Love Me: The Manoir

Wear Orange Trousers

I remember picking out my outfit for the first day of sixth form the night before. The year before I had begun to experiment with clothing slightly more. While before I would beg my mum for a pair of Topshop jeans and a crop top so that I fit in with everyone else, I was now beginning to divert from the crowd. Charity shops became my new haven, and the clothes I wore became slowly more and more wackier.

I opted for a pair of flared trousers and a black t-shirt, overlain by my favourite windbreaker (which I bought from a flea market from Amsterdam and I would let everyone know that), and my masterpiece was finished by a necklace that had a clock as its pendent which everyone still makes fun of to this day. I walked in and said hello to all the friends I knew before, still icy and cold towards those who had ditched me (or at least I was in my head, I'm sure in real life I was actually just the same with them as I had always been).

But this was a time to reinvent oneself, and that was electric in the air. I spoke to as many new people as I could, trying to build up a repertoire that would help me escape the box I had been confined to for my whole life. I wanted to finally be someone, not someone's sidekick or joke or someone completely forgotten at the edge of a circle.

I joined an umpteen amount of clubs and activities – student newspaper, creative writing, Step and Tone, FemSoc, even one called Rubbish Runners – in the desperate attempt to do something with my time. I was sick of being told that I didn't have hobbies, that I didn't do anything worthwhile, that I never got myself out there. I was the one controlling my fucking fate now. I directed my own sail.

Slowly, a large friendship group seemed to form around me and wrap me up in its warm arms. They spoke about politics, human rights, but they also would watch X Factor auditions and laugh at them. We would sit every lunch and break time in the IT room of the Sixth Form centre and chat shit or dance or play pranks on each other.

I had never had so many friends before. In previous years it mattered only about who was in your group, and yet here it felt like everyone was invited to one big party. And while my new friends were brilliant, one thing remained the same.

I was still the butt of every joke. And yet, at Sixth Form there seemed to be so much more ammunition to attack with.

It became a recurring theme over the next two years for everyone to assess what I was wearing the minute I walked through the door and tell me exactly how I felt. No one else came under this scrutiny, and slowly as time went on this began to drag and drag at me. While I had laughed at first when they called my jacket disgusting or called me shoes vile, a few months in it began to hit me how much this was affecting the way I viewed myself.

I began to dress every morning in clothes that I knew would get the less abuse, clothes that would help me blend in, or clothes that I knew had elicited a rare positive comment before. I was dressing to avoid the bullying that would follow. Unlike before in my life, this was not me wanting validation from the people around me. This was me trying to get through my day without the comments which I knew I would cry about when I got home. I spent a lot of time in bed those evenings, wondering why the world had to be so mean sometimes.

The problem when your friends are the ones making you feel like shit is you don't know how to broach that topic without seeming like a twat. How do you tell people that their source of entertainment is detrimental to your mental health? How do you tell people that their words and cutting into you like knives and with every judgement of you, you bleed and bleed internally?

You can't. Or at least, I felt like I couldn't. It felt like this was my assigned fate now – constant judgement.

However, despite the pain that this brought me, sixth form began rather successfully. I had new friends to replace the ones I had lost, and for once I felt myself peaking at school. Academically I was thriving, and I saw the world around me expanding. I was becoming someone different, someone new. The kind of person who, for once, I wanted to be.

Monday 4th December 2017

DOWN

I came to school in an outfit I really liked and just got ripped for it. This happens everyday, it's relentless and it does get me really down. 'It's only a joke' they'll say but it doesn't feel like that and being told you look shit everyday in clothes you love is really hard. And it's everyone now, everyone does it and it gets too much sometimes. I almost started crying in geography today because I had just been roasted all break time about my clothes and I just felt like shit. There's always something people have to pick on and it never happens with anyone else. No one else gets fucking roasted everyday till they feel like they're ugly and worthless by their own fucking friends. I've just had enough but I can't tell them to stop because I'd be seen as a killjoy. I'm sorry I want to wear bright and colourful clothes and that I don't want to blend in. This is really affecting my mental state because I before I would get dressed and wear clothes I like, now I put on clothes and wonder what comments people will make. Because it happens every day. I sat in geography and realised this is a form of bullying. They're my friends and yet they say these things which surely you shouldn't say to people. I've just seen myself regress back into this state of being where I view myself as worthless and I hate it. I hate that I am weak enough to let words change me but it's every day. Every single fucking day I get critiqued and judged for the way I look.

-    Ella