Boarding Stories

People sometimes write to us saying they would like to tell the story of their boarding school days. We should be very pleased to see your story If you would like to add it to the collection and make it available to all those interested.

The story:

• should be a maximum of about 1,000 words;
• should not mention the school by name; and
• will be edited and accepted by us in discussion with you.

Please send your submission to info@bss-support.org.uk.

I have been spending time with my childhood self and giving him some of the care and attention he did not have while at school. I tell him how grateful I am to him that, at school, he dealt, as well as he could have done, with the cold wind, the caning, the name-calling and the loneliness.

I thank him for having been a ‘tough little soldier’, because that is what was needed at the time. The idea of ‘resilience’ lay a long way ahead in an adult world, but when the headmaster pulled down my trousers to cane me on the back of my legs, I needed to grow a hard skin round my heart which can now be shed – like the locusts kept in the school science block used to shed their skins (they were harsh pets for a schoolchild to observe). They would sit in their heated-up cages laying waste to any vegetation, as it felt like the school was doing to us – ravaging our little lives.

As a child, I was number 60; now I am 61 years old. As a child, I was pushed into a fight just because I was large (Bouncing Blubber was my nickname). As a child, I was taken to another boy’s bed who writhed around on top of me.

As a child, I can’t have done too badly: another schoolchild told me that I was like Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout in the way that I dealt with things that went wrong, springing up from off the ground each time. My brother and I shared the experience together, and I was glad for him being there.

I tell my childhood self that now, half a century later, there is no need for him to look after me, his adult self: his job is done.

He has taught me valuable lessons of pragmatism and coping, but he doesn’t have to worry any more about me. He can let me go and I will be all right. The child becomes the adult; the adult cannot stay as the child.

I reassure him that I am not looking to leave him on the school steps once again, and drive off as happened all those years ago. He is I and I am he; we can have home time together without the school terms in between.

There are life lessons, that I learnt at school, which have stayed with me ever since. “If you can’t finish one job, try finishing another and then return to what you were doing before”, said a sports-master, watching me as I hunted for a missing games sock. “Excellence in one sphere encourages excellence in another”, would be the regular refrain from the headmaster – without a regular rhythm.

There are things I have learnt, as an adult, that I never knew as a child. Women are friends. They no longer wave you off to school but lie beside you in bed. Men are friends; they no longer name-call you but call you by name. ‘Home’ is a place of sanctuary – to return to not to be sent away from.

There are lessons from school that I still have to unlearn: life is not a competition. There is no need for the adult to compete for attention in the way that the child had to do in the rarefied loveless boarding school air. A child has to prove himself, an adult has simply to be himself.

Farewell and thank you dear child – you have been a good and faithful friend. After school-time adaptability comes adult acceptance. “It is as it is”, say the prisoners where I work as chaplain. I had epilepsy for 30 years and fell down but got up and ran 15 marathons. I married, and then married again: and I settle down with Sylvie’s faithful love.

I found my home in the church. The life that had been taken away in grey Sussex stone corridors, a dormitory bed and cold playing fields, became a life that was given away to the young, lonely, sad and hopeful.

I glimpsed God with Isaiah (chapter 6) on the steps of the Jerusalem temple, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts… Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the Lord God of Hosts”. Isaiah, on the steps of the Temple, was I on the steps of the school watching my parents drive away. I could understand Isaiah’s God who was powerful and all-knowing and in the face of whom I quaked; that was my schoolboy self.

“Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so”, “Gentle Jesus meek and mild” did not come to me so easily and maybe never has.

You can be proud of yourself my dear childhood self; “in my beginning is my end”, wrote TS Eliot, and it is no coincidence that the child, left on the school steps, crying, is now me, an adult caring for those left in prison.

It was the year that Procul Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale was number one in the charts for nearly twelve weeks that I decided, after three years attending a boarding school founded by in the early 19th century, enough was enough.

The despotic headmaster had already told my parents that I was something of an enigma and would never make it to university. Fortunately, I was able to prove him completely wrong: and, with the impetus of adolescent defiance and determination, went on to study at four universities, one of which was at postgraduate level.

This account is not a look back in anger but more of a philosophical reflection of an event –  perceived at the time as probably weak and even shameful – that can sometimes reset us on a different trajectory and result in a far better outcome.

That event recalled was to break the norms of public school tradition, its intransigence, subjugation and belittlement: all thinly disguised by that euphemistic mantra of character-building. This supposedly results in us all becoming thoroughly decent chaps as exemplified by some of Britain’s prime ministers.

Aspiring to be a successful absconder was the last resort in throwing down the gauntlet to tradition, and a measure of desperation, and was not by any means easily achieved. One’s whereabouts were closely monitored, and those who did manage to make it as far as the railway station would be quickly intercepted by the prefects and hauled back to face retribution. This was usually in the form of a caning followed by long-term ‘gating’ – a term used to refer to constant monitoring which meant reporting to the prefect on duty during one’s free time every half hour.

This presented a challenge not unlike trying to escape from Alcatraz. Instead of sharks impeding your swim to freedom, there was a cohort of prefects ready to hunt you down like a team of frenetic bounty hunters.

A carefully planned escape strategy needed to be thought out if I was ever to succeed in being the first boy in the school’s history to hit a home run. Clearly using the railway was not an option, but the airport was about twelve miles away and seemed to be a better prospect. As I was already gated for insubordination to a prefect, my window of opportunity to effect an escape was now very limited.

I had decided that flying down to London was my best option. I would arrange a rendezvous with a taxi somewhere at a recognised location to take me to the airport. In the interim, I had to sell off most of my prized Carnaby Street gear to fund the taxi and airfares. As well as this, I needed to improve my level of fitness and train up in one of the cross-country running teams. I would have only thirty minutes to sprint to my rendezvous before my escape was detected.

My level of planning had given me a degree of confidence that I might succeed, so when I reported to the prefect on duty for the last time, I was fully prepared to enact my escape. I ran like a frightened hare across the fields, not daring to even glance back in case I was being pursued: and, the further away from the school, the more I felt emboldened as my yoke of oppression began to lighten.

Thankfully, the taxi was there waiting for me and we made the short distance to the airport in plenty of time. By now, I assumed that the bounty hunters were already looking for me and would have headed for the railway station. My destination was my uncle’s house in Sutton where I eventually arrived unannounced.

Having reached Victoria station in less than two hours from leaving school, I thought that I ought to notify my housemaster as to my whereabouts.

“It’s Knight here sir. Just to let you know that I am now in London and won’t be returning.”
The housemaster replied: “Don’t be so silly boy, where the hell are you?”
“I’m at Victoria station”, I said.
“That’s impossible”, he replied. “If you don’t return immediately, you’ll be expelled”.
“Then you’ll have to expel me”, I said, and hung up on him.

So began my transition from institutional to organisational life. I was now able to forge an identity that for once afforded a degree of self-esteem. The control, coercion and intimidation were finally over.

After evening prayers, three of us, standing in front of the sixty girls we shared a boarding house with.  Our house mistress giving us to read out loud in front of everyone the note we had sent to A.  X was excused from reading it as it was her first term at the school. Y couldn’t read it because she was crying too much.  So I read it, to the silent gasps of our house.

Then an evening of standing in the corridor facing the wall in silence as various older girls told us we were bitches and didn’t deserve to live.

Separated from our peers for what felt like weeks and made to sleep in a strange part of the house in small rooms where we couldn’t hear the morning bells and were shouted at for being late.

The terror of returning to my parents at the end of term many weeks later, knowing that a letter had been sent from the house mistress about our bullying note.  My parents never mentioned it at all.

Carrying the shame for years into adulthood; one day spotting the person we bullied on a school friend’s Facebook feed and asking them to mediate by sending her my message of apology.

We were eleven years old.  There was no-one to help us understand.

I’m sitting at Round Table because I’m a new girl. It’s the summer term so there are only two of us. This is where Mrs Ford sits too, she’s the headmistress, and Miss Brice, who’s the Matron. Mrs Ford is called Fodder behind her back, and Miss Brice is Beezer. I learned this in bed last night, after lights-out.

I ate the cornflakes, even though the milk had white spots on it and tasted funny. Now I have a slice of bread and someone’s put a cube of butter on my plate and a spoonful of slimy black treacle that smells bitter and is spreading like an oily puddle. I cannot eat this, I cannot. I want to go home. I don’t want to cry. But my eyes do anyway and drips slide down my face. I look down but Mrs Ford notices and says, “Jane, you’d better leave the table. Go and stand in the corridor.”

I get up, scuttle across the dining-room in my new noisy clodhoppers, pull open the heavy door and shut it behind me. I stand in the corridor of dark wood walls. After a while I hear everyone scraping back their chairs. The others come out and I join the rush upstairs where I get told, by Beezer, how to make my bed with hospital corners.

Here is my first letter home, written two days later:

I already knew I mustn’t bother or upset parents. And had learned to lie to them, and to start the process of convincing myself I was ‘fine’.

My first breakfast at prep school, aged nine, was what I call the defining moment – when I realised care was and would be absent, when I learned that crying was abhorred, and when I decided to ‘refuse to mind’. To not show distress (suppressing) meant not letting myself know I felt it (repressing). This worked even when my mother’s letter arrived on Monday mornings. I did sometimes feel wistful if I looked out of my dormitory window – the Sussex downs were in the distance and my house was just behind them, but no-one else would have known. My resolve didn’t work when Mrs Ford employed her key instrument of torture. Whenever shamed, my cheeks let me down, flushing red. What could I do but apologise for not being perfect, and try harder to make not one mistake; and at the same time cling to some trace of aliveness – rejected as bumptious, impertinent, obstreperous, bolshy.

Food offered with love is very different from food delivered as reward or punishment. Food offered with love can be tasted, taken in or not, swallowed if desired, then digested. Food offered with love nourishes the soul as well as the body, and fosters self-love, self-value. My first breakfast at prep school severed any residual connection between food and heart – at my Victorian pre-prep school I’d already witnessed my friend being forced, every day, to swallow repellent-to-her rice pudding; competition with my brothers, back home for holidays, obliterated discernment regarding quantity: I just wanted as much as them.

The message I did swallow from being banished from the dining-room was, ‘Your distress, your you-ness, is not welcome here.’  

Food became my enemy, fighting desire for sweets and stodge was a battIe I couldn’t win. My body, hunger included, became my enemy too. Being shamed at home (my name was Fatso, then shortened to Fat) didn’t stop me eating; neither did the dread of end-of-term weighing. Through my teens I tried diets, skipping meals, starving; the idea of eating less immediately made me crave, this beast called ‘need’ would not relent. I was caught in a loop that fed self-loathing, and led to seeking proof I wasn’t disgusting: being wanted was the goal, however temporary, whatever I had to do to earn it. The impasse lasted for as long as I didn’t realise it was love I was hungry for, emptiness I was attempting to fill.   

It wasn’t until I found a therapist I could confess my greed, and learned that need for nurturing wasn’t greedy but natural, that I dared opening my heart to digest love. Not in one gulp, any more than someone deprived of regular meals over years can tolerate more than a mouthful at first. Years later, self-love and value much restored, I eat mostly shame-free and with pleasure. Early evenings can still activate the urge to stuff: memories of not going home need ongoing tender attention.

Discovering the sensual pleasure of eating is a delight: the smell, taste, touch, sight, even sound. Shaming sensuality is, of course, central to boarding school regime: deprivation, a known torture, keeps a child striving. Success in terms of achievement becomes the goal rather than joy in living.

Not any longer…

One of the best feelings in the world is when you hug someone you love, and they hug you back even tighter. ~Author unknown

I shifted uncomfortably in a metal folding chair as the women’s leader spoke to the young moms gathered at church on a sunny Friday morning.

“Do you hug your children?” The slim, brunette woman standing before the fireplace scanned the audience of attentive moms, who were all nodding. “I’m sure you do, but do you hug them long enough?”

She meant to encourage us with those words. However, eager to be a good mother, I felt like a failure.

As sunlight streamed through the windows of the cosy fireside room, Pam smiled and continued. “You might have a child who wants lots of hugs or one who needs longer hugs.” She crossed her arms over her chest and squeezed her shoulders with her open hands. “Why don’t you try staying in the hug until your child breaks it off?”

At ten years old, my fun-loving yet reserved son, Robby, often asked for hugs. But I shied away from lingering touches because I didn’t receive a lot of physical affection growing up. I wanted a quick hug to be enough for him.

The older, experienced woman continued her lecture, and my thoughts drifted to my childhood. As missionary teachers in a rural Nigerian village, my parents raised my four siblings and me in that beautiful country among its wonderful people.

However, at age six, my parents sent me to a missionary boarding school four hundred miles from home. Dorm mothers didn’t give many hugs. Instead, a hurried kiss on the head served as a bedtime ritual.

Soon after I arrived for first grade, I fell on the playground and skinned my knee. I limped to the nurse’s office where I plopped down on a wooden bench with seven other kids in the waiting room. When it was my turn, the school nurse roughly cleaned the wound, pressed on a bandage, and sent me on my way. I bit my lip and fled to my room where I threw myself on the bed. In that silent, lonely dorm room, I sobbed rivers of tears into my pillow. All I wanted was my mother to hold me. Nobody consoled me, so over time I buried my need for comfort and affection and learned to take care of myself.

That independence served me well when I married Chris and we raised three children. As a pilot, my husband flew away for half of each month, leaving me to parent alone.

At each goodbye, I blocked out my grief and focused on the day’s duties. Brusque and organised, I looked competent, driving three kids to their classes, practices, and games on my own. However, by cutting off my emotions, I unintentionally lost the ability to be a cheerful mom.

Pam’s voice drew me to the present as she sent us into our small-group discussions. With only four other moms, I felt comfortable sharing, but I also wanted to defend myself. “I’m worried my son’s love tank gets only partly filled each day. But at least he doesn’t live at a boarding school.”

One of them patted my hand. “You’re doing a fine job. I’ve seen you hug him plenty of times.”                  

That afternoon, when Robby walked in the door after school, he tossed his backpack on the couch and then sauntered into the kitchen. “What’s for snack?”

I stepped toward him. “Could I give you a hug first?”

“Sure, Mom!”

In front of the fridge, we stood with our arms around each other. I was determined not to break first.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably just two minutes, he sighed. “I’m looking forward to Christmas.”

I chuckled over the top of his blond head and pulled him closer.

After that day in the kitchen, I realised the significant comfort these hugs brought to him. They became a daily habit – one that we kept even through Robby’s teenage years.

Now in his twenties, my lanky son lives at home while job hunting. Over the past two years, he walked through some deep valleys. Sheltering at home in 2020 for Covid-19 restrictions brought anxiety and depression for him. I’m so glad we’d already made healing hugs part of our daily routine.

On the days when Dad is home, he joins in, and we bask in the warmth of a group hug.

Our now-happy son says, “This is the best part of my day!”

It’s the best part of my day, too. The habit that began as a way to connect with Robby has brought me healing. Sandwiched between my son and my husband, I feel wrapped in a warm cocoon.

The long family hugs make up for the comforting cuddles I missed in my childhood. I’m always the last to let go.

On reaching eight years old, I was left at a Catholic boarding school for girls. I say left, because one of my earlier memories was sitting on the edge of a bed allocated to me, watching bemused, as other girls in the dormitory were shown by parents or siblings how to make their beds and put away their belongings. In preparation, I’d read Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and watched The Sound of Music. Both were rose-tinted works of fiction: but nothing really, could have prepared me for an experience that impacts me to this day. 

The school, set in many acres of undulating grounds overlooking the sea, was owned and governed by an order of Catholic sisters. The senior school, for girls aged eleven to eighteen, sat atop the hill adjacent to a large white villa and resplendent chapel. Prospective parents were received in opulent high-ceilinged sitting-rooms where pupils rarely, if ever ventured. At the bottom of the hill was a listed greystone manor house: the junior school, where I began my education. 

In my view, the junior school was no place for young children. Allegedly haunted, it had dark wood-panelled walls, dated décor, leaded windows and a draughty cloakroom. There was no dining room; we walked three times a day, rain or shine, up and down the hill to the senior school to eat our meals. I don’t remember teddy bears or other comforts other than tuck, sweets that were portioned out once a week from a personal tuck box locked in a cupboard.

At nighttime, we were under the charge of two sisters (nuns). We knelt to pray before lights out “…if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take…” If we were caught talking after lights-out, we’d be punished with lines to write before returning to our beds. Because my bed was nearest the door of our dormitory, I’d sometimes be woken and either left in a dark room downstairs to write lines or shut in the airing cupboard (I preferred the latter: it was warmer).

Matron was the sour, greasy-faced nun I was required to go to twice daily to receive medication. She took an instant dislike to me, calling me ‘disgusting’ and that I ‘should be ashamed of myself’. The contempt on her face is an ever-present memory. Fortunately, another girl also required medicine – an inhaler. She was bolder than me and would often make me laugh. One term, after returning from the holidays, she wasn’t there. She’d moved abroad and I was heartbroken, without a comrade. 

Some girls thrived as boarders. Elitism was rife and there were favourites. Those whose parents were rich and donated money to the school; girls borne to local Catholic families; and those who excelled at sport or music or were naturally gifted appeared to enjoy their time at school. Photographs of their achievements lined the corridors, names of head girls were etched in gold on large wooden boards on the walls. Having a supportive sibling or two sometimes helped. Some of us, however, were targeted, bullied or abused. These included girls of divorced parents or those whose faces simply didn’t belong. There’s a contrasting range of memories listed in the school’s alumni Facebook page.

One girl in my class, was so unhappy she overdosed on vitamin supplements. She was 11 years old. Fortunately, it had little physical effect, but I’m sure the ridicule she received when others found out what she’d done had a more lasting effect. Another girl developed anorexia (eating disorders were common) and was eventually removed from the school, barely a skeleton. Leaving by one’s own volition, however, wasn’t an option. Anyone caught running away or stepping foot ‘out of bounds’ was immediately expelled. We were told this would be a permanent black mark on our record: the shame was unthinkable. 

Over time, I learned to survive. We were to be grateful: our parents invested a lot of money in our education. I turned to humour, discovering a talent for mimicry and singing. I’d be asked to sing Disney songs to help others in my dormitory get to sleep. Otherwise, I stayed under the radar or sought the approval of others. In secret, I loved writing stories and doodling… English language and literature fascinated me. I wrote letters, learned poetry with ease and explored the works of the Brontës and Shakespeare. I wanted to study English at A level, and, despite achieving high GCSE grades, I wasn’t allowed to. By then, I didn’t have the courage to insist or leave and go to another school. 

At around 13 or 14 years of age, we were herded into a room to watch the 1984 anti-abortion propaganda film: The Silent Scream with graphic images of late-stage abortions in a shamefully misleading attempt to prevent us from contemplating abortion, considered an atrocity by the Catholic church. 

Ten years of Catholic boarding-school education has a lasting impression. It’s safe to say that the experience impacts every day of my life and relationships. I may have learned the social graces, but I struggle with social anxiety. Academic and professional achievements mask a pursuit of perfection to the point of exhaustion. I’ve collected diagnoses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder. Insomnia has me wake suddenly during the night in a state of inexplicable terror, most likely due to being woken during early years of boarding. 

The history of Catholicism offers us little hope of acknowledgement or even atonement for the ill-treatment of those who suffered at Catholic boarding schools, steeped in the secrecy and shame of the ‘entitled’. I learned later in life that young Catholic women were sent away from their families and loved-ones to convents, to dedicate their lives to celibacy and devotion, sometimes against their will. Is it any wonder then, that some chose to deflect their pain towards those more vulnerable than themselves: the children in their charge?

When I was a child in the 1960s, my father was a professor of philosophy in Montreal, Canada. During his first sabbatical, he met another professor of philosophy at another university who was a graduate of [a public school] in London. My father’s new friend told him if he wanted me to get a good education he should send me [there]. If I did well, he told my parents, getting into Oxford or Cambridge would be no problem. He had done it himself a decade earlier. My parents bought into the idea – lock, stock, and barrel. As a six-year-old, I had no idea what my parents were conspiring to do with me.

By the time my father had his second sabbatical, my parents were divorced and I went with my father to London. He did his philosophy research while I prepared with a tutor for the gruelling two-and-a-half-day-long entrance exam. I bombed. My father sent me to a ‘cramming school’. The preparation was excellent. I succeeded on my second attempt and the Housemaster was willing to accept me. In September 1976, I left my parents in Canada and flew to London. I was just shy of my fourteenth birthday.

Being a Canadian boarder at [an English public school] was like being in another world. The daily routine was unlike anything I had ever imagined. Before classes, the whole school would walk through the medieval cloisters and attend a service. After classes, our ‘free time’ was taken up by extracurricular activities. Supper was in a medieval refectory during which I was required to assume the role of ‘toast fag’ in scheduled shifts with the other new boys in my dorm. Prep time was from 7.15 to 9.00 pm. Lights out at 10.00 pm. For sports, I rowed on the Thames. We had school six days a week. On Saturdays, after school the boarders would go home for the ‘weekend’ and return Sunday night. Only a small minority stayed over the weekend. I was one of them. Throughout the school year, I only saw my parents at Christmas.

At first, I looked forward to getting settled in and integrating myself with my fellow housemates and classmates. However, it did not take me long before some sort of change happened in me that was unsettling. I did not understand it at the time, and I was unsure of what to do about it. I increasingly felt that I had been abandoned in a foreign orphanage. The separation from my parents contributed to an increasing sense of alienation from them and everyone else. I tried to enjoy whatever free time I had, and I attended concerts by the Rolling Stones, Peter Frampton, and Pink Floyd. I started to smoke cigarettes, drank in pubs, and had my first exposure to cannabis.

Notwithstanding the excitement of being in London without parental supervision, I became increasingly despondent and depressed. While I portrayed a confident exterior and sought to give the impression that I was mature and ‘cool’, on the inside I increasingly suffered from anxiety and insecurity. My deteriorating mental health manifested itself in a downward spiral in my studies and corresponding marks. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate for any length of time on any school material and increasingly lost interest. None of my teachers was inspiring or motivating. I held my own in French class, but every other subject was a source of frustration and my marks tanked. Towards the end of the year, I wrote to my mother that the teachers were nice to me, but none of them cared and my Housemaster never enquired about my well-being beyond a superficial “How are you?” in the hallway which generated the inevitable “Fine, thanks” response.

When I returned home in July 1977, I begged my father not to send me back as I assumed that I would have to repeat a year. My wish was granted. My expedition to [London] was a failure, and I felt like one on my return. My relationship with my parents never got back on track. For decades afterward, I seemed to struggle with the enduring legacy of that experience.

When the Canadian government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2008 to study the impact that ‘residential schools’ had had on Canada’s indigenous population, the media consistently reported horrifying stories of abuse and trauma. I was prompted to re-examine my experience [in London] and its impact on my life. In the process of researching the history of [the school] and English ‘Public Schools’, I came across the works of Nick Duffell and Dr Joy Schaverien and their discussions of Strategic Survivor Personality and Boarding School Syndrome. How grateful I am to those two authors for helping me to understand who I am! I also researched the field of ‘writing therapy’ and subsequently endeavoured to write an autobiographical account of my experience and its impact on my life. To describe the writing process as a cathartic experience would be an understatement.

I don’t suppose that this writing is in any way exceptional, and I know that very many people have suffered far more horrific things than have I. Having faced serious illness and a major operation during the past two years it somehow caused many long-buried traumas to burst up to the surface, forcing me to look my past in the eyes and, in my late fifties, haunting me and terrifying me again. Everything I describe here happened between fifty and forty years ago and recently I have made a complaint to the police about it. I have also written a book in an effort both to achieve some kind of catharsis and to raise money for charity, but my pain seems only to be getting worse and this makes me feel ashamed. I hope that by knowing that someone, somewhere knows what happened to me I can achieve peace from my reincarnated torment.

I was sent to prep school at the age of eight. For the first two years I was a day boy, but the days were long – from eight thirty to six o’clock every day including Saturdays. Being small and young for my age, I was bullied relentlessly by older boys and by some of my peers. Worse, I, together with probably every other boy in the school, was subjected to ‘mild’ sexual abuse by the Latin master, who was also Deputy Headmaster. He supervised showers after games every day except Tuesdays, which were his ‘half day’. After we’d showered, he would rub and squeeze our genitals “To make sure you’ve dried yourself properly”.

After two years I began to board. We were not allowed to go home at all except for holidays, in the interests of ‘not getting the boys upset.’ The bullying subsided as I grew older but the abuse did not. As I matured physically so the abuse became worse.

At thirteen I was sent to public school as a boarder: the school only accepted boarders. Once again, being small for my age and gentle – timid even – by nature, I was bullied relentlessly and in much more brutal ways. Out of taught lesson times the school was entirely run and supervised by senior boys, who were free to punish us in any way that they felt suitable, including beatings. Very soon, in an effort to deflect bullying from themselves, many of my peers began to bully me too. I lived in terror constantly, night and day. I had nobody to talk to or turn to, and no possibility of respite. I was locked in dark cupboards for long periods of time, locked in a trunk, held under water, and was a general whipping dog for anyone who felt fed up with life.

That school broke my heart and my soul, and caused me to be unable to trust anyone ever again. I feel to this day, as a successful professional, inadequate, frightened of people, always on the lookout for the next punch.

For the past year or so I have been suffering all that pain and hurt again repeatedly, disturbing my sleep, haunting me by day and making me feel terrified again.

Thank you for being there to listen.