Bully for you…

Bully for you…

No!

 I can NOT be the only one who has ever felt this way!

On the bus alone because no one wants to sit next to me

In class because no one wants to sit next to me

They held their noses as though I was an alien from outer space.

They tell me I smell I don’t fit in I don’t wear socks (though not through wanting or affording)

I can NOT be the only one who wonders why I feel so outside of the world looking in.

I swear others MUST have gone through this TOO…

People always making comments not behind your back but to your face they do not care WHO they hurt!

I would walk home alone no socks to cushion the rainwater from the soles of my tired feet.

My tired mind.

You see I wondered for 12 years IF life would get better wondering IF there WAS something wrong with ME.

WHY I had NO friends WHY I always rode my bike alone WHY I would spend hours alone reading to escape to another world poets and authors took me away from the reality my life became bleak and foggy on all fronts at home. At school.

Why

WAS

Life

So

Alone?

Tears, stares, punches I got the kicks, pushes and torment.

ON the bus, at home and walking down the school hallway I would cling to the white washed walls in the hope they would transport me to another place.

Another life.

Sat next to on the bus twenty others sat behind calling me names sitting next to me to wind me up taking about my hair, sockless shoes and torn, unwashed and putrid clothes.

I looked down at my rags I looked upon theirs in envy why did I not have clean clothes and a pair of socks, shoes without holes

Nice hair?

A packed lunch

Family holidays,

Days out?

Anyone to talk to at home?

 Why was I ignored?

Left out of family parties?

Told there and then at my request maybe to come I was not family so I cannot attend an left at home alone whilst everyone else went and I would overhear the stories the next day tales of dancing family talks and food really nice food I longed to taste too.

 It was then I decided no one cared about me no one cared to look after me so I was nothing compared to the other children in my form or my school.  Other children on the bus pretended not to notice an air of relief that it was not them etched across their faces as they looked sorrowfully at me

No one could save me.

The 15 minute journey each day would appear like hours would last for hours in my head as I got home to my bedroom.

I began to get the later longer bus to which my tormentors could not get home.

Safe protected by metal and glass I would stand alone at the bus stop and watch them jeer and taunt me from the window but I would only look down and the damp gravel floor ashamed.

The number 18 bus which took a longer route to get home I passed streets for which I had never seen before houses I had never knew existed this is where my love of bus journey came from my love of ANY journey came from. I would watch as the warm evening glow would radiant from each window of the houses I passed I would imagine that I was going home to that house and I was to be greeted with love and smiles and that I would be able to talk and share like I had heard others at my school had been able to do with their parents and siblings.

I would get me home late to which the only communication I got ALL evening with anybody was: why are you late?

 From her another oppressor to which I just go and sit upstairs on my bed and say nothing.

Slapped around the face for just looking her in the eye and called every name under the sun told I could be sent back to the courts AT ANY TIME as though I was an unwanted Christmas gift.

Waiting to be summoned downstairs for a meagre portion of dinner whilst everybody else gorged themselves portions and helped themselves to second portions in the pot mine was to be eaten alone in the kitchen whilst everybody else ate in living room and talked and laughed how longed to be a part of that each evening.

And DARE I reach into the Dutch pot or even ask for a second portion of food or an extra piece of meat or extra rice or a dumpling.

I received £1 lunch money a day I could not even afford chips which were priced at £1.10 so to save embarrassment or comment from anyone in the canteen I would hide and sit outside on the wall at lunch in rain, snow or summer look longingly at others packed lunches from home or food brought from the canteen and long to be in their shoes literally.

I would get so angry at myself.

I would get SO angry I would punch my wardrobe door until my knuckles bled.

I would punch my wooden door over and over until my knuckles bled and ONLY then would I feel better until I saw and felt the warm trickle of my own blood on my unbroken hand wrist.

I couldn’t talk to anyone I was locked a golden key could not unbolt this door. So many things piled upon a tiny mind SO much to absorb when it I should have been innocent instead I was exposed to toxic poison.

There was NO end to the torment home school home school home school home school home school home school home school home school parents, Drug addicts social services social services social services being a ward of the court home school, meetings meeting about meeting psychologists, school councillors all trying to get into my closed bolted shut mind.

It was a tormented 12 years the toughest of my entire life but then aged 16…

 chinks of light broke through the canopy of my leaves that was my thoughts my being my spirit hit my forest floor and from then on in I began to breathe for where once I had been suffocated, smothered I breathed oxygen like I had never before I with all my strength I breathed and gasped for air clung, climbed I grew shoots from me and grew roots and vines big strong roots that blasted skywards and left the obscurity of the forest floor and chased the warm rays of the sun…

I was unlocked I threw off the vines that had entwined themselves around my heart blackened they burned as they tried to cling to me to claim the rays as their own that bathed me they slowly burned, withered, crumbled and turned to ash beneath me on the dark, dirty rotten forest floor.

30/05/2000 I left the torment

02/02/2000 one of my worlds was born

21/09/2002. The day I made friends

19/01/2007 I graduated with honours a Law Degree.

30/09/2011 Mouthy happened to me

28/01/2012 my first published poem.

30/08/2012 performed my poetry at the London 2012 Olympic Games

1/10/2012 Started helping teaching English in a secondary school

7/06/2013 I performed poetry in Budapest in a little underground book shop to a hundred people and gave those who came to listen to ME and others speak Goosebumps!!

14/08/2013 I am about to undertake my first poetry workshop teaching impoverished children how to write and how to express themselves…

Freedom came.

Happiness came.

Loneliness VANISHED

What made me weird and alone and all the hurt and the pain became my beauty and talent but most of all… I became ME.

16/06/2013: (aged 29) the date I realised I was NOT the only one! The anguish STILL lives on in other lives… somebody ELSE now wonders IF there life will ever get better.

This is WHY I must sit here and fight! Through these tears to write to tell you to make YOU understand that life does get better!

I PROMISE.

Serita Blake LLB.