Bearing the Scars: for those who still remember

For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed.
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.
-- Edwin Arlington Robinson

You wondered if you'd live through high school, but somehow you did. Your school days finally came to an end, and you tried to get on with life as an adult. But you never forgot how it was to be beaten up regularly, to be hit, kicked, pushed into lockers, spit upon. Maybe you tried to tell people how it had been, only to find that those who'd had other experiences in high school didn't believe you, or just didn't understand. Or maybe you'd already given up trying to tell people by the time you left school.

All the way through middle school and high school, I swore that as soon as I was a grownup and people would listen to me, I'd tell the world what my school years had been like. The evening I graduated, I thought to myself, "Okay, I'm an adult now. So now what?" People didn't seem any likelier to listen to me than they ever had. Twenty years passed, and I never found any way to get the word out, to speak out against the myth that school is wonderful for everyone, to challenge the blame-the-victim mindset that says it's an outsider's own fault for being attacked. And now -- well, at last, I've found a way.

There's not much out there of especial interest to adult survivors of continual pulpings and/or ostracism in school, but I did manage to find a few links. Here they are.

Bullying, Stress, and Effects on Health -- Discussion of long-term physical and psychophysical effects on victims and survivors of bullying. Part of Tim Field's comprehensive U.K. site, BullyOnLine

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -- Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder -- DSM-IV definitions of PTSD and PDSD; relationship of long-term bullying and harassment to PTSD and PDSD. Also a part of Tim Field's BullyOnLine

'Suicide Wish' of Gay Bullying Victims -- BBC news article reporting on a survey of the long-term results of bullying.

And for other links of interest to outsiders (but not directly concerned with bullying) check out Raven Days' Outside Over There.

['Ozy and Millie' comic strip about bullying]

"Ozy and Millie" ©1999 by D.C. Simpson, and appears here by permission.

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All original material on the Raven Days website, except the material appearing in the sections Words Out of Shadow and Lighting the Way, © 1999-2008 by its creator and maintainer, Meredith Minter Dixon.. Copyright to the articles in the sectionsWords Out of Shadow and Lighting the Way is retained by their authors. Counter: 10356