Everyone needs a place like that!
Mine used to be in a section of jungle around the school that's now been exposed due to expansion. There was a derelict old building that was technically out of bounds but was the "doorway" in (you could totally just go around the damn derelict wreck of a building and that was probably a lot safer but not nearly as much fun). I didn't read up there but would often just go in there and sit for ages with my dog listening to and watching birds and how the light came down through the leaves. Can't even remember what I used to think about now but I could be there for ages.
Ergh your school experience. I didn't have that growing up but can't say the same for the Indian kid and the tiny handful of white kids in my predominantly Asian school. I never did anything about what I saw because I was tiny and stupid and didn't know why "everyone" (in reality just a small loud handful of kids) being mean to them or what those kids had done to deserve that treatment (did they have a fight perhaps? Sometimes kids would havew arguments and it would last for days which is forever when you're tiny and stupid). Fortunately in this case it didn't last forever and by high school everyone was friends or at least cheerfully tolerant of each other.
I could have done without school anyway, such a waste of 12 years XD
I remember when I used to be such an avid reader. Hive is about the extent of my reading now >_> on the one hand I really should read more, but if I read and watched nearly as much as I should be I would never get any of my own work done XD
I was lucky to have a few spots to retreat to. I wasn't a loner though, just preferred my own company to the alternative. I was a thinker, quite emotional and in-touch, and so solitude worked. I am still the same although with Faith it's different as we do it together, both preferring the same thing. We've got a few spots we go to, block out the world...Keeps us sane.
School was shit. It got better in high school but being brown, funny name...I was an easy target...Until I almost ended someone in high school and they people just did it behind my back from that point. It was stupid and hurtful. Walking into the common room in year 12 with my school bag hanging on the side of one of those mobile blackboards with some words scrawled across it, not nice ones, with people laughing and others too afraid to get involved...Changes a person, but I had been dealing with it for 12 years. Built character though and now it's like nothing at all.
I guess I am who I am now because of it. I'm pretty mentally tough and from a physical perspective have made sure I'm not an easy victim...It's also taught me patience, kindness and tolerance.
I'm happy with who I am, and understand very clearly that bullies are far more broken than I could ever be.
The dumbarses who thought your name was funny wouldn't have been able to cope at my school XD I remember walking around uni one time with my leavers' shirt from the high school back home (not the high school here which I really didn't like) and one of the other freshly out of high school kids that was in one of my classes noticed it was a leavers shirt and immediately had to read the names on the back like they would know anyone and after failing at pronouncing several of the names, said that they were "weird" names. I turned around with dead eyes and said they were perfectly normal Chinese and Malay names.
I guess I'm glad it was character building for you, or that you were at least able to benefit from it (because while I don't like that it happened at all it is was it was). I have friends who were also bullied (some really freaking terribly I can't even) at school and it took them literal decades to start recovering.
Look at the manes around Australia now, in mainstream population...Back in my day in primary school (1970's) it would have been unheard of.
Yeah, I made it work to my advantage, but I understand that many do not, and did not, and so suffer lasting damage. I'm not one of those. Confident, happy with myself, fun, humorous, respectful etc. Yeah, I think I came out ok.