Bullied into Submission

When I realised I was the victim of subtle bullying, I was over forty, divorced and raising two boys without any financial assistance from their father. I wasn't too sure what to do or who to turn to. The belief I was one of life's failures was firmly entrenched.

Tenacious business owner, I managed alone. Tough exterior - well sort of! Softy on the inside. My colleagues always commented on my self-confidence and tireless energy. They didn't know what plagued me at night. And, in fact, haunted my thoughts with every waking moment and had done since I was a child.

The subtle bullying began, when at seven years old, in my first year at school, I experienced the devastation of gradually going deaf. That was probably the easy part! And all the excruciating pain that went with it. I do not recall ever being teased or bullied by my classmates! It was my aunty and my sister who were doing an excellent job of removing any self-belief I may have had as a seven-year-old, deaf and dumb little girl. I withered, in more ways than one.

At every opportunity, they told me I was dumb. I began to believe it. I couldn't spell. I was hopeless. My aunty said I should follow in my sister's footsteps, but when I tried, I failed. I seemed to consistently fail at everything. I found solace and reassurance when I stepped into my horses' stables. That is where I was loved unconditionally. That is where I felt understood. They were my mentors in many ways. Only a year had passed since my mother had died. Playing polo, my father had a near-fatal accident which left him in a wheelchair, paralysed for life. He ran the farm from his wheelchair and raised three small children. He is, to this day, a tremendous inspiration even though he is no longer here.

By the end of my first term at school - boarding school, we had to complete an assortment of tests on what we had learned in our first three months at school. I sat down, pencil in hand, and shifted my desk a little closer to my best friend. I could see her answers and I copied them.

Standing beside me was our teacher. I had not heard her move in to see exactly what I was up to. I have no idea how long she was there watching me cheat. She tapped me on the shoulder and I froze. It was then that she had the where-with-all to realise there was something wrong. She beckoned me to follow her to the headmaster's office. I could hardly stand, fear had taken charge of my limbs, but I made it to the office without further humiliation.

I was expecting the worst punishment, but instead, I was greeted with sympathy. I have special gratitude for those observant tutors. The headmaster called my father - we lived seventy miles from the school.

My classmates, who were my dormitory mates too, all gathered after supper to hear what had happened in the headmaster's office. I also revealed to them that I had no idea what had been taught in class - I couldn't hear well enough. I had grasped very little of the terms work. I let them know that my father was fetching me the following day to take me to an ear, nose and throat specialist in the capital city.

Children of that age are so often cruel with their words and teasing, but in this instance, I got nothing but sympathy from them. However, it wasn't their sympathy I needed, but the support of my older sister and my aunty - my late mother's sister.

Once all the tests were complete my father was informed that I was to be taken immediately to the children's hospital. I was to undergo a series of operations on each ear. I had no more than twenty percent hearing. These operations would take place over a period of six months.

"Six months," I cried. Tears tumbled down my cheeks and there was little that could be said to console me. My grandmother was there too. She had put together a parcel of sweeties, toys, crayons, colouring books, pyjamas and toiletries that would suffice for a few weeks. My grandparents farmed next door to my father, so neither could get into town often. It was a frightening, lonely time for little me.

I left the hospital seven months later, once I had learned to walk again. My balance had been severely interrupted by all the operations - seventeen on the left ear and fifteen on the right ear. Now I could almost hear a pin drop but the subtle bullying continued. With hearing as good as any child my age I was still not as good as my sister.

This pattern of subtle bullying went on, even when I did well academically and in the sporting arena. My achievements were a shock to them and they said so with a smile as if it was an affectionate joke. Over a period of time, the emotional and psychological manipulation eats into one's self-belief and atrophies any remnants of self-worth. No matter how well I did, I began to tell little fibs about my sister. I wanted to get her into trouble. I hated her, but I loved her too. Even though I could hear, I was still a dumb underachiever in their eyes. I began to experience difficulty sleeping in the dormitory. I used to long for the sounds of the train passing in the distance - the sound of it comforted me. I wasn't alone. Someone else was awake in the world.

I would lie awake at night and think about how I could impress her and my aunty. I'd ask myself questions I had no answers for. In the early 1960's there was little help in this regard. I began to think my aunty hated me. It was her I blamed more than my sister. I began to internalise the actions and treatment of my two aggressors and became more introverted and self-critical. I became shy of expressing any form of opinion and eventually gave that up as a bad job. As hard as I tried to understand the reasons for their nastiness I could not work it out. Eventually, I blamed myself. Nothing I tackled ever turned out well and I intimately believed I was useless. I lived in a quagmire of constant self-doubt. I tried to be better at drawing than her. I failed. I tried to be a better cook. I failed. I tried to make my own clothes and make them better than those she made hers. My father told me how well I was doing. My friends envied my artistic ability but in my mind, I wasn't good enough. I went on questioning my own worth, values and sense of self.

This lack of self-worth played out in numerous unsavoury ways when I reached my mid-teens. I turned to smoking - only cigarettes, but in those days that was scandalous rebellion. I was blessed with good looks, which my sister was not. The subtle bullying turned to jealousy, one that is still in place today - 66 years on. None of my early relationships with men were happy bar one. He also left. I began to flaunt my good looks to my detriment. Fortunately, I realised the error of my ways then, but seven years into marriage I was unfaithful. I was bored. Even in marriage, I was a failure. But I had two beautiful boys. It was then that I decided to have nothing to do with my sister or my aunty and never saw either of them for many years. I achieved and ran two successful businesses, but even then I had continuous self-doubt - I could have done better! After Aunty passed and my sister was in need of help, I stepped in and stepped up to the mark. Well, I thought I had.

At the age of 64, I had a near-death experience. I had contracted malaria, bilharzia and typhoid all together while in Uganda. I am not sure how I survived, but I did. At my lowest ebb, fragile and emotionally vulnerable, the final attack on my self-worth came in the form of a WhatsApp from my sister. This time I didn't cry, I didn't dissolve into an emotional mess and feel guilty. On the contrary, I felt strong enough to set the boundaries I should have set in my youth but never knew how to. I realised then that I had also mostly blamed my aunty, not my sister for the continuous disease of self-doubt that had plagued me my whole life. Erosion of this nature takes years until finally the wall of resistance lies in wait. And it was there, lying in a hospital bed, nearly dead, that I felt empowered after I had typed my response and pressed send.

That was the day the bullying ended. Don't wait as long as I did, take back you. You are worth the effort.

I had spent a fortune going to healers of all descriptions, on books and videos to enlighten me to the fact that I was worthy. I could have opened my own bookshop! This was years before the advent of YouTube and Google. Before the world of information was at our fingertips and the internet was flooded with self-help books.

Now I look back and realise that almost everything I have tackled to date has reached a certain level of success but has never progressed as I had hoped and dreamed because of the niggling self-doubt lodged in my sub-conscience. I have had two successful businesses, but even as I built those, the ever-present self-sabotage raised its ugly head.

Now, as I approach my sixty-sixth year on this planet and I hear their voices in my head I am mindful of the corrosive effects they have always had on me and I recite a few inspiring affirmations and move on.

The first person we should love in our lives is ourselves.