Talk about it

Life So it's nearly all over. Jade is being evicted and the E4 live feed is showing footage an hour old which indicates that something must be going on in the house. The level of contrition is startling from Danielle and everyone else involved which either means they've realised it all went a bit too far or someone's had a few words with them in the diary room.

You'll notice the tag on the post is Life not TV though. Because after my post the other day about bullying and what happened to me at school I received a nice email from a Canadian journalist who is preparing an article about this horrific incident in North Babylon, New York which I hadn't known about in which a young girl was beaten by classmates -- and the video had appeared on You-Tube.

She asked if I would write something about my experiences for the site she works for or alternatively agree to a telephone interview. I thought long and hard about it, the opportunity, but eventually declined. Even as I was thinking about it (and indeed as I write this now) I'm having flashbacks, brief glimpses of memories buried and I just felt that if I was to start dredging through past in this way, recall moments which I'd fought so hard to bury I might not stop.

I'm a different person now, I think. It was fifteen to twenty years ago and I made my piece with it all as soon as I went to university. But it doesn't mean that sometimes, when I find it hard to meet people or find myself trying to understand people or not understanding why we don't quite click that I don't wonder if there's still something deep down that isn't related to being an only child or my personality but is actually because of what happened to me at school.

Am I a coward for not wanting to confront the issue? Probably. I just think that like not wanting to eat the Rusks I used to love as a baby or watching The Grumbleweeds when I was five, there are certain things that happen when you're a youngster and as you grow up you need to leave them back were they are and not revisit the sensation no matter the opportunity. And the bullying is one of those.

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