by Ben Smith
Ben’s brother Daniel was hard on the outside but soft in the middle, whereas Ben was soft all over. When we lived in Norwich, Daniel played mini-rugby and loved it. The first time we took both of them to the rugby club, I said to them: ‘You don’t have to do this, you can just watch if you want.’ Daniel was off like a shot, Ben hid behind my legs. But after a while, Ben said: ‘Actually, I might like to have a try.’ So off came the tracksuit and on he went. Ten minutes went by and I began to think: ‘Where has Ben gone?’ All the other kids were down one end of the field and Ben was at the other, making daisy chains. It was typical Ben, the sensitive soul. That was probably down to his grandma – she was always wandering around a lake, near her flat, with the boys, picking flowers. He was so innocent, probably too innocent. And he was also naïve because we were naïve. I wasn’t what they would call streetwise, I trusted everybody. If I got a good kicking, I went back for another because I’d think: ‘They didn’t just do that to me, surely?’ It was Ben’s naïvety the bullies preyed on and his innocence they took away.
We did ask the school about its level of pastoral care, things like: ‘Do they get a cuddle if they need one?’ Because we were a very tactile family, I used to sit with the boys and read them stories and stroke their hair. So we didn’t expect what he got. We saw him as often as we could. There were times when we would suddenly up sticks and come over to the UK, and I’d feel like crying, watching all the other kids playing with each other. He was close to my mum and some weekends he’d stay with her in Rotherham and have a great time. And every end of term he’d either come to Germany or we’d go down to my mum’s. It was the three months in between that were the problem. I’d always go and collect him at the end of term or pick him up from the airport, but I could never do the other journey because I could see how unhappy he was. He’d be absolutely heartbroken, and so would I. Even now, it makes me cry, just thinking about it.
••••••••••
When it was time to go to secondary school at 13, I thought: ‘I suppose this bullying’s going to end now.’ But at secondary school, things escalated quickly. The plan had been to pull me from school when Mum and Dad moved back to the UK. But then they got posted to Buchan, near Aberdeen, and they had heard the local kids didn’t look too kindly on English kids from a military background. Things could have turned out far worse, which is a sobering thought. The abuse was now physical, which is not to say that the mental abuse stopped. I was dyslexic, not great at reading and writing, so kids would label me thick. And suddenly, lots of kids were calling me gay, a word I hadn’t really heard before – ‘You’re gay! You’re gay! You’re gay!’ I wouldn’t say I was camp or effeminate, but I was quite shy and softly-spoken. I didn’t really know what being gay was, but I thought it was a bad thing. At school we were in church almost every day, so I had this crazy idea that being gay was un-Godly, abnormal and unhuman.
Every morning, I’d wake up thinking: ‘What’s going to happen to me today?’ One incident I remember to this day was when I was in the computer room, playing the game Doom. All the usual suspects were in there, ganging up on me, killing me in the game, relentlessly taunting me, calling me gay or weird or both. I grew angrier and angrier and more frustrated and eventually I lost it, completely flipped out, and punched one of them. I stood back and thought: ‘Oh, shit, what have I done?’ To save face, he chased me out of the computer room, through the corridor, up into my bedroom and beat seven bells of shit out of me on my bed. My bedroom was my only sanctuary, in what I had commonly come to refer to as ‘hell on earth’, and he invaded it. I was curled up in the foetal position, thinking, ‘I just want this all to end’, when someone else from my house walked in and had the balls to say: ‘Whoa, what’s going on here?’ To this day I appreciate him doing that. It takes a strong kid to stand up for somebody else who’s being bullied. But I felt weak not being able to fight back, and a little confused as to why. For many nights after the incident, I dreamt about what I would do if it happened again. I saw myself fighting the bully and winning, after a martial arts-style frenzy. It was completely absurd, but a way of dealing with the situation.
The mental bullying was worse because it wasn’t intermittent, it was constant, like psychological warfare. It left a scar no one could see with the naked eye. I lived in constant fear, and that zaps your energy, your confidence, your everything. Maybe the kids were feeling abandoned and wanted to somehow regain control of their lives and the only way they felt they could do this was to abuse somebody else and make their life hell. Perhaps it was a case of wanting to belong. One of my bullies turned out to be gay, so maybe he hated himself and was taking it out on me? Whatever the reasons, it wasn’t just kids being kids, that’s just a cheap excuse. In my opinion kids are born as blank slates and it’s their influences and experiences growing up that mould them into the people they become. That was certainly the case with me, so why would it be any different for my bullies? But what was going on in their lives that meant they had turned out like this?
There were a few bullies in particular who made my life a misery. After I left school, I’d search for the boys online, hoping they’d had a bad time of it and their lives had gone to shit. One had no online presence at all, so I never found out what happened to him. Another has a young family and sometimes I’d think: ‘I’d like your kids to know how you treated me.’ But then I’d think: ‘Maybe these people just don’t realise how nasty they were being, or maybe they don’t even remember me?’
There’s a lot I’ve blocked out from those days, but I do remember sitting in the phone box on the top floor of the house many times, sobbing down the line to Mum: ‘Just come and get me, please come and get me…’ But I didn’t tell my parents what was going on, I kept it all to myself. They were obviously aware I was sad, but they didn’t really know why, so had no concrete reason to remove me from the situation, which is what I wanted. I remember a throwaway comment from Mum: ‘You know, this has almost broken me and your dad up.’ That put a lot of responsibility on me. Actually, it led to me putting a lot of responsibility on myself. I didn’t want them to know I was being bullied because I didn’t want them to go through all that again. And if they’d broken up, I don’t think I would have been able to forgive myself. So, every time I was asked if I was being bullied, I’d say: ‘Everything is fine, I think I just feel a bit homesick…’
••••••••••
Beverley Smith, Ben’s mum: Pete being in the Air Force, it was extremely difficult to make plans. You never knew where you’d be from one day to the next, and in those days, they told you where you were being posted, you weren’t asked. We had an inkling Ben was being bullied because he was clearly unhappy. ‘What’s the matter?’ we used to say. And he’d say: ‘I just miss home a bit.’ The situation was the only thing that ever threatened our marriage. I was caught in the middle because Germany was the tour Pete had wanted all his working life. And he deserved it, he’d worked so hard for it. But it became such a strain that I thought about coming back to the UK. Pete was away a lot, so when Ben came home for holidays, I used to say to him: ‘Daddy’s away, so you’re the man of the house now.’ Little did I know that what seemed like just a harmless, throwaway comment sat on Ben’s shoulders like a heavy weight. And because Ben was so sensitive, this comment was stored away and he lived his life thinking he must never let his Mum and Dad down.
The headmaster of the secondary school had visited the prep school and what struck a chord with Ben was when he said: ‘Every child that comes here will have a fresh start.’ So Ben decided that was the school for him. And because Daniel was jealous of what Ben had, and saw it as an adventure, he insisted he wanted to go, too.
In our naïvety we believed what the headmaster had said, but it turned out to be a load of crap. I told his housemaster that we thought Ben had been bullied at prep school and that he was quite a sensitive young man. But while we were in Scotland, we got a phone call from Ben, who was saying: �
�They’re chasing me and I’ve got nowhere else to go!’ Pete kept talking to Ben, while I rang his housemaster and said: ‘I don’t know what’s going on down there, but something is, because Ben has been on the phone, telling us he’s being chased!’
We dropped everything in Scotland and when we finally arrived we discovered there was this particular group of lads who’d been teasing Ben and flinging all his gear about and what not. It might not sound like much, but because of the type of lad Ben was, and because of how much damage had already been done, he couldn’t take it. There was also a big class divide because these bullies paid full school fees, whereas our kids were what they called ‘military brats’, which meant the Air Force paid part of their fees. So Ben and Daniel were natural targets. We used to say to them both: ‘Talk to us, tell us what’s wrong, you can come home.’ But because Ben wouldn’t communicate, we had no idea of what he was going through. It was always: ‘I’m so sorry for worrying you, I’m so sorry for this, I’m so sorry for that.’
We had a word with his housemaster and he said: ‘Oh, Mrs Smith, you’re worrying too much, it’s just boys being boys…’ But it wasn’t: the school was trying to cover up the bullying that was going on. Still Ben never said anything. Every time they came home, the pair of them would bring shadows with them. It would take them the whole weekend to unwind, and when the time came for us to take them back, you could see the unhappiness in their faces.
When we bought our house in Lincoln, having moved down from Scotland, the plan was to take both kids out of boarding school. By then, they had gone in very different directions. At school, Daniel was taunted by kids telling him his brother was odd. That began to push them apart. He wanted his brother to be there for him, but Ben was having enough trouble without trying to stick up for Daniel. And because Daniel was sporty, while Ben sang in the choir, their places within the school were very different. Daniel wasn’t particularly happy when he found out he was leaving, but he did as he was told. We gave Ben the choice: Do A-levels where he was, or go to a school in Lincoln. And Ben said: ‘They’re going to make me a prefect, I’m captain at swimming, I’m going to stay.’ So we thought things were OK. Ben was so honest and open, but he was also a good liar – he had to be.
Chapter 2
My Normal
Slapping and slopping down a coastal path on the Gower Peninsula, straight into the howl of Storm Abigail, I have never seen weather like it! Rain coming in off the Bristol Channel, horizontal. This doesn’t sound like the best place to be, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. So many people told me I was crazy: ‘How could you sell your house and everything you owned without knowing what the next step is?’ But I found something that made me happy to my soul. And this is exactly it. Waves crashing against the cliffs, wind landing with its best shots. Fear. Mum’s right, I was a good liar – I had a lot of practice. But I’m not lying anymore.
I haven’t really thought this through. I’ve got no waterproof gear, so I’m soaked to the bone. I had a plan, but I kind of didn’t. It’s sink or swim, either you give up or you thrash away and get through it. It’s just the two of us, me and a guy called Matt, from a running club near Swansea. I don’t know what he’s thinking, as we slap and slop away. Up on the cliff top I come to a halt. Abigail is howling straight at me as I look out to sea, and I’m howling back, arms outstretched:
‘Come on! Come on, Abigail! Throw everything you fucking can at me! Come on, everything you’ve fucking got! I can take it! I can take anything!’
It’s like something from a film, I half expect to be struck by a bolt of lightning. Meanwhile, Matt is keeping his distance, looking at me as if to say: ‘What the hell have we got here?’ He must think I’ve lost it. Completely lost it. I’m freezing, I’m drowning, I’m terrified. But I’ve never felt so alive.
••••••••••
There were loads of kids being bullied at secondary school. And when other kids were being bullied it provided respite and relief for me. I’m ashamed to say there were even a couple of instances when I joined in. Once, I caught two kids in the act, so to speak, and ran up and down the corridor telling everybody about it, literally screaming at the top of my voice. It must have been hell for those kids, but I just thought: ‘Well, at least I won’t be bullied for a while.’ You do what you have to do to survive in that kind of environment, it’s dog eat dog, Darwinian. When you’re the one taking the heat most of the time, if somebody else is being bullied for an afternoon, you’ll gladly take the solace.
Even now, I think I played a big part in how my life unravelled. I can’t just blame the bullies. Maybe if I’d been a little bit stronger, the bullying might have stopped. But I was in a constant battle with my inner self, that’s how unhinged I was. Sometimes, I would find some strength from somewhere, put the shutters up and be able to block things out. I’d become older and more mature, which enabled me to put the face on and go into survival mode. The next day, I’d crash and be sobbing down the phone to Mum again. It was a life of desperation. I took GCSE music, but had no interest in music. I cheated in my exam, got one of the other kids to write one of my compositions for me. I was in the choir, but so were two of my bullies. They were everywhere I went, I couldn’t escape them. I was terrible at most sport, a lanky streak of piss. I hated running, so cross-country in the freezing cold and mud, wearing a T-shirt and shorts and plimsolls, was hell to me.
My maths teacher was a kind soul. He was a dad, had two sons, and I found enjoyment in his subject. Sometimes he’d stand in for my housemaster and I’d really look forward to him being there because he made me feel safe. We’d have long chats and with his help, I got an A in one of my maths modules. I was over the moon, I’d never had an A in my life.
My other escape was swimming, which was the only sport I was mildly good at. My grandma was a champion swimmer, so I took after her, just as I took after her at picking flowers. I was good at swimming, fast. The weird part was that two of my bullies were on the team and in my final year, I was their captain. Being captain of the swimming team was easily my biggest achievement at school. It gave me a real sense of accomplishment, far more so than being a prefect. I suspect they only made me a prefect because not enough pupils wanted the gig. And you don’t have to be a psychologist to see why swimming provided an escape – body submerged, goggles on, ears blocked, away from it all.
But swimming only provided temporary respite. That final year at school, the pressure was mounting and the lid was starting to rattle on the pot. I didn’t like the way I looked, and I remember doing my hair in the mirror and nearly ripping it out because I couldn’t get it perfect. I was hyper-stressed, frayed, stretched, frustrated and annoyed because I had no control over anything. But at the time, I didn’t even recognise it as stress because it just became my normal. I could feel myself losing it, but because I had normalised the daily torture I couldn’t see why I was losing it, which worried me even more. If somebody says something horrible to you, you obviously feel hurt; it gets to you, no matter how much you try to cover it up and say it hasn’t. But because the bullying was such a constant in my life, people attacking me for who and what I was every single hour of every single day, with the occasional physical abuse thrown in for good measure, I became numb to the pain. In a sick way, I looked forward to it happening because it had become my normal. And if it didn’t happen, I’d think: ‘Oh my God, if not that, what else?’ My perceptions had been reversed. I was losing a bit of my soul every single day, starting to question who I was, what I was, why was I different, why I was even here. Other people had hijacked my life, taken me over, and without even knowing it, I’d become a shell. It wasn’t my life, it was a life for other people to mess with.
I don’t remember there being a trigger and I didn’t even hatch a plan to end things. One day, I just found myself putting that knife in my pocket, taking it back to my bedroom and cutting at my wrists. You can only bury all that poison for so long, eventually the body reacts. Looking
back, it was one of the most important times in my life. I was so worried about the fact I’d tried to kill myself that I eventually told Mum and Dad when I got home. It was a massive shock to them.
••••••••••
Beverley Smith, Ben’s mum: He got through the first part of his A-levels and was learning to drive when he came home to Lincoln at weekends. But he was getting thinner and thinner. He looked dreadful, yellow, haunted. Michaela, his German pal, who we thought was his girlfriend, rang me and said: ‘Talk to Ben, please talk to Ben.’ So one weekend, we had our quiet time together, and I said to him:
‘Something’s going on, something’s obviously going on.’
‘No, I’m alright, Mum.’
‘Don’t you feel well?’
‘Everything’s fine…’
He was all packed up and ready to go back to school on Sunday evening, but we couldn’t find him. I thought he was already in the car, but Pete came in and said: ‘Where is he?’ We searched the house, high and low, but couldn’t find him. Eventually we found him in the garage, cowering in the corner, rocking backwards and forwards. He was in a terrible state. I brought him into the kitchen and said:
‘Whatever is it? Whatever’s the matter?’
‘I tried to kill myself. With a knife. In my bedroom at school.’