text: You’ve heard it, I’ve heard it, I think it’s safe to say that most of us have been told this at one point or another in our lives. It seems to be the solution to fights, arguments, bullying, and pretty much everything that frequently ruins the lives of teenagers. “Walk away”. I’d like to focus on just that last one for now: bullying. I fancy my chances when I say that you’ve probably fallen victim to, been close to someone who has fallen victim to, or have witnessed bullying (after all, roughly 20% of people were bullied as teenagers). As only the closest people to me will be able to tell you, I was bullied (this would be a pretty boring thing to read if I were to just throw facts at you for a few pages of Walbaum Display in size 11). Therefore, I have a lot of stories I could tell you about the effects it has had on me, my family, and my perception of the world around me. But I’d like to tell you one story today. Just one. It was the one that changed my life. Before we begin, I should clear some things up. The bullying in question was both physical and emotional, and occurred late into my years in primary school (emotional bullying continued slightly into year 7 but faded away eventually). It happened for several reasons: I was physically weak (some sick people saw me, therefore, as easy prey), I was fat, and I spoke like I though I was smarter than everyone (this wasn’t what I was thinking and I was actually doing terribly in school, but I’ll elaborate on that later). My primary school was also one of those schools that has some years past six (usually for those who couldn’t find a better school that would accept them). Now that we have the background out of the way, we can begin. I wasn’t the only person getting bullied at that school, there were three or four others who all fit the criteria (weak, nerdy, etc.), and we had all come up with several plans over the years to avoid being picked on. My personal favourite (in retrospect, of course) was, and this is hilarious,... “stand up to them”. We can laugh about it now, but that little trick sent all four of us home with a thick lip and visible limp, so... maybe it wasn’t the best plan. Of course, there were other plans, for example, “ignore them”, but it’s quite hard to ignore someone pulling your chair out from underneath you in the middle of a test. We soon realised that no strategies were going to work. There was no “dealing with bullies 101” class, no “12 neat tricks to overcome a bully”. Nothing. So, we had no option other than “knuckle under and stop whining” (which was actually a piece of advice I received more often than was necessary). Then, as usual in a story, there was a plot twist. It’s normally an wise old man or a travelling monk, but mine came in a pretty mundane form: another child. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to any adults to find someone my age who has dealt with bullying to speak to me. You’d think it would be simple. Blatantly obvious, perhaps? You adults do it for careers, choosing A-levels, choosing GCSEs. In fact, I’m positive that almost every other aspect of school uses the “bring someone who has gone through this in” method, yet, somehow, the people who are supposed to guide us through childhood (adults) hadn’t thought of just asking someone with experience. Nevertheless, I found someone roughly my age who could help me. Her name was Jenny and she was actually a friend of my older brother, Sam. We only met because I came home in tears and her mum was giving Sam a ride home and popped in for a cup of tea. Sam asked Jenny to come round and speak to me, and she did. The next time her mum came round, Jenny saw me doing my homework in the study and came in. She sat cross-legged on the floor (looking up at me, as I was on a dining chair that had been moved because my step-dad needed the desk chair) and greeted me. “Hey, Charlie”. She seemed upbeat, not too upbeat, but enough to make me start feeling a little better already. “Hello”, I mumbled (I wasn’t in a good mood, because I’d just had an argument about the chair). “So, I hear you’re having some trouble with the older kids at school?”. I nodded. She asked “when did it start?”, and I instantaneously burst into tears. My speech was incoherent, my mind refused to control my body, and my chest began to ache. I wanted to calm down (I didn’t want Sam to be embarrassed of me, after all), but the more I tried to breathe, the more my throat closed up. It was a horrible feeling that is unique to extreme weeping. Jenny didn’t expect me to talk, instead, she stood me up and hugged me. We must have sat there for hours, me bawling, her rubbing the back of my head. It took me a while, but I eventually ran out of tears, and my throat stopped trying to strangle me. Jenny had forced me to lower my defences and I ultimately trusted her more than anyone who had ever tried to help me. After all that crying and the countless stones I must have lost in tears, I had no choice but to give Jenny’s idea a shot. She hit me with that all-too-familiar phrase: Walk away. Call it vulnerability, call it a female’s comforting presence, call it whatever you want, but this time it hit differently. “Walk away” went from being some impossible thing said by adults who just don’t get it to the easiest step in a one-step guide to fixing your life. She wiped the tears from my eyes and off my cheeks with her sleeve, and squeezed me tightly one more time. “You’ve got this, Charlie!”, she whispered as she left. I sat for a bit and planned out what I was going to do (it didn’t take long as the game-plan was about three words long), before getting back to my homework. Then, something weird happened. The work was just easier. It’s like people had been telling me to walk with a boulder on each shoulder for my entire life and then Jenny just put them on the ground and now I could run. Cringey as it seems now, I genuinely felt as if a burden had been lifted. Whether it was the endorphins from crying or the after-taste of being hugged, I got the best sleep of my life that night. The next day came and my mum was worried. Not because I was frightened or because I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed (like normal), but because I was calm. Finally. I had longed for that feeling of “I’m going to have a day today that won’t be cut short by a fist to the back of the spine and a 5-minute struggle to pick my books up off the muck-coated floor” for far too long (it’s a feeling you don’t realise you have until it’s gone). I grabbed my bag (I had packed it the night before, in my temporary, tear-triggered enlightenment), brushed my teeth, got changed, and hopped on the bus (all in record-time). My day was going brilliantly. I got an A for a test I thought I’d failed, I managed to eat my snack at break in peace, and I had a positive expectation for lunchtime. I walked out of the classroom happily with my head held high and began to make my way to the playground. Instinctively, like a gazelle steering clear of lions, I scanned my hunted-grounds and gave the all-clear to my pack (given that this pack consisted of... me, it was a very brief conversation) and made my way outside. I began to walk, holding my cereal bar nonchalantly, when I was thrust into a wall. I felt like I was getting beaten up by an out-of-control freight train. My head collided with the wooden handrail and ricocheted onto the concrete floor. My brain began pumping adrenaline throughout my body, filling my limbs with an instinct to react to the pain. It began to overwhelm me. I could feel myself being stripped of all control. But then, I remembered Jenny. “Walk away” I looked the bully dead in the eye and breathed. Having caught my breath, I turned and walked. I didn’t run, nor did I flee. I walked away. He screamed obscenities and insults at me. “You ******* coward! Get back here!”. I just walked. No destination, no adult behind whom I was going to hide, I just walked. I felt serene. After that day, things started to look up. My fellow victims of bullying began trying the technique, I started being able to concentrate and sleep, and I started to regain confidence. Of course, the journey still wasn’t easy, but I can tell you that my life would be a lot worse today if I hadn’t met Jenny. “Walk away”--every adult.