Reggie & Me

by Marie Yates

  I got up from the bench and let Reggie off the lead. It wasn’t fair on him not to have a run around! He didn’t run anywhere and still stayed right by my side. He walked me home!

  Jane has talked about making decisions before. She said that sometimes you just have to decide that you are going to carry on and you are going to succeed. Once you have made the decision, then you figure out how to make it happen. Right now, my only success will be making it through school tomorrow. I know that I really do want to be here and I know that it won’t always be like this but I am terrified about what they’ll do next. I know that I can’t cope if this carries on and I know that if it happens again I will tell someone. It’s not like life can get any worse at school! Never mind my other goals and stuff. All I want to do at the moment is get through tomorrow. Only two more days until the weekend.

  Forty

  It’s Friday. I did what I set out to do and got through school. I was sticking to busy places, trying to mix with the crowds so they couldn’t get me even if they were planning to. I changed the routes I used to classes and spent the whole of break in the toilet. The whole thing was so frightening. Not just because of what they did to me (which was bad enough), but because of how I felt in the park. I will never, ever let anyone make me feel like that again.

  Mum has been telling me since the rape that I am not a victim, and yet I have been acting like one since we got here. Maybe if I had made more effort to start with and not hidden away I would have made some friends as not been seen as a total freak. I’m not saying it’s my fault, I know it isn’t. It’s their fault as they are choosing to behave like this. I just wonder if I could have made life a little bit easier for myself. It’s never too late to make an effort I suppose.

  I am not a victim.

  Today at school we had an ex-pupil come and talk to us and her timing could not have been better. She went to this school and whilst she wasn’t bullied she said that she didn’t really have any friends. She had a few comments from other kids because she was considered different but they pretty much left her alone. She didn’t go into details about her childhood but said she’d had a difficult time and lived with a local foster family while she went to school. There were always other kids coming and going so she never knew what she’d be going home to. Some of her foster brothers went to the boxing club just down the road from their house and one night she thought she’d join them. It was really unusual for a girl to do boxing but the coach helped her out and she turned out to be really good at it. She said that she was called a lesbian or a transvestite because she started to develop muscles…but nobody would really mess with her! What really annoyed people was that she would never, ever retaliate. She just smiled. She said her coach had told her to do that. She was told that the skills she had weren’t supposed to be used outside of the boxing ring and she needed to be disciplined. It sounded a lot like Taekwondo except I’m still not very good at it, and the other day I couldn’t have used the skills even if I’d wanted to!

  I couldn’t believe she just smiled at the people who were bullying her. Smiling? Like I want to smile at those girls! The only positive might be that it would annoy them, but I don’t think I want to annoy them. What would they do then? I don’t think I could ever beat them.

  She had just come back from the World Championships with a gold medal. She had beaten everyone! She had worked really hard and she had achieved her goal. She had a really crap time growing up but it didn’t stop her. More than that, it made her even more determined. That has got to be a better use of time and energy than sitting on a park bench and crying? I don’t want to be a boxer, I’m not sure what I do want to be but I do know that there is more to life than being constantly frightened.

  As I was leaving the room I stopped and said, ‘Thank you, what you said has really inspired me.’

  She just smiled and said, ‘You’re welcome…now whatever you have seen in me, it’s already in you…go and be your own hero.’ I will never forget those words.

  What do I need to do to become my own hero?

  I need to achieve my goals to start with. She said that she had the big goal of one day being a World Champion and then lots of smaller goals that led to it. My big Taekwondo goal is to have a black belt and so all of the other belts will lead me to the big goal. I’m not sure if I want to compete, I want to feel safe and I want to keep fit. I need to figure out what I want to do with my life so that I can have a big goal to work towards. Passing my exams feels big enough at the moment!

  • It is June and I have my second belt in Taekwondo!

  • It is August and I have passed all of my exams.

  • It is September and I have decided what I want to do next in my life.

  The successes I have had today:

  • I have made it through school. I know that might sound really small but it has taken every bit of strength I have to come in to school these last two days.

  The things I am grateful for today:

  • Reggie! He always has to be top of the list!

  • Having the talk at school today. It has really inspired me to do something with my life. I’m not completely sure what yet but I will do something.

  • Talking with Jane.

  I called Jane this evening and told her that things had got worse. She was obviously worried, but then I told her about today. I said that I felt much stronger and that I didn’t know what I was going to do but I was going to do something! That seems to be my answer to everything at the moment. She said that she would call me on Wednesday evening and if things hadn’t changed we agreed we’d talk to Mum and go to the school. I just feel so much better after today, especially knowing we have a back-up plan!

  Forty-One

  I was on my way to Maths this morning, which is never a great start to the day anyway. I always see them before this lesson and there’s no other way to get to the class unless I hide in the loo and make myself late. The Maths teacher isn’t someone to be messed with so I have always just walked past, kept my head down and tried to ignore what they’re saying. I try to make sure they can’t see it’s bothering me. As usual, I was walking down the corridor and I could see them ahead of me. I braced myself and right on cue I heard, ‘Here comes the dyke,’ come tumbling out of the Nina’s mouth.

  Today, I didn’t keep my head down. I didn’t just keep walking, looking at the floor as if it was me who should be hiding. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I looked straight into Nina’s eyes and with a slight smile and shake of my head, the same way Mum does when she’s disappointed I haven’t tidied up, I walked away.

  I had beaten them. In my own small way, I had taken back the power. I didn’t avoid them, hang my head in shame or try to make myself invisible. I stood tall and I did not back down. Having a corridor full of people helped a little bit as I was sure that they wouldn’t try and pin me to the wall there and then!

  I am proud of myself. It’s the first step I have taken since the dark day sitting on a park bench wondering what the point is. It’s amazing that even though I’m still feeling scared about what they might do next; I’m also feeling much stronger. If I can take that little step then I do it again and I can do whatever it takes to get through school.

  In that Maths class I concentrated more than I have ever concentrated before. I felt awake and energised. I still didn’t understand most of what the teacher was talking about, but I wasn’t fazed by trying to work it out! I was chatting when we worked in a group and eventually got one of the questions right. It’s like part of my brain had been set free. I was so scared when I looked Nina in the eye, but what did I have to lose? It couldn’t get much worse and I knew that I had my back-up plan if it all went wrong!

  It was the same before but I had Mum and Jane to help me figure out what I needed to do. When the police first came round after it happened I was so frightened. I didn’t want to say anything, couldn’t look them in the eye and just wanted to make myself invisible. I felt like I had done something wrong a
nd no matter what anyone said, it took ages for me to stop feeling like that. When I started to actually talk to the police officers rather than just answer their questions, I felt more in control. They were answering my questions! I just needed to be braver than I was being. It seemed like an impossible task but as soon as I started asking about what would happen and what I needed to do I started to feel better. I was so worried and frightened about the unknown but also too scared to ask questions as I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answers! Hearing the answers was always better. That way, I knew what I was dealing with!

  Now, I don’t really have any questions that I need the answer to. Nobody can tell me if they’ll stop or whether they will continue shouting in my face until the end of the year. I can ask myself a question though! What am I going to do to make sure I get what I want out of this year? Today showed me that I can make sure I feel okay no matter what they say or do. The only thing that changed today was my reaction. Nothing they did changed at all! Yet, I felt so much better. I didn’t see them again today, which was brilliant, but I noticed that I wasn’t as worried about it either. I still looked around to see if they were there but my palms stayed dry. That’s progress.

  I know that I might have to find the energy to do the same thing every day. If that’s what it takes then that is what I will do. There are lots of things I want to do that will probably mean I need to find the energy to be brave! Like, achieving these goals…!

  • It is June and I have my second belt in Taekwondo!

  • It is August and I have passed all of my exams.

  • It is September and I have decided what I want to do next in my life.

  I’m on track with these. Especially after today when it turns out all I need to do is concentrate in Maths and I might actually be okay at it!

  The successes I have had today:

  • I didn’t walk along wishing the ground would swallow me up. I looked Nina in the eye! Mum would have been proud of my ‘disappointed’ look too!

  • I figured out the answer to a maths question!

  • I have learnt a new move in Taekwondo that will help me reach my next belt.

  The things I am grateful for today:

  • Reggie – especially as he is still not running too far away from me!

  • All the other people in the corridor that made me feel a little bit protected!

  Bring on tomorrow!

  Forty-Two

  Things have been okay over the last week. I’ve had to make an effort to carry on just going about my day like nothing is wrong. I still look Nina in the eye as I walk past and she has actually quietened down a bit. She has plenty to say once she has walked past me but is losing the ability to say it to my face. She’s not nearly as confident as she looks. When her gaggle were with her and I just looked down she had all the confidence in the world. That’s not real confidence though. She has tried to avoid my eye contact a couple of times by deliberately turning to talk to one of her support crew. They were making their usual comments about me and still thought that they were hilarious, but they are not having the same effect on me at all.

  I realised that while my brain has been occupied with avoiding the gaggle and being worried about what might happen I have missed out on so much. I’ve been writing these goals down but not doing much about the school ones. I think that Taekwondo was more of a distraction than anything and even though I was enjoying it, I wasn’t 100 per cent there. Now when I go, I only think about what is going on in the room. My mind isn’t wandering to the next day and how I’m going to get around school without being seen. I’m enjoying it even more and actually getting better much quicker. I’m almost back to a healthy weight too and my favourite jeans fit me again! Not only do they fit me, I wore then out to the cinema with Katie. Our mums decided that they’d like to have time to talk without having to constantly watch the dogs, so they dropped us off to have dinner and go to the cinema and they went on to somewhere a bit nicer! I really enjoyed it.

  There’s a big difference between how I am in school now and how I was before. I have made more effort in class and haven’t just sat there like a stuffed toy feeling like I should apologise for my existence. A couple of days ago, in Science, I was working with two other girls that I haven’t really spoken to before. Usually I would be really quiet and just wait for everyone else to come up with the idea but this time I had an advantage. We were doing an experiment on the effect of temperature on solubility (yawn) and I had already done this in my last school. ‘Okay, so solids are usually more soluble in hot water than in cold water so we can just measure the difference in boiling water and an ice bath. We just need to measure it, draw a graph and we’re done. If we use ammonium chloride it just means someone is going to have to look like an idiot and wear the safety glasses.’

  A teacher’s voice piped up at that moment with, ‘I think you’ll find, Danielle, that you’ll all have to look like idiots and wear the safety glasses.’ Oops! I was actually useful to my team and I had a laugh. I think that was the first time I had laughed in a lesson since I moved to this school. That’s really sad isn’t it?

  One of the girls I was working with even asked what I was doing for lunch. I was really tempted as I was having a great time with them but that would have meant not having lunch with Katie, Maya and Callie. They had been my lifeline and I wasn’t willing to change that even for one day. I am so grateful to them and I think it would be wrong of me to ditch them the first time I have another offer! It made my day to be asked though!

  Things are looking up and it’s only me who has changed. Even though I feel like I am making an effort, it’s also really easy. The science lesson went really fast because I was having fun and I’ve noticed that the school days don’t feel as long either. I’m definitely on target to pass my exams, but I’m not sure that’s enough. I want to do well. I am more determined than ever to reach my goals.

  Jane called a few days ago like she said she would and she has called every night since! We are not putting plan ‘b’ into action as I really am doing okay. It took me a while to convince her that I really am doing okay! She has been helping me to concentrate on the good stuff and that’s making sure I don’t go back to concentrating on what might happen with Nina. It was very easy to fall into a habit of only thinking about her and what she might do next. It hasn’t been as easy to change that habit but I’m getting there and it’s making such a big difference. Mum has noticed a change in me too. We took Reggie out together over the weekend and she told me that she’d seen me smiling much more. She said I was looking great too and said we could go shopping when she’s paid! I’m never going to need the bigger sized clothes again so they’re going on eBay! Maybe one day I’ll tell her about what has been happening but for now, I’m just pleased that she can see that I’m okay.

  Jane keeps telling me how important it is for me to do this too! I didn’t tell her that I’m not doing it every day even though she probably knows that! My goals are still…

  • It is June and I have my second belt in Taekwondo!

  • It is August and I have passed all of my exams.

  • It is September and I have decided what I want to do next in my life.

  I am on target with the first two! I need to really start thinking about the last one.

  The successes I have had today:

  • Concentrating properly at Taekwondo and in lessons.

  • Reaching my healthiest weight in almost a year.

  The things I am grateful for today:

  • Reggie…and no rain when I took him out for his walk – makes a change!

  • Lunch with Katie, Maya and Callie.

  • Laughing in class – that wasn’t today, but I’m still grateful!

  Forty-Three

  ‘Okay, Danielle, so the black belt idea is brilliant but tell me what you’ve done to get closer to it rather than just wishing you could do that flying kick.’ Another call with Jane was turning into a motivational speech.


  ‘I am doing stuff every day, I really am. I’m practising and learning the moves and can do the waist high kick like a pro, well almost a pro, okay so I can kick a bit! I’m getting better though, when I started I was out of breath in the warm up. School’s okay and I’m feeling much more awake in class, I only think about the flying kick when I’m really bored! Don’t sigh, I’m joking. I just feel like I need to get these things, I need to get my black belt and pass my exams to prove that I’m worth something.’

  I should have known that would send her into another speech. ‘If you’re not enough without them, Danielle, then you won’t be enough with them. The simple fact that you are working towards these things makes me incredibly proud and I hope you feel proud too. Don’t roll your eyes, I know you’re rolling your eyes.’ Damn, that woman is good.

  I guess everything is done taking little steps. I just want everything to happen NOW!

  When we first had Reggie I wished he would learn to lie down when we told him to. That took AGES and a lot of patience from me and Mum. We had to do a little bit of training with him every day until he finally lay down on command. It’s not like we don’t have setbacks! I told him to sit and then lie down in the park the other day. He did it, but rather than waiting until I got to him like he usually does, he decided that chasing after a squirrel would be much more fun. So much for all those hours of training! He’s good though, we just have to make sure we stick to the same rules with him and keep on, day by day, with the training. I need to do that with myself too! I don’t need to lie down in a park but I do need to do something every day to make sure I get to where I want to be. Just sitting around wishing I was already a black belt isn’t going to make that happen!