Click here for the intro post
Quick Note
Hey, I know this is quite a long post without pictures. This is here as a permanent record in the blockchain for myself and perhaps for those interested.
Intro
This is the story of how and why I dropped out of school at age 12. How people can be so cruel.
In September 2007, at age 12, I moved school. This was, in my eyes, a good thing, or at least I thought it couldn't get worse. In the last school, I had been bullied and nobody liked me. I had no friends there.
Now I was always nervous, socially awkward and anxious in school. Definitely not the best-behaved child either. When starting at my new school I didn't know how to engage with others, everyone already had their group of friends. Eventually, a few people in my year approached me, engaged with me and we made friends. I didn't expect that. School wasn't perfect. I got into a few classroom fights, but in the end, I got along with most people I spoke to.
I even ended up with a "girlfriend". Compared to my previous school, things were actually really positive here.
When "it" happened
It was French lesson. Now, this class was always a mess. The teacher could barely control the children. We always misbehaved at the start before the lesson started. Nothing new here. So we have a seating plan along with wide desks for 2 students each.
I sat with a girl. Let's call her B.
Going back to the classroom, both B and I were both messing around and being kids just like everyone else in the classroom. The teacher wasn't in the room, so it was complete mayhem.
I don't recall how or when, but at some point, I turn around and notice she had gone quiet with her head in her hand and clearly looked upset. I asked her if she was okay? If I should get her friend? She didn't give me a response and her body language said to me "leave me alone"
I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just let her sit there upset. I walk to the other side of the classroom to speak to her best friend and tell her that B is upset and I don't know why, and she won't talk to me. To give them space, I go over to my other friends and talk to them, but still curiously looking back over at them both, out of interest and concern. Then her friend looks over at me, and it was clear from the look on her face that it was me. I had done something wrong.
It couldn't be me, surely? I didn't do anything? I wasn't even talking to her... WELL, that's when her friend stormed over to me. And this is when the accusations started. She claimed I had "touched" B. Where specifically? I still don't know. Regardless. She yelled at me for it, others did too. Nobody believed me and everyone believed B.
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"Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I couldn't believe I had gone out of my way to ensure a classmate was okay, for it to just turn on me suddenly like that. These kinds of accusations are serious. To be falsely accused of violating another person in such a way feels rotten. It made me feel rotten. To be thought of as "the guy who touched B" is sickening.
Every day, multiple times again, kids of all ages in the school were constantly coming up to me "Did you touch B?" - I'm actually surprised I didn't just get beaten up. It drove me insane. I almost started to believe I did do it. That would've been easier - to just accept that I am who I've been painted as.
From this point onward, I didn't like school anymore. I felt that was enough. I woke up crying and screaming at my mother and sister who were both trying to get me up in the morning to go to school. I took some days off school every so often over the next few weeks.
So... I had never had a problem with B and always thought of her and a nice and kind person. She loved hugging people and was polite and nice day-to-day. Now anytime she tried to hug me, I would decline. I was the opposite. Nervous and awkward. I liked my personal space and didn't like to get close to others. One day, after this false accusation she had made, she tried to hug me again. This actually threw me even more.
I was in a constant state of anxiety in school as it was, and this really just made me worse. I was careful about my interactions and just overall far too paranoid. But after she tried to hug me the questions rushing through my mind were never-ending "Is this a trick?" "will she do it again?".
Soon after this, I took time off school one day and never went back. I lost my formal education. I lost opportunities that had been afforded to others. I feel betrayed by the school for not acting at all. Why wouldn't they want to investigate this?!... And B, for creating a lie that could break someone so easily, like it did me.