Day 10 - Unfavourable Experience

In keeping with the tone of yesterday's post, I thought I would give you a bit of infight into what school was like for me growing up.  Now, like I said in yesterday's post, some of this information is not going to be new to you if you've watched the Coming Out video I made last week.

While in Elementary school I lived a pretty normal existence.  When I got into about grade five I think is where the nonsense began.  When I was a child I used to hang out with all of the people who would later become my bullies.  Those people that I'd spent nights with, and gone sledding with, and had a hundred birthday parties with would later be the people who made my life miserable.

So, I would say in grade five I started having people harass me about my sexual orientation.  The part of my being gay that I resent the most is the fact that people "knew" years before I did.  There is no shame nor hiding it with me, I just am.  I hated that even though I was in very serious, committed relationships with the women that I was dating, that I didn't get the respect to let me discover my own sexual orientation.  This may seem like a ridiculous thing for me to thin, seeing as how this fact later helped me in my coming out process, especially with my family!

When I was in grade six, (I say this loosely because I can't quite remember what grade, elementary school regardless,) I wound up having to see a therapist for many months.  Every third Thursday of the month she would come to my classroom and pull my out of class.  Now that I'm saying this, I believe it lasted right through til the end of school at Junction Road.  I had my even my cousins throwing ridiculous comments and making me feel like an outcast.  Especially in such young grades where students just naturally gravitate to what is happening that allows to you fit in.  At least when you're bullied in higher grades people have the intelligence to form their own decisions of you.  I may have been bullied but I had a ton of friends as well.

Moving into junior high school, things naturally got worse.  The school is larger and the students are older, and each grade had double the amount of kids, as the two elementary schools merge when making the transition to junior high.  I remember two boys right off the cuff that set out to make me miserable all the time.  One of those people would wait for me outside of school with a threat looming that he was going to beat the snot out of me, and I was a little kid, I make no jokes when I say I would have easily been beaten.  The other kid, and one of his other friends, would do summersaults in the hallways and aim themselves at me so that when they were done, they would kick me and I would fall over into the wall or onto the floor.  It was humiliating!

During grades seven and eight, the local legion in my town held dances for the kids of town.  I went religiously to these dances and there one weekend, I met a girl named Laurie.  As I said, I was actually pretty sure I wasn't gay for a long time.  I was older than most.  I would tell myself that if I was attracted to this girl, which I was, that theres no way I was gay.  Whoops?

So, towards the end of grade eight, March I'll say, I remember a day that sticks out in my mind always when I talk of high school in Springhill, I'd left school one day to walk home and the kicks waiting for the buses started hurling rocks at me.  They were rather far away, and I'm quite sure I never actually got struck with a rock, but I remember thinking, 'why am I still here?'

I used to get furious that my parents would not move to a different town, a bigger town maybe.  Somewhere that I wouldn't be the brunt of everyone's ridicule.  So, in March, I moved to Amherst.  I moved in with Laurie and her parents and started school in Amherst.  While at that school, for the two months I attended, I was actually on the other side of the fence.  Not that I was bullying people because I wasn't, but I certainly didn't have the constant terror that was my life in Springhill.

Missing my parents, I decided in May of that year, that it was time to move back home.  Though I had no desire to go back to school in Springhill, it was my only option, as I was too young to drive.  School in Springhill for the remainder of that year was miserable as always, and that summer my mom moved to Amherst.

So back in Amherst, I found myself.  Though this year I was in a new school, and once again, back at the low end of the totem pole.  The students in this school weren't so pleasant and I hated it there just as much.  I rarely attended school, and when I did I would walk the two kms in the morning and after school so that I could avoid taking the bus.  I did all of my work at home, and honoured that year of school!  I am still proud of that!

I digress, in grade ten, about a month into the year, I decided to move back to Springhill.  I figured at least the arseholes that were living there and making me miserable were familiar people.  People I'd grown up with.  Though at the time I'd thought it was going to make things better, it had actually made things worse.  I allowed myself to fall in with the bad crowd and started skipping school, and this time I was not doing my work at home, like I had been in Amherst.

I started smoked weed and drinking all the time, and I even tried ecstasy.  In grade eleven I even dropped out of school.  This happened in April.  I was working part-time at the nursing home in town, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew I had to get back into school.  I talked with my friends parents and it was decided that I would move in with them, in Parrsboro, what would later become my home.

I started school in Parrsboro, and at this point in my life I was dating a girl, Lorraine, but I was completely honest with myself in knowing that I at least had attraction to men.  Lorraine and I quickly broke up once I was in a school that not only I was thriving, but I had friends.  I was no longer just the person that everyone attacked, but I was the new, interesting kid.  Though I was liked by most, I chose to keep it simple and befriend anyone that wasn't necessarily someone everyone liked.  I loved that year.

Once Josh and I got together things with school went down hill.  I wound up leaving Parrsboro to move back in with my mom, and going back to Amherst school was no easy thing for me to do.  I think I attended one day and then decided correspondence was the way to go.  I completed one course at home, and in April of that year started to realize that I didn't have enough time to get it all finished in time to graduate with all of my friends, in Parrsboro.

So I went into the school one day, to actually get a pamphlet and application on a university, and a teacher I'd grown to love, Ms. Jewers, started asking me questions.  The course I had left to complete was a Global History, or Global Geography course, a requisite for graduating, and this just so happened to be one of the courses she taught.  She went into the office and when she came back out she said I started the next monday.

Just like that, I was back in Parrsboro school and travelling to and from Amherst, with a car I'd bought. I was able to graduate with my friends and all was well, though my marks were certainly not my best effort.  Two years later I actually ended up going to school, and honoured each course I took.  That was an excellent year of school for me, but that is another story.

So you see, sometimes school isn't a great experience, but by changing my experience as I went, I ended up having a great experience!  I know this is not an option for most and I hope that somehow everyone who deals with bullying finds peace!

Please check out the links in my previous post for contact info if you need it!!

K.F.H.
23:04AST