Published on 12, July, 2020
I found school a traumatising experience and I still don’t think I’m completely recovered yet. I don’t know what the worst part was – the noise, bullying, lack of understanding from horrible teachers, the difficulty in fitting in, trouble finding classes because the school was split up into buildings so you had maths in building A and then science in building D. I never did get used to that.
I did enjoy the learning though. I still like to learn now but prefer doing it from home watching videos on YT and reading books on how to do this and that. It’s how I learnt to play the guitar and how I learnt to make my own bird box for the birds in my garden. I think all children should get to learn from home because it would make schooling a lot more fun, if you don’t mind being on your own.
My favourite time was the holidays. I could stay home and shut myself in my room without fear of having to go to school and face all the dread and horrors. Back then I never wanted summer to end!
At school I did attempt to make friends but I got bullied and gave up in the end. I did make one friend though, another girl who was also bullied. We bonded over the fact we were targeted by the bullies. It was a friendship that lasted though. The only good thing to come out of me going to school.
In general I did not enjoy school. From start to finish it was absolute hell. My worst memory of it was my maths teacher, a woman who knew I had anxiety and hated having to talk and she always made me stand up and answer questions when she knew I couldn’t answer it correctly.
Luckily that is all over now. I would never go back and anyone who has to go to school has my sympathies.
I loved the learning and the predictable, familiar routine. Everything else was awful. I got bullied for being 'weird', and for being poor, and for being hopeless at sport. When I became a teenager it got worse because all those things were still true, but I was also a late bloomer and fairly obviously queer (obvious to everyone else anyway, I would realise MUCH later, due to section 28 and very limited cultural awareness about asexuality anyway). And then for some reason I decided it was a great idea to be a goth I think my reasoning was that if everyone hated me for being weird, I might as well be weird on purpose and in a way that I enjoyed. It didn't stop the bullying, but it did make me feel as though I had some control over my life.
I didn't know I was autistic at the time, but looking back, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world. This was the 90s through to the mid-2000s though, and it was just assumed that girls in mainstream education couldn't possibly be autistic- even if they were socially clueless, ate the same packed lunch every day for years, and couldn't get through a PE lesson without some sort of physical or social ordeal occurring.