Rachel Ng

You’re probably going to think I’m a drama queen after you read this. Maybe I am. But this is how I thought my life was like, and therefore it must be what my life was like. Cogito ergo sum. I used to be a wallflower, but then I found out that’s only because I chose to be one.

I discovered my interest in psychology when my mom started trying different methods of bringing me up. Not long after the bullying started, we started sharing little aspects of our day, and discussing both the good and bad things along with how we can improve. To be honest, it started off quite unnatural. However, after a while, I fell in love with the concept. It helped me reflect and figure out what I could improve on. Soon, I had higher expectations of myself. Since I was striving to meet these goals and deadlines I set for myself, I learned a lot more.

I was considered an outcast mainly because I didn’t make much effort in making friends at school. It got worse between third and fifth grade, and got even worse when I started secondary school. It became mutual that people should dislike me. In other words, my friend (if I even had one at the time) was my only friend, and so of course I was her only friend. When I walk towards a bunch of gossiping girls, and they start to talk quietly and glance at me every now and then – that’s my cue to leave.

I often doubted if this was all just my imagination. I wondered if I was only victimizing myself, and if there was nothing to worry about. This lowered my self-esteem and made me feel like I was exactly the person my classmates described me to be. At that time, I couldn’t even take care of myself. I was dealing with problems internally. There were things about myself that I needed to figure out.

It was the before-bed sharing sessions with my mom that helped me re-build my self-confidence and stand up for myself. In primary school, social workers came and gave presentations telling us to say “no” when getting bullied. The truth is it doesn’t work that way. Believe me, I have tried the same method and made the situation worse.

Now I see that with all this experience, it is less likely I will be faced with the same problem in the future. School is a good time to learn such things; it’s better to make mistakes at school than to make them in the future.