Hi Anita,

Bullying in school started when I was very young, and my parents, especially my mom was very supportive and upset that it was happening to me. However she felt she was very helpless in the situations as when she talked to the teachers and counselors were not helpful and I suffered many years until I switched to the public school. She tried to be active in my school and volunteered some days to teach kids in my class and girl scouts. She did try to build my confidence through martial arts and sports, and sometimes it worked. Honestly I don’t remember what my dad did. He probably got pissed, would try to comfort me but left it to my mom for the most part.

When I was older and I got made fun of, I didn’t really talk about it in detail to them because it was really upsetting and brought up past experiences that I wanted to forget and it only lasted for a year. But around freshman year my relationship with my parents started to degrade. It was around the same time I became friends with those two people, and there was an incident where my father was drunk and he said I was a slut, which was damaging to me since I dressed like a boy and conservative, I never have been on a date or had a relationship with a guy. I never told them anything about my friends because they became so judging of my life at that point there were so many thing that they would not have agreed with. One of my friends was spiritual in a new age type was with spirit guides and was gay. She was my only friend for awhile so naturally I wanted to protect our friendship and felt that my parents would threaten it if they knew everything.

When I lost those friends I think my relationship with my parents improved after awhile. I decided to open up to my parents and they werent happy at first but have gained a better understanding and kind of gotten over a lot of my weirdness. I still made friends but I just wasn’t close to them. When I would completely stop making friends or talking to people in general my mom and dad got extremely upset with me and would try to push me to meet new people, especially in college when I literally went a semester not saying a word to anyone besides the teacher. It was partly because of of my mom I started hanging out with my local outdoor pursuits, and she made me sign up for a course in my interests where I met the guy I mentioned that shared the same interests as I did and wanted to open up too.

So, I guess the point of my relationship with my parents is that there are times when our relationship sucks and some where they are the only ones who understand me. They do appreciate that I am an independent person and are happy they got me and not some druggy kid, but they are not always supportive on who I am and what I want to do with my life.