Something similar to that happened to me. My main teachers of fifth, seventh and eighth grades were bullies, in every sense of the word. They singled me out with their power, had me feel stupid at every chance they got, and any time there was blatant bullying going on from the students, they would fluff it off and say that it was normal kid stuff.
Two of them singled me out for a reason I couldn't control: my heritage. I can not change the blood flowing in my veins any more than anyone else can. They constantly said that Germans were bad people when we were learning about the Second World War, and I was the only German in the school. They said it enough times that I began to believe that I was a wretched individual for ever being born, despite the fact that I'm a pacifist, that I don't like to hurt anyone, and it takes a fair bit to provoke me.
My fifth grade teacher thought of me as insubordinate and needed to ensure that she was the teacher, that she was the boss over me. She did this by pulling me out of the room and telling me as such for silly little things - not bringing my project out to be tested when it was broken in the duration of its stay in the classroom, forgetting a homework sheet and asking for another copy so I could get the answers, and refusing to hand in an essay explaining why it was a good thing laws were broken in wartime Germany.
These things were ridiculous and she needed to assert her power so that she felt important, not because it was necessary.Because of her, I am still scarred, and I doubt it will ever go away. My mom pulled me out of school for a year and a half because of that woman. By the time she got me out, I refused to sleep some nights because of the nightmares I would constantly get when I closed my eyes. I refused to make any more friends, because she'd target them too, for being kind to me. And I refused to try to learn because I thought there was no hope in this world that I could be a scientist or a writer or anything else.
For a full month after I began homeschooling, I refused to leave my room until 4pm due to worry that I would be sent back to school. My mom wouldn't do that to me, but that's just how fear works.
I returned in seventh grade.
In the time I was home, my mom spent more time trying to fix the mess in my head than she did teaching me what disciplines I was to know about or how people would treat me in the future. The only reason I went back was because my dad didn't like having me around the house so much, he said I needed to grow up and deal with my own problems.
The teacher in seventh grade wasn't a horrible lady, she just inadvertently did things to make my situation worse when she was trying to help. Because there was no record of my work, she stuck me in a remedial English help program, making me feel like I belonged there, with the people that couldn't pick up a novel and understand it. When she noticed I was having trouble making friends with the barbarians of my classroom, she let me eat lunch in the other class, which no other students were allowed to do, singling me out. And she was oblivious to the bullying, and I didn't feel trust enough to tell her. I really didn't trust anyone enough to say a word.
Eight grade was almost as bad as fifth, but this time I didn't even have people my own age I could talk to. And I kept as much of it as possible from my mom so that she and my dad wouldn't fight. The teacher reminded me so much of the woman in fifth grade. One day, she was showing a video based on Anne Frank. Towards the end of the period, about fifteen minutes from lunch break, I tried excusing myself to the washroom, not because I needed to use the facilities. I needed to calm down and didn't want people to see me cry. She didn't understand the urgency and refused to let me out, saying that I could wait like the other students.
Fifteen minutes later, I bolted to the washroom and curled into a corner, crying. One of my classmates found me, and she said that I was rocking back and forth. That I was whispering "It's happening again." No one could get me out of there for two hours, when I sobered up so that my mom wouldn't notice by the time I got home.
That was the start. Other things, like when I broke my ankle again and couldn't carry my own stuff around and her having the gall to say that I didn't understand disability, having me read a book for English study that I couldn't get past the first page because of the gruesomeness, forcing me to write apology homework when I was out sick the day my class misbehaved for a supply teacher. And siding with the students that were bullying me.
Any time I told my mom, my parents fought. My father was always one to believe in the Principle of Parsimony: The simplest explanation, the one with the fewest assumptions, must be the right explanation. Which meant that to him, the problem wasn't with the teachers or the other students, it was with me - I must have been doing something.My mom wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt. And if she hadn't, if she didn't start picking me up for lunch every day, driving me to and from school, letting me take days off of school for mental health and getting to stay in bed with popcorn and movies, helping me finish my overdue homework because I spent the entire night in the hospital for another ankle break, telling me it was going to be alright someday... I would have done something irreversible.
So... I really don't believe in trusting people for the sake that someone above says I can. People need to earn their trust - be they bigger or smaller. What do you do when you can't trust anyone around you? That's what Bus People are for. That's what perseverance is for. Never give up, never let them show that you've been hurt, never let them win by having the last laugh. It really is the best way out, getting through as quickly as possible.
I hope by reading these posts that you're finding consolation. There are more people in this world that understand what you're going through than you think there might be.
