? There doesn’t have to be a reason for this kind of behaviour. It doesn’t have logic, there is no debate to be had; you are different, you must be punished. This was a very localised culture war. We went to a different school. That was it. I can’t quite remember, but I think the boy got to one of us, I can’t recall who. We made a pact after that, to always walk together, setting off for school earlier than we needed to, to avoid bumping into him. This boy was sadistic, there was every chance he would kill one of us, yet not one of us considered bringing it up with parents or a teacher, even at 12 years old recognising the futility of involving any kind of law enforcement. We carried on, the five of us, sometimes having to run very fast when we saw the sadistic stranger coming. But there was safety in numbers. I’d never known ‘numbers’ before; it was usually just me. I was no less anxious, but at least I wasn’t alone. Until I was. In the end, it wasn’t the boy from another school who got to me. A pact, with straight boys? I should’ve known better.
One day, five became six, when one of the boys’ younger brothers – aged no more than ten – joined us on the journey home. There was an atmosphere I wasn’t yet wise enough to decode. Alarm bells, yes, but faint. I was always a fast walker, so I must’ve been a little ahead of the group, around ten minutes into our twenty-minute journey, opposite the graveyard – I am fated to remember every second of this, sadly – when I heard one of them say, ‘Go on’. The youngest boy, the newcomer, jumped me from behind, grabbing me by the neck and punching me until I fell to the ground. I was not a fighter, by any means, and while I was almost three years older, I was no match for this kid; he was scrawny but strong, with the focused and efficient movements of a child who relished brawls and fought to win. I remember the other boys standing round, silent. The boy tried to choke me with my tie, and banged my head on the pavement, and punched me in the face. I did fight him off as best as I could, and eventually managed to release myself from his grip. He booted me as I struggled to my feet, tears streaming down my face, the ultimate shame. I had let them see me cry, exactly what they wanted. I had lost, I was weak, nothing. They’d perhaps wanted to remind me that my membership of their gang was temporary and could be revoked at any time.
I stumbled away, taking an alternative route, with great heaving breaths as I tried to stem my crying. All I could think was that I wasn’t safe anymore, and also that my school tie – the only one I owned – had been pulled so tight it might have to be cut off, and my mum might be mad about having to buy another. (It didn’t, and I never told her what happened, even though she noticed something was wrong.) Even your allies, your so-called friends, could betray you in the name of entertainment. You were never safe, could never breathe out and relax, not even for a second. I had trusted them. More fool me.
I had to change my routine again. This new schedule came flooding back to me, over thirty years later, as I folded the socks. The drudgery my life became. I got up earlier than ever, when it was still dark, and ate my corn flakes downstairs with TV:am on low, before setting off for school alone. There were no other children around at that time, so I was safe, in my mind, and I arrived at school an hour before it opened, found a corner of the playground, and read until the bell went, as schoolmates trickled through the gates, each one seeming as if they didn't have a care in the world. I felt like I was looking at the rest of the world through glass. It took me a while to live down being beaten by a ten-year-old, but I carried on. We all moved schools after that year, and the other boys went somewhere else. More horrors awaited me at the next school, but let’s not dwell.
I barely think about this period of my life at all now, but when I did, there was a small spark of fury at the convoluted, stressful, reduced life I was forced to lead to avoid acts of violence. And I think of the children – and indeed adults – going through it now. We will never be fully free. When I’ve written about this before, there’s been the odd suggestion from below the line that I should move on, or let go, forgive and forget. I have moved on, quite far indeed, and I’ve let it go insofar as it didn’t ruin my life. That said, I won’t ever forget it. I’ll always remember how it felt to be that little boy. He reminds me how far I’ve come, how important it was to keep going in pursuit of a better day, and how if I can get through that, I can probably get through anything. Revenge has never worked for me as a motivator; I don’t thrive to show off to my bullies, I do it for me. That 12-year-old’s resilience, not their violence, has motivated me.
How lucky to make it out, to be a grown man, recall this flicker of a past life and, rather than break in two, shrug it off to fit two loads of washing perfectly onto a clothes airer. So many of us don’t.
I went through this alone, but no child should have to. Make a donation to ChildLine via NSPCC so they can help vulnerable children find their voice.
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