Charli Browes

Coming out was never a struggle for me. A lot of people who have to face up to a society where heterosexuality is the norm have internal emotional problems: guilt, self-hate, failure. I on the other hand knew, like many same sex lovers, that I liked girls long before I liked boys and I emulated this from a young age such as only wanting to “play house” as two wives. I never had any struggles as I never had to come to terms with it, I already knew. It was the rest of the world who had a problem with it.

In October 2010 I was two weeks away from turning 14, and I began my first relationship with another girl. Within days the news had reached our friends, who were very supportive. After three days’ people started to gossip so it ended up around school. At lunch, I was stood next to my then girlfriend when two boys from a year or two below came up to us.

“Are you lesbians?”

“Yes.”

“Then kiss.”

It was then I turned to my right to see that the windowed wall by the cafeteria was filled by spectators. Dozens and dozens of people were staring at us, the “lesbian couple”, like we were an exhibit at a freak show. Some others started to leave the cafeteria to make their way to us and so, we gathered our bags and made a move, only to have them follow. We carried on walking but they carried on following: easily fifty plus nameless faces from the years below just following us. By the time we reached the library, my favourite teacher just happened to be passing. I was flouting into a panic attack. He took us to the reception and the rest of the day was a vague blur. I remember my head of year telling me and my girlfriend that either we would have to tell our parents we were in a relationship or he would, and spent most of the conversation avidly avoiding the word “gay”.

That day sparked months of verbal abuse. People I didn’t even know would yell “lesbian!” or pretend to throw up as I walked past. Girls would try and get out of changing for PE in the same room as me. A girl commented on a friends Facebook post to leave us alone that she wanted us to “fall off a cliff”. On one incident, a girl who was particularly vile to me tried to follow me home yelling vulgarities at me until I turned around, grabbed her by the wrists and asked her:

“Would you like to go in the pavement or in the road?”

And thrust her down on the path. She then told her mother I was bullying her, and her mother messaged me threatening to call the police until I showed the message to my head of year. I never found out what happened after that. Another girl who would walk past me and yell abuse — continuing this, well after me and my girlfriend separated, I had begun a relationship with a male — she had to be sat down with me and a student support worker explained to her to not yell abuse, which in retrospective was ridiculous. To this very day, six years on, I still hear “lesbian!” yelled from across the street in my home town; granted it is far rarer than it was back then.

The bullying made me an angry, paranoid person. The incident where I thrust a girl into the floor was one where I had reached the end of my tether. Every time I went in school, it was guaranteed, at least for the first 8 months, someone would yell something at me and as mentioned before this continued well into and even after I entered a new relationship with a male. Which also prompted questions of:

“Are you straight now?”

But how am I now?

I moved away from my hometown aged 18 to university, and when I’ve been in town visiting home, no one has yelled at me. I assume either it’s either because the people who bullied me are not in town at the same time as me, they’ve moved, or more hopefully they’ve learned tolerance. However, whenever I go out with my current female partner and we hold hands, I expect insults to be hurled. I can remember at least four occasions where someone yelled — one even rolling their car window to shout at us, and other when someone made gagging noises cycling past. Mostly now, it’s just evil stares or nasty looks. Although my paranoia is founded on past and current events, I worry: I worry always that someone will say something and that someone will even take it to the next level and be physically violent towards me or my partner.

Many people experience depression and anxiety through bullying. I do have severe clinical depression and a General Anxiety Disorder, but I believe the depression to have hereditary origins from my maternal side. My anxiety didn’t occur during the bullying either, but one thing is for certain, my paranoia did increased and stays with me to this day.

I now have loving family who accept me, a partner who loves me, great friends and a bright future with my education. But some people won’t be like me, some people won’t make it and will give into depression and end their lives. Tolerance is something much needed but heavily lacking. People forget that higher education isn’t just 7 years of your life and that things that happen during can affect you for the rest of your life. And it can be detrimental to how someone grows. Bullying has an impact.