An Eighth Grade Memory

I’ve been meaning to write a lot, but I can’t. I am having a lot of memories. That’s what they’re supposed to be. I already survived and am now safe and an adult, age 32, living with my husband. I don’t care, this pretty freakin’ hurts. One of my inner teens, Karin, hurts the most.

On November 17, 2000, I hid under a coat rack during recess. I don’t even know why. I mean, yes, I was feeling miserable and lonely. Kids in my class were bullying me and I had no friends. I was mainstreamed at the time, being the only blind student in my school.

My French teacher found me and called for the coordinator. My tutor had just gone on sick leave the day before and never returned to our school. The coordinator would act as my tutor from that point on. He sat across from me in the room where I’d been hiding under the coat rack. He held my hands and said: “Is something wrong?” I couldn’t communiicate. Not speak, not move, nothing. I was completely frozen.

Several months later, by the time my now tutor had become aware that I was feeling left out and lonely and being bullied by my classmates, he organized a class conference. Without me there. My classmates were allowed to say what they didn’t like about me. Then I was supposed to change those things. I was supposed to take better care of my personal hygiene and develop better social skills, so that I’d be less curt.

My tutor died in 2016. He cannot read this now, but my old tutor, the one who went on sick leave just before the coat rack thing, can. She found my Dutch website last year. Granted, it has my real name in the URL and this one doesn’t, but still. Maybe I shouldn’t write this, or publish this. But I want to. I want to get this off my chest.

I want to show that it’s not okay to blame a bullying victim for being bullied, even if the victim “elicits” it by acting weird. It’s good to teach a child about social skills and personal hygiene. I won’t deny that. It’s quite another thing to link that to bullying and say “You bring it onto yourself”. That’s what many people around me did say. That’s victim-blaming and it’s not okay.

Another thing I want to say is, if you wouldn’t subject a non-disabled student to something, chances are you shouldn’t subject your disabled students to it. Another boy in my class was being bullied too. My classmates asked for a class conference similar to the one held about me. The boy didn’t want it and this was respected. I was never even asked whether I wanted a class conference, because apparently, being blind, I was so special that I shouldn’t have a say. For clarity’s sake: I think class conferences like thsi one are an example of victim-blaming whether the bullied student agrees to them or not.