Bullying: A Retrospective (Guest Post)

My middle grade/young adult novel, The History of Hilary Hambrushina, deals in part with bullying at a junior high school and was inspired by my own experiences. Although I’ve often been teased, more or less good naturedly, for being different, I’ve experienced only two distinct periods of behaviour that I would define as bullying: persistent, cruel teasing in which the perpetrators knew full well that they were hurting me.

This occurred once in school when I was 12 and again nearly 20 years later when I was working full time in an office. In both instances, the bullies were groups of females with whom I’d previously been friends and from whom, for various reasons, I had begun to distance myself socially. I tried to remain civil and amicable towards my former friends, particularly in the office, but I was not allowed to leave the group without paying a heavy toll.

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Ever since I was a child, I’ve been introverted, slow to speak, sensitive, and in some situations, shy—qualities that, in the extrovert-centric North American culture, made me an easy mark for bullies. Because I was not the type to make a scene or assert myself, the bullies quickly discerned that they had found the ideal target. I’ve come to realize, though, that in my case, the bullying had less to do with any particular characteristic of mine and more to do with the fact that I had dared to leave the sanctity of the in-group. As punishment, the queen bee ordered her workers to sting me. My gentle personality simply facilitated the bullying.

In both periods, I tried to brave the taunting alone before eventually confiding in my parents, particularly my mother. My parents offered immediate support both emotionally and practically. The school bullying began in elementary school and continued in junior high school when the bullies and I graduated from Grade 6 and switched schools for Grade 7.

This occurred in the 1980s, before most Canadian schools had anti-bullying programs, as some now do. My parents spoke to several of my teachers at both schools. Most teachers were sympathetic and promised to look out for me and address bullying if they spotted it. Yet I can recall my homeroom teacher from Grade 7 expressing little support for my situation. “She and I are not in the same boat” was my mother’s diplomatic assessment of this response.

And other than the nanoboost my self-confidence received when I understood that most of my teachers didn’t think I deserved the bullying, I can’t recall my teachers being much help. The bullying continued in the hallways, in the lunchroom, on the bus, and especially in the ninth circle of hell that is a junior high school girls’ washroom. The taunting didn’t diminish until I reconnected with a friend from Grade 3 who had left my elementary school and was now attending the same junior high school. She introduced me to some fellow nerds who also became my friends. Once I had a group of allies, the bullies backed off.

When I was taunted as an adult, the responsibility of confiding in someone at the institution in which the bullying was occurring (in my case, a workplace) fell to me alone. I chose not to involve anyone else, primarily because I had already made a comment about the queen bee to my manager, which had backfired.

During a performance review, I noted that I sometimes had difficulty concentrating because of the amount of socializing that went on around my cubicle. My manager pressed me to name the noisemakers. Although I refused, she soon figured out to whom I was referring. Several months later, she spoke to the queen bee about this, and that’s when the bullying ramped up. Concerned that involving my manager or anyone else might escalate the situation, I chose a different way to address it.

When the queen bee was absent one day, I asked the worker bees to meet me in the lunchroom. There, I said that I had noticed tension between us and I was sorry if I had done anything to cause a conflict. The workers batted their eyelashes and expressed surprise, saying that they “had no idea” that there was any tension between us.

The following day, the ringleader returned, less a queen bee and more a moth with a broken wing. She even smiled sheepishly at me. The workers had clearly phoned her and told her about my conversation with them, as I had hoped they would. That diffused the tension and paused the bullying. But within a couple of weeks, a low buzzing started up again. Two weeks after that, however, the queen bee left the company and the bullying stopped.

Looking back, I wish that I had confided in Human Resources instead of trying to play the saint by taking on the problem alone. But I bought into the teenage idea that involving someone else would only intensify the bullying—which is exactly what the bullies wanted me to think.

Both of these experiences have fundamentally shaped me. I’ve realized that the abuse at the hands of former friends has caused me to exercise restraint and place barriers between myself and the very people with whom I should be open: true friends. My reserve is such that even some of my current friends have said that they are sometimes uncertain as to whether I want them to reach out to me when I’m in a crisis or whether I want them to leave me alone. Perhaps it’s fate, then, that the publication of this book has forced me to reveal more of myself by going on social media and writing articles like this. These revelations have encouraged me to open up to close friends about other personal issues and struggles.

By sharing Hilary’s story, I’ve taken several strides in my lifelong journey of healing and peace.

*For more info on Marnie Lamb’s novel The History of Hilary Hambrushina or if you would like to purchase a copy, you can do so here.

Marnie Lamb is a Gemini incarnate: half writer and half editor. She earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Windsor. Her short stories have appeared in Journey Prize Stories 25 and various Canadian literary journals, including filling Station, The Nashwaak Review, and The Dalhousie Review. Her first novel, a middle grade/YA book named The History of Hilary Hambrushina, is published by Iguana Books. She pursues her other love, editing, as the owner of Ewe Editorial Services. When she is not writing or editing, she can be found cooking recipes with eggplant or scouting out fashions—preferably ones with polka-dots—at Toronto’s One of a Kind Show.

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