My name is Chris, I’m 30 and based
in the West Midlands. I’m currently studying to become a counsellor. I also
sing in 2 choirs, follow several sports and love writing and reading history. I
am interested in disability, mental health and identity – my blog can be found
at www.memyselfanddisability.wordpress.com, I can also be found on twitter -anything else just ask!
It
was December 2006, I was sat in a pub with some schoolfriends catching up from
our first completed terms at universities all over the UK. Suddenly, one friend
turned to me, and as if seeing me for the first time said quietly “Chris, you
put up with a lot of stuff in school!”
It
was a genuinely arresting moment, this was not only something that he was just
waking up to, but something that I was also just starting to realise. I didn’t
realise that I was bullied in high school until I left, because it was so
normal that I didn’t notice. I knew that having my wheelchair moved when I left
it somewhere, constant verbal barbs about my physio, my walk, and mocking my
supposed lack of masculinity were awful experiences. Feeling excluded from even
the concept of dating and having my sexuality as a disabled person mocked left
me with many mental scars, some of which I’ve only recently started to look at.
But what I didn’t know was that it was bullying.
I
was raised with a strong independent streak, a sense that my cerebral palsy
wasn’t going to hold me back from my ambitions and that where problems were
encountered, solutions would be found. My parents didn’t know what the social
model of disability was, but my upbringing encapsulated it. This gave me a
strong drive to ‘just get on with it’ and play the cards that life dealt me. If
that meant being bullied and ostracised in many subtle ways, then I would get
on with it and not let it get me down. This was my normal. I’ve often said that
when you have a disability, you know who your true friends are, I was lucky to
have a core group that seldom wavered and were always in my corner. Looking
back you realise that it shouldn’t have to be that way.
This
also meant that because I was raised in an environment where my disability was
not a problem, it meant that I didn’t realise until much later that that was
really a key reason why I took so much hostility in my teens. It’s not that I
didn’t know I had CP, it just didn’t matter to me very much. I was much more
likely to identify first as a sports fan, a singer, a horse rider, someone who
wanted to go into theatre, with a budding interest in politics before I even
mentioned my disability – indeed, I never considered disability a strong part
of my identity, largely because I had no peers going through similar things.
Nothing to compare my experiences against. And that, looking back, is key.
One
of the major changes between then and now that I see is that disabled young
people are networking and connecting in a way that we didn’t before so even
those in mainstream schools where they may be the only disabled pupils, are
more likely to have a network of support and shared experience. The
conversations around disability identity, experience, bullying and acceptance
from ourselves and from others, are starting to happen now among young people
in a way I’m happily jealous of. It also seems to me that disabled adults and
young people are sharing experiences much more now, it is striking to me that I
didn’t know any disabled adults until I was one! I’m happy to say that such
things are much less likely (though not impossible) now.
We
may not have reached the point where bullying of disabled people is an anomaly,
but hopefully it won’t take friends realising it in the pub long after it
happens for us to know it’s happening. And that way, we can address it in the
moment.
Have you ever faced bullying? How did you deal with it? What effect did it have on you?
