Contending With The Bully Inside

The surprising way I engage with my childhood bully today

I first experienced bullies at school when I was seven years old. There were two of them - a girl who was ‘my friend’, and a boy I had a crush on. The boy had just one strategy - he would call me a ‘fat moose’. 30 years later and it still hurts to acknowledge that taunt. I had no conscious awareness of my weight or size before this started, and it was the beginning of decades of self-loathing associated with my weight. The girl never commented on my size. She never called me names. She was never obvious. She whispered things to others while looking at me and then laughed. She would lead the charge among our ‘friends’ of ignoring me for days on end. She would invite me to sleepovers and then try to embarrass me. She would be nice just long enough for me to let my guard down and then start the cycle again. I’m not sure anyone believed that what she did was bullying. I remember the phrase ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’ being used a lot. We were just another pair of squabbling girls, because, ‘that’s what girls do’. I knew the parents of both children. The girl’s dad was uninterested, abrasive, dismissive. Her mum was superior and judgemental. The boy’s mum was smiley and kind to me. When I saw his dad, he seemed distracted and grave. I heard rumours that he beat his wife. We are being raised in systems of harm, and some of us are taught to be cruel very early on.

Secondary school came, and both bullies went off to different schools to me, a blessing I have never really acknowledged until now. Older kids and a new school brought more fatphobia and a ramping up of how often and how many people commented on my size. That’s when crash dieting began, and later, bulimia. I first met the boy who would go on to bully and abuse me for the next six years, when I was 11 years old. It was a physical education lesson, and we were doing long distance running around the field at the back of my school. He was fit and a fast runner. I was slow and pretty miserable about running. He had finished his laps, and came back to run next to me. He talked to me like I was a dog. Making noises, whistling, calling me various dog-themed names.

He was the most popular boy in the year. He was good looking, cool, funny, and a master manipulator. He could make people feel amazing about themselves, and he could reduce people to nothing just as easily. He had respect for those he couldn’t control and was disgusted by those he could. I fell into the latter group, I was mesmerised by him. My self esteem was so low that his cruelty felt like something I deserved. If only I was thinner or prettier or cooler, he would be kinder to me, he would like me. I became infatuated with him quickly, and this infatuation would last for years. Looking back now, I can see the motives in his behaviours towards me. For example, when he flirted, gave me attention, it was to get something from me. Once, we were in a shed in his garden, making out. I went to the toilet, and when I came back, he was on my mobile phone. He had used all my credit. A full tenner, that I had just topped up, gone. He kept me around, in the group but only on the periphery. Whenever I was feeling too relaxed or comfortable in his presence, he would say something cruel to stop me gaining confidence. Once he told me that my mix of Indian and English was an ‘intergalactic fuck up’. When I was 14, he ran up behind me and jumped on my back as I was walking down the school corridor. My left ankle went sideways and the ligament tore. When I returned to school a few days later on crutches, he told everyone I was faking. I understand well why people don’t leave abusive relationships, and I certainly understand how these patterns can be imprinted in childhood.

When I was 16, he texted me to say that he and one of the other boys were close to my house and wanted to come over. I was so completely under his control that I was nothing but excited about the prospect, and not suspicious about why he was 6 miles from where he lived when he rarely went further than the park at the end of his road. He convinced me to tell my parents that they had missed their last train (they hadn’t) and would have to stay. My parents were out for the evening, and when the boys arrived, he came and sat next to me while we watched MTV. He flirted and put his arms around me and told me he wanted to go out with me. At some point, we went into a different room, leaving the other boy alone. We carried on talking, he was touching my arms and holding my hands. When my parents came home, they grudgingly let the boys stay (on the living room floor). In the morning, I remember I brought him a cup of tea. I knelt down on the floor to give it to him, he took it with one hand, and took my hand in his with the other. It felt tender, and real. The next day I went to school and… nothing. He stopped talking to me. Stopped acknowledging my existence. A few days later, I saw him on the other side of the street near our school with a girl. The friend I was with told me she was his new girlfriend.

I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. It was so hard to process and so humiliating, I couldn’t really even admit it to myself. I forgave him, of course, not that he ever asked for my forgiveness. But months later, when he started talking to me again, I was relieved, happy even, such was the depth of his control over me. It is only very recently I have been able to revisit this memory without extreme pain, and when I did so, I started wondering what was really going on that night. Maybe they intended to steal from us. Money, booze, CDs? My parents never said anything was missing, but they wouldn’t necessarily have noticed. The booze cupboard was rarely opened, there were no big spirit drinkers in our house. If money was missing, they may have assumed I took it - we had a shelf where they kept some money so I could take what I needed for lunch/the bus etc. They trusted me, and it is so painful to know that I invited trouble into our home. It’s also possible that the boys were hiding out for the night. I remember much later, he talked about having to avoid the town I lived in because there were people there ‘who wanted to kill him’. The truth is I’ll never know why they really came to my house that night, but what they took from me left a mark so deep that I still can’t fully reconcile with it. From 11 to 17, this boy was my abuser. I was trusting and vulnerable. My autistic experience, in a world built for those who can perform the construct of normal, meant I was very susceptible to bullying, particularly to manipulation. Worse still, I know I was sometimes cruel to others to have some sense of power and control.

It’s been 20 years since I last saw him, but he still visits me in my sleep. At 37, my most recent dream of him was a week ago. For many years, I got angry about this. How dare he invade my subconscious and take up space in my thoughts and my body. I fought against it, I ignored it, I felt pathetic and deeply ashamed. Then I discovered the neuroscience of dreaming. I attended a webinar with Sidarta Ribeiro and what he shared impacted my relationship with my dreams profoundly. He talked about how our ancestors knew that dreams were information and that processing them can help us to understand what our sleeping minds are trying to tell us. Ever since then, I approach my dreams with curiosity. I share them with one or two people close to me whom I know won’t make fun of me or find it ‘childish’. A short time after this, I realised why I still dream of this boy. When he was abusing me, I felt completely helpless and worthless. Without agency, without a sense of self, without any ability to stand up for myself, like a non-person. When he shows up now in my dreams, he is there to give me information about how I am treating myself, and how I am engaging with other people. If he is cruel and I still want his love and approval, it is a sign that I have been abandoning myself. That I am ignoring my own needs to please someone else. If he is kind, and I fall for it, it could be a sign that I am being manipulated or exploited by someone. Whatever the scenario, dream bully always provides information that enables me to reassess how I want to show up for myself in my waking life.

I dream of him less often now. In the most recent dream, I was seeking him out. When I found him, he acted aloof at first, and then he softened. He said that when I was away, it hurt his heart. We had some kind of embrace. A cute baby was nearby, and I said as much. He said the baby would be cute, but he was fat. I said, no, that’s just your fatphobia, and he said ‘what about your fatphobia?’. Crumbs. Sometimes dream bully is super profound. Fatphobia might be the most entrenched colonial conditioning I have, after all, it is how this story began. This was a signal that there is more to release around this, and that it needs my attention to do so. And him missing me? I think that’s because I am showing up for myself more and more, leaving less room for him.

I’ll never be grateful for being bullied. I wish so much that my child and teenage self had felt safe and good about themselves. But my mindbody has kept this guy around for a reason, and learning to trust myself is a huge part of my healing process. The version of him that shows up in my dreams isn’t him, it’s me. Taking a form that can convey the information I need, helping me to make intentional decisions, to act from my agency, to show myself the love and respect I have always been worthy of.

I’ve no idea what happened to this kid. I doubt his life has been easy. When I think of him now, it’s with pity. And as for dream bully? I can’t hate him without hating myself, and I have already spent far too long doing that.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• How can you instil self-worth, confidence, compassion and agency in the children in your life? How can you best support children who are experiencing bullying?

• If you experienced bullying as a child, how are you supporting yourself with those wounds as an adult? Are you fighting/ignoring/pushing feelings away? How can you integrate what happened in a way that enables you to move forward in self worth and agency? In what ways is your mindbody already trying to help you do that?

• If you bullied others as a child, what parts of yourself need to heal around this? What reparations could you pay forwards?

• What systems of harm created the conditions in which you bullied, or were bullied? What are you doing as an adult to interrupt and dismantle those systems?