First. It can get better. I had one really good friend, once I got to third year. And we're still friends mostly because we're both very stubborn badgers. You've not met him, I've barely seen him the past few years, because it'd put him at risk. We owl a lot.
The rest of my yearmates, I just did not understand. They mostly left me out raher than being nasty, except for a bit fourth year with the Ravenclaw witches in my year that was - very bad. Alcor (my predecessor) after that, he taught me about how to see the patterns in how people interact, how to make sense of it, have it stop being so puzzling, and more something I had choices about.
And then once I left school, when I could find people who liked the things I did, and who weren't so pinned down by trying to do the right thing, the visible right thing, it got a lot easier. You've seen how Gilly and I are together, and you've seen me with other people. It's - it's always work for me, attention and effort, except with a very few people, but it's so much better than it was at school.
Even if I still get it very wrong a lot of the time, and I know people laugh at me, and assume things about me that are wrong and hurtful. And yes, even in the Order.
Including people, welcoming them, really doing it well, is the hardest thing in the world, I think.
I've been thinking a lot about bullying, here. About discipline in general. Because how do we go on, with students, when all of you spent years with people doing things that could be lethal? Were, sometimes. When Crucio was considered a perfectly reasonable punishment, or other, horribly abusive things. (And I'm not just thinking of Madam Pinkness, for all she was quite horrible that way.)
I don't have any answers. At all. Except that I know we have to do better, somehow. I keep feeling I failed so many people, so many times, and it'll take the rest of my life to begin to put any of it right.
And except to say that you still have time, to find the people who want to be around you, who find you interesting, are amused by your quirks and your poetry and your earnest adoration of statistics.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2015-08-04 01:21 pm (UTC)First. It can get better. I had one really good friend, once I got to third year. And we're still friends mostly because we're both very stubborn badgers. You've not met him, I've barely seen him the past few years, because it'd put him at risk. We owl a lot.
The rest of my yearmates, I just did not understand. They mostly left me out raher than being nasty, except for a bit fourth year with the Ravenclaw witches in my year that was - very bad. Alcor (my predecessor) after that, he taught me about how to see the patterns in how people interact, how to make sense of it, have it stop being so puzzling, and more something I had choices about.
And then once I left school, when I could find people who liked the things I did, and who weren't so pinned down by trying to do the right thing, the visible right thing, it got a lot easier. You've seen how Gilly and I are together, and you've seen me with other people. It's - it's always work for me, attention and effort, except with a very few people, but it's so much better than it was at school.
Even if I still get it very wrong a lot of the time, and I know people laugh at me, and assume things about me that are wrong and hurtful. And yes, even in the Order.
Including people, welcoming them, really doing it well, is the hardest thing in the world, I think.
I've been thinking a lot about bullying, here. About discipline in general. Because how do we go on, with students, when all of you spent years with people doing things that could be lethal? Were, sometimes. When Crucio was considered a perfectly reasonable punishment, or other, horribly abusive things. (And I'm not just thinking of Madam Pinkness, for all she was quite horrible that way.)
I don't have any answers. At all. Except that I know we have to do better, somehow. I keep feeling I failed so many people, so many times, and it'll take the rest of my life to begin to put any of it right.
And except to say that you still have time, to find the people who want to be around you, who find you interesting, are amused by your quirks and your poetry and your earnest adoration of statistics.