Let me take you back to 1995 when John Major had resigned as Prime Minister, on the other side of the pond OJ Simpson got the not guilty verdict and back on English soil, I had started secondary school!
Oh yes, I had romanticised the whole idea of it! I honestly thought it would be an extension of my time at primary school; making friends easily, being competitive and opinionated without fear, getting up to a lil mischief and being 100% me.
Boi!
I could not have been more wrong!
I felt like I had left the ‘Little house on the praire’ and had been tossed onto an extended series of Bad girls. I had a rude awakening to the fact that my life was going to be very different to what I had expected and I simply wasn’t prepared for it.
That’s the thing with transition you can’t always prepare perfectly beforehand, some changes are somewhat predictable while others aren’t and in some circumstances it’s not the change alone that’s the issue, it’s the challenge of adjusting to the change. Transition: the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. Often transition can be a major point of relief, anger, sadness you name it. As people we evolve whether we like it or not; childhood into adulthood, single to married, unemployed to running a business you get my drift.
Life means change and how we deal with the process or period of change matters. The choices we make affect us positively or negatively and can impact us for a long time too.
So, lets continue.
So there I am, at the school gates with my slightly baggy school sweatshirt, pleated navy midi skirt and my bleached, white knee high socks and on my feet were my black, thick rubber sole, oxford style and very sensible brogue school shoes, that were absolutely indestructible. I stood proudly at the school gates ready to step over the threshold into womanhood.
Welp!
Let’s just say I certainly stepped into something. My secondary school was a girls’ only school and there was clearly a ‘who’s who’ hierarchy in place. I saw myself quite quickly at the bottom of the ‘food chain’. This left me feeling invincible and unimportant and I’d never ever felt like that in my life, it was unpleasant and it felt so foreign.
You may be thinking “that was decades ago why bother with it?” Well I’ll be honest up until that time I thought I was a pretty confident and chilled person. The bullying and name calling that I went through really changed me. Sometimes, you know when you explore your past you can pin point those pivotal moments of positive and negative change and sometimes it can help you to recognise certain thought patterns, choices and behaviour that may need healing or change to allow you to progress forward effectively.
The name calling literally started by me walking past a group of the older girls, they looked as rough as they sounded and to me they were pretty scary. They cussed my sock’s my hair and yup my so called “boffin shoes”. It became a daily ritual; laughing at me, making snarky remarks, calling me “uuuuuuuugly”.
“ Explore your past, you can pinpoint those pivitol moments of positive and negative change…”
– everyshoe tales.
I began to literally soak in what they said and how they behaved towards me. I wish I could write that I just mustered up the confidence to say something back, or that I just didn’t let what they were doing bother me but that, just wasn’t my story. All I had the ability to do at the time, was to do all I could to avoid them.
Their tutor room was slightly opposite mine, separated by a couple of star jump lengths across brown, shiny and seriously scuffed herringbone floor. I figured that if I took the long way round to my tutor room and did not look in their direction while opening my classroom door, then they wouldn’t notice me, and it worked. So, I began to use avoidance as a coping mechanism for anything that made me feel uncomfortable, literally. So, no awkwardly walking past a group of seniors, putting myself forward for class rep or playing well in sports. I just sank further and further away and the thing is I loved running, I loved having an opinion, but I hid it all.
I also developed a habit of literally looking down when I was out and about, especially if I was walking alone. I looked down at the ground to avoid any eye contact with anyone and it got to the point where it felt normal.
Let’s pause a moment and think about our coping mechanisms.
Copy mechanisms are in a nut shell, things you do consciously or unconsciously to ease tension and help you cope with stressful situations. For example, when someone’s stressed they may go for a walk to try and wind down. There are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
- Do you notice any unhealthy coping mechanisms?
- Where do you get your coping mechanisms from?
- Why are coping mechanisms important?
Ready? Lets’ continue.
So this change within me also determined who I hung out with, I guess I didn’t choose my friends but was rather taken in by the nice girls. You know the ones who were nice to everyone, but never chosen first for drama, sports, dance or anything really. We didn’t have much in common with each other, but they were nice enough to team up with me and even with them I still couldn’t be authentically me.
I was really into RnB and Rap, do you remember Keith Sweat “you got me twisted over you’” – eh heh that’s where I was at and you know, Black Street, Jagged Edge and the like! While they were into Take That and David Beckham. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having different tastes and likes but I felt like I was an ‘add on’, it was a kind gesture to be my ‘friend’, so I wouldn’t be on my own.
I remember one time when we were sitting down in tutor group and one of the nice girls shuffled next to me and whispered excitedly “Guess who me and my brother were dancing to last night? It was a rapper”, she added with a tone of approval. As she fidgeted in her chair with excitement, I started to think ‘ok, maybe we do have some things in common here’. As I was quite knowledgeable about rappers, I thought, this should be pretty easy to guess, so I guessed.
“Tupac?”
“Nope”
“Erm…Biggie, Notor-“
“-Nooooo”
“Ok, right … Ahh how could I forget, Busta Rhymes?”
“Who? No” she said rather impatiently.
It was (drum roll) “Will Smith, Men in Black!” she said with some kind of triumph.
I remember smiling for quite a while and raising my eyebrows, thinking ‘Men in Black’ – was that it? Not even ‘Summer Time’. I kept the ‘smile’ plastered on my face and simply nodded. Then looking around at the group I thought do I really belong here? They were giggling and talking about their previous get together over the weekends, that I never seemed to get an invite for.
So, I guess because I never felt accepted during the first couple of years of secondary school, those feelings led to feelings of unworthiness. If I was told I was rubbish at something, I basically believed that I was. You see the way you think will determine how you behave. I thank God that things did change for the better during my latter years at school and I do have a pair of shoes for that in my next blog- Decisions
Round Up!
As a child, you think as a child – right? But certain thought processes and feelings that develop from things that happen in childhood, I believe can mutate into adulthood. I mentioned earlier in the blog that during the process of transition the way that we process, adapt and manage it (negatively and positively) can in turn affect the type of choices we make, for example in our relationships, for our health, careers and so on.
It’s important to realise that transition can come outside of our control and at times within our control. We are not robots (yet, lol), so we cannot always pre-empt, prepare or control errthang! I don’t even think we were made to.
What’s important is learning now what ‘s good for us:
- Healthy coping mechanisms
- Seeking help when we need it and not be ashamed to ask for it
- Recognising some of the gunk we have accumulated over the weeks, months, and years and work at ridding it.
*A note of caution if you are really struggling mentally and/or emotionally please try and reach out for help. You can speak to your GP/Doctor. UK services – MIND – https://www.mind.org.uk/ Samaritans https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/or a trusted family member, friend, Faith leader.
