Was tempted to write about some other stuff, but I think these post therapy diary entries have become an important part of the process, so I will put the other stuff off for today and to continue my journey deep, deep into my own navel.

Wow. It’s linty in here. And funky.

So in order to talk about what happened today in therapy, I will have to tell you all about the revelation I had over the weekend, because that was today’s jumping off point and I am still pretty mad about it so anything that furthers the process of getting it off my chest is a good thing.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I was quite horribly bullied in elementary school. Many times I had the entire school body chasing me around wanting to do bodily harm to me. I was regularly physically beaten and almost constantly verbally abused. There were the hardcore regular bullies, and then there were the eager spectators who were very very clearly not on my side. I spent most of my formative elementary school years terrified of my fellow students. I would do anything to avoid having to go outside for lunch and recess. I would fake sick. I would hide in the school. I would spend all the time I possibly could in the library.

(No wonder libraries and bookstores make me feel happy and safe.)

None of that caused anyone to wonder why I did it and maybe try to help me. Time and again, I would tell teachers what was happening to me, and ask for help. And again and again, they would do absolutely nothing about it. All they did was give me some half ass lameness like “they are just jealous of you” or “maybe you should try harder to get along with them” but never would they actually do a single thing that involved, you know, actually doing anything.

Certainly nothing that would involve them getting up from their desk.

Personally, I think that they secretly agreed with the bullies. I was weird and fat and way too smart for my own good. I deserved to be bullied. Maybe it would teach me not to be such a freak.

So the teachers most definitely knew that I was being bullied, as did the administrators. Heck, the janitors knew it. One time, I even heard one of them laugh while I was being beaten. Nice huh?

That is one half of the equation. My parents are the other half.

My parents, ever since I first brought it up when I was a depressed teenager, have always maintained that they had absolutely no idea that I was going through hell when I was in elementary school.

And I never questioned that. Seems plausible. I was the inconvenient child, the one who had not been planned, the one they actively encouraged to act as though he did not exist, and to do absolutely nothing to remind them he was there.

So obviously, this makes it easy for my to believe that they had no idea what was going on while I was in school. They barely noticed I was alive a lot of the time.

But last weekend, something occurred to me after all these years :

What about parent-teacher conferences?

My parents attended those religiously. That was one thing they were good for. I suspect my father’s fear of losing face in the community and my mother’s being a teach and thus being able to talk to them like an equal, are the deciding factors there. Certainly not little old me.

So it’s not exactly as if my parents and my teachers never talked to one another. This opens up two main possibilities, both of which are highly unpleasant :

A) My teachers, knowing full well that I was going through hell, still did not deem it important enough to bother mentioning to my parents. Perhaps they thought it might reflect badly on them (as it should have, when you think about it) and so they decided that there was no reason to bother mentioning it unless my parents brought it up first. After all, realistically speaking, what was in it for them? It could only get them in trouble. And really, what’s the fate of a weird fat pain in the ass kid worth compared to their comfortable life?

or B) My teachers did, indeed, tell my parents all about how I was being abused and how terrified I was most of the time and how basically horrible my life was, and my parents just shrugged and decided it was not worth making a fuss over and did nothing about it, and the teacher just shrugged too, and figured if my parents didn’t see it as a problem, neither did they. And then, years later when I asked about it, my parents either had forgotten all about it (because you know, they had more important things on their mind) or they lied to me and said they knew nothing about it when they damned well did.

You can see why I am mad. Seems like nobody back then even wanted to deal with me at all, so they just plain ignored me. Parents, siblings, teachers, school administrators, all of them were there and could have helped me, could have protected me, could have stopped the bullying.

They could have made me feel like I was not abandoned to the wolves.

Instead, I was an agoraphobic before I even hit puberty.

So the therapist and I talked about that, and how it all makes me feel, and things spun on from there. He suggests that I try to contact some of those teachers and confront them about it.

And I want to do it. But I am having trouble finding the information I need. I remember the teacher’s names, but only their last names, of course, so it makes them hard to look up.

And sadly, there seems to be no publicly viewable archive of teachers past for Parkside Elementary School in Prince Edward Island, so I don’t know how to look it up.

Suggestions are appreciated.