This is a story about obvious consequences…
The Trek 820 mountain bike was excellent, and cost just over £300 in 1993. This was apparently too much for my Dad to pay, so he stole a girl’s bike.
Having removed the family to the middle of a remote part of the UK, on very steep hills on the Devon/Dorset/Somerset borders, away from all my friends in Oxford, I was then expected to get to school and do my paper round on this bike, as well as making new friends at the school which was part of my 6 day a week gruelling punishment for being the son of a couple of lazy dope smokers.
Averaging about 50 miles a day on some of the UK’s steepest gradients. I can tell you a lot about lactic acid burning in your legs. I can tell you a lot about gritting your teeth and grinding the pedals, through all seasons, through all weather.
One thing I can tell you about children, is that they are extremely good at spotting other children who are different. Usually bullying and social exclusion are based on these perceived differences. I can tell you a lot about both of those things.
I’m going to hospital now, because I’m suicidally depressed. It seems like the responsible thing to do, even though all I really want to do is run myself a hot bath and slice my arms open with a kitchen knife, to get at my radial arteries. The pain must flow out of me somehow. The thoughts are invasive. I can’t block them out.
At least my parents got to save £300 (or maybe less if they actually bought me a bicycle second hand). Are they responsible?
Tags: #bullying #oxford #childhood #parents #cycling #addiction
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3 responses to “The Price of a Life”
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Yeah, bullying really stays with you. Kids are cruel. I was bullied for lots of reasons but mainly no reason at all. A few months back I got a message on Facebook from somebody who I went to school with back in 1999-2001, apologising for bullying me. She said she had only just discovered, aged 27, what bullying is, and had realised that she’d made my life hell for those two years. It doesn’t change the last 16 years of my life but it does make a difference to know that somebody else acknowledges that it wasn’t my fault.
I’m glad you went to hospital when you got to this low point.
I don’t really blame the bullies. Most of them had horrible lives themselves, and were compensating the only way that they knew how. I would have preferred to not have to cycle past the entrance to my school, where 1,200 children were waiting to be picked up by busses, on a girl’s bike. That would have made my school life a little more bearable I think. Public humiliation is not great for a child’s self esteem.