cerulean

Hey hello!

So I've been growing my natural hair colour out which is strawberry blonde and not wearing as much foundation to cover my freckles on my nose etc (I'm not fully ginger, and I don't have a lot of freckles, but regardless I fall into the 'red head' category). This may not seem like a big deal but for me it is, its a huge deal and it's scary. I haven't had this much of my natural hair colour since 2008, nearly 10 years, the most I've let my hair grow out is about 4cm which was only because I couldn't afford to get my roots done, I HATED my hair colour, which leads me to the reason why;

I was severely bullied at my first high-school. I was 12 years old, I was chubby, and I had just gotten prescription glasses, and I had a thick head of golden/orange hair - heres a photo from that year at that school (its a bit of a bad quality/dark photo)

So I really wasn't very attractive, I wasn't ugly, but I wasn't one of the 'hot' girls, nowhere near it. I went to a small primary school of about 150-200 kids, where bullying wasn't ever really an issue, I'd get called names here and there but it wasnt like a constant thing, so I had this naive perception that my high-school would be the same, especially considering it was an extremely culturally diverse school with people of different races and religions. Oh how I was naive, and had no idea I was in for an experience that would change my life.

The first day: things were scary, I was going to a high school with about 4 or 5 people from my primary school, and I wasn't close with them but I tried to make a better friendship with the girls I did know and people who seemed friendly. We we're in some of the same classes so it was fine for a while, but those girls eventually became really close without me included. In my current memory I actually cannot remember if I had a single friend at this point, I just twasn't into the same things the girls in my year were into, I liked wrestling, and nintendo, and I enjoyed science a lot, the other girls wore makeup and talked about boys, and wanted to steal stuff, and I just wasn't like that. I remember sitting by myself at lunch times, which turned me into a huge fucking target.

***

I don't remember the first incident. What I do remember is an Australian show (which I actually really liked) called Summer Heights High. It was a comedy show, it was funny, and it wasnt anything serious, but holy fucking shit did it have its repercussions and people got some vicious ideas from it. It started a thing called being a 'ranga' - shortened for orangutan - another way to degrade people with red hair. Heres a few things from the show to show you what type of ideas they were giving people:

Thats just from one episode, probably the one that started a whole epidemic of bullying across Australia. On top of that there was the whole "gingers dont have souls" shit, which for me is true, because after this my soul was... different. It was sore, it wasnt the soul I used to have.

So, everyday, from the moment I got on the train to get to school until the moment I got off at the end of the day all I heard was "fat ranga" (that being the most common among other things) and people laughing and making jokes. It wasnt just the people in my class, it was every grade, almost every person, and the ones who didn't laugh just didnt do anything at all. I would walk past people and they would throw food at me, like peeled bananas, and yogurt and stuff, they would straight up tell me I was a "gross fat orangutan", a "stupid ranga", a "fat four eyed ranga" and literally every combination of insults to do with that. People would trip me over on purpose, people put stuff in my hair. I would be on my way to class and I'd be lost and I'd ask someone where to go and they would laugh at me and purposely tell me the wrong place. None of the teachers cared, but then again I didnt say anything to them. But I cannot explain enough how constant this bullying was, it was every five minutes, it was every class, people started hating me because it was something for them to do. I would spend my lunch times in the toilet. I felt fucking worthless, no one liked me, no one wanted to be my friend or even stand up for me once. I literally felt like I had less worth than the dirt under someones feet because of the way I looked. It was fucked.

I eventually told my parents though because I would ask to stay home a lot, and they pickedd up on something so I told them the basics of the situation and I got the usual "just ignore it, they're probably just jealous, people pay hundreds of dollars to have that colour" the usual bullshit because when my Mum was in school in the 70s it was cool to have red hair. Not so much at this point in time.

Anyway, I was eventually made to go to school and wasnt allowed to stay home, my parents thought I should confront the situation. I dreaded waking up in the morning knowing I had to go to this hell hole of a place and sit there for 6 hours while people continuously make fun of something that I have 0 control over and tell me that I resemble a monkey, I was 12 and I hated life. I was about 4 weeks into school at this point, and we had to choose a sport for wednesday afternoons, and I picked dance which had the least people in it, there was ONE senior girl in that class, she thought I was cute and she called me 'strawberry' and she was literally the only person I could go to, which wasnt very often cause obviously we were in different years. She was a glimmer of hope in my hell hole. She truly was. But things got worse.

Now this is where things start to get hard to remember, I honestly think I've repressed a lot of it. But I remember that I went to the toilet one day and something about rangas was written on the wall, so that was awesome. I don't remember the events leading up to the last incident but I was on the fucking edge. We had to go to drama class, with about 20 of us in the class. This would have been about the 5th week of school, maybe 6th, and in the drama class we had been working on an act in groups of 3 or 4 to present to the class for part of our grade. It was something to do with a breakfast table situation and every group had something slightly different kind of thing. So it was our turn (myself and 2 other girls) to give our practice performance in front of the class, and people were laughing and snickering while we were doing it, and I remember we had a relief teacher that day, she got angry at the class and stuff and we continued. We finished, the teacher said we did great, cool. Everything's okay. Wrong. I sit down for the next performance, which was 3 boys, who were shit stirrers and for lack of a better word, cunts, so they were some of my biggest bullies considering I had multiple classes with them. As soon as they stood up, the ringleader of the group looked at me, with a fucking evil smile, and I knew something was up.

So they got up, and they were all giving each other little smiles and nods to start, and they started. At this point I could feel that weird overheating thing you get when shits about to go down. They literally made their act based on teasing me: talking about rangas and orangutans as part of their breakfast table conversation. I cant even remember what they said exactly but I heard the word "ranga" and then the boys laughing and other people laughing, and I lost it.

I got up. I picked up a chair and I threw it at the stupid cunt and fucking ran. I ran to the train station and I was either gonna get on the next train and go home, or throw myself in front of it. I was a mess, I had never ever done anything like that before. I had never known people that were that determined to make me hate myself. The train wasnt going to arrive for another like 20 minutes so a teacher came and got me and took me back to the office and called my mum. This was the turning point, I now literally hated my hair colour that much that I was ripping it out of my scalp. My mum picked me up and I was so hysterical she didn't know what to do, all I wanted to do was get rid of my hair, so we went to a salon and I got my hair bleached and never went back to that school. Ever since that day I have hated my hair colour and felt like I'm worth less than people with "normal" hair colours. Its taken me nine years to finally be okay with who I am. I still look in the mirror and have the intense urge to just bleach all of my hair and get any form of orangeness out, but so far I'm doing okay.

I never realised how badly my bullying experience affected me, it still affects me, I am honestly terrified of having my natural hair colour. But I'm starting to learn to love it, that its a beautiful and complex colour and one that you cannot get from a salon or a bottle. I'm learning to appreciate it's rarity and uniqueness. Hopefully I'll get there.

It's incredible that these insignificant people had such an intense impact of my self image and my life, but its hard to 'ignore it' when its in your face constantly to the point of people needing to incorporate bullying into a piece of school assessment.

It is hard and takes a lot of effort hating something you have no control over, so its time for my hate to stop. And for anyone who's read this far, thank you, thank you for listening, thank you for not bullying me, thank you for helping me to like myself. Writing this whole thing has been emotional for me as ive never really explained it to this extent, so I truly appreciate anyone who has taken the time to read this, it was a fucking novel and you're a champ for reading it all. ♡