It was May. He’d had enough. He taped his head inside a plastic bag, as he’d heard that was a quiet way to go. Wrapped more tape round his wrists behind him. crawled under the bed, restricting his movements and tried to remain calm.
Keep calm and not carry on.
He wasn’t one of the sporty kids. Shorter than the others, nerdy. Constantly referred to as “gay” or “that queer”, although it wasn’t the homophobia that drove him to the edge. He was gay at the time, but never confirmed that to his tormentors.
The other geeky kids, the Dungeons and Dragons players that he hung out with, picked on him too. Because of his hairline – higher than usual for a fourteen year old boy. They gave him a derogatory nickname. If he hung his jacket on the back of his chair in class, they’d conspire to see if they could write it on there in chalk before the end of the lesson. In the corridors the game was to sneak up behind him and reach around to slap his forehead. Again and again. Every day felt like it was a walk through enemy territory.
If he spoke out against them, if he turned them in, he’d have been a pariah. The rule of the playground was “You don’t sell out your mates”. As one of them put it to him: “We’re your friends. You rat on us, who’ve you got left?”
In the week before the plastic bag, his mother found him throwing up. The name had been written on his (leather) pencil case in tippex, and he’d tried to wash off the white remains by combining bleach and other household chemicals, and the resultant cocktail had fumes, which he’d inhaled.
She got the whole story out of him. He begged her not to make it worse. She assured him she wasn’t going to.
The day of the plastic bag, the day after the bucket, the day after the assurance from his mother – his form-master asked him to take the register back without dismissing the rest of the class.
Every set of eyes was on him as he walked out with it. There was a telltale sound of an envelope being reopened as he closed the door.
Later he managed to get the details out of a classmate. His mother had set it all out, but not the reasons for the bullying or the names of the boys involved, thankfully. The teacher had read the entire letter aloud, she had said he’d been crying himself to sleep.
It was humiliating, and that night he tried to kill himself.
As the air ran out it was a struggle not to fight. Whirling round in his head, he found one thing to live for. Pulled his wrists apart, poked an airhole in the plastic stretched over his gasping mouth.
Lived.
Bullying is horrific. And I have every sympathy for the teenagers who commit suicide. I disagree it’s a cowardly way to die – it’s a desperate way to end something that seems to be without end. It’s a last resort.
And I should know. If you’ve not guessed, the reason I know what the ‘one thing’ was that kept that poor boy alive is because it was me. Writing this I can feel the desperation crawl back in my throat. The paranoia. I thought I wouldn’t cry as I wrote this post, but I can feel the tears welling.
…
It gets better, yes. As a grown up I’ve had a great life. Right then, I couldn’t see that far ahead. People in that situation can’t. They need ‘one thing’, because one thing can tip the balance. The promise of good times in a few years is something, but something right there, right then is what is needed to stop someone at the brink. I felt totally alone.
Being visibly queer friendly is a start. Homophobic, transphobic and biphobic bullying is bad, all bullying is bad, and any bullying can lead to suicidal thoughts and fantasies.
Find a way to be one of the things people stay alive for.
Some links:
Anti Bullying Alliance
It Gets Better
Stonewall’s “If you are being bullied” page
Please comment with any others you have.
Thank you.
It was “I’ll never see how the cliffhanger resolves on this week’s Dr Who”. That gave me a week. It didn’t all get better in that one week. But it didn’t get any worse, and I’d made it a week. That’s how tiny a light I could find in the tunnel, but I’m eternally grateful that I found the light I needed.
