• Baku
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    2 months ago

    I feel pretty much the same, despite the fact I’m still a child. There’s honestly a little bit of fear every time a large group gets on my bus/train/tram, and I avoid travelling at school times when at all possible. A group of two dozen 12 years olds vaping and trying to start a brawl on a bus is not fun

    On a similar note, I did not use the school toilets a single time between grades 3 and year 10. Fucking traumatic, and a large part of the reason I seek out unisex/single person toilets with proper walls, or a quieter one with multiple stalls when possible

    • StudSpud The Starchy
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      2 months ago

      School bathrooms were utterly atrocious in the 2000s, and they still are.

      When I was a kid, I intensely disliked being around other kids. School was fucked, the only people i liked were the teachers. The kids didn’t like me either, and I think latched on to any visual oddity to bully me, but I think they knew I was different. Not special or anything, but had experienced trauma in ways they had not, and I was different bc of that.

      It took me 20 years to understand why I hated going to Nan and Pops (mum’s parents. Thanks repressed memories), and bc that trauma happened so young, I knew things other kids didn’t.

      Like I said, I’m not special or superior bc of trauma. But it does change a child. There’s something about traumatised children that is obvious to other kids, but they cannot articulate it.

      Bathrooms are the worst. I want to throw up with anxiety when I have to use the flinders bathrooms. And pub bathrooms scare me as well.