Ricochet: The Things That Hit Us

Ricochet is a piece about bullying. About the things people throw at you, the people who stand around and watch, the ones who whisper from the sidelines, and the few who stay. It is also personal, because I was bullied when I was a kid.

In elementary school, it wasn't even subtle. I was pushed, people talked about me, and on the school bus kids would sometimes sit next to me just to hit me. There was the usual exclusion in sports, being picked last and being made very aware that somehow you were the kid nobody wanted. In fourth grade, a teacher even had everyone write down what they thought about me, and then I was given those letters to read. I cried so much. Some kids actually wrote things like, I don't really understand what everyone has against her. I think she's totally okay. And luckily I had two best friends at the time who gave me a lot of stability. But still, I was nine or ten years old, reading a collection of other children's opinions about why they did or didn't like me. Kids can be cruel.

I knew I was a little different, although I couldn't have explained exactly how back then. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just didn't seem to fit properly into the categories around me. I didn't care much about clothes and never really understood the divide between what girls were supposed to be like and what boys were supposed to be like. Looking back now, I think my autism and ADHD probably played a part in how other kids perceived me, and in how difficult it was for me to understand some of the social rules everyone else seemed to know automatically.

When I moved on to secondary school, things actually got much better for quite a long time. For several years, I barely had any real problems with bullying at all. I had friends, knew people across different year groups and, by 10th and 11th grade, I had a boyfriend too. I felt much more connected and socially secure than I had in elementary school. Having people around me gave me a kind of protection, and for a while I really thought that chapter of my life was behind me.

It was only after 11th grade that things slowly started changing again. The exclusion came back, but in a much less obvious way than when I was a child. There was more whispering, subtle gossip, social games and that uncomfortable feeling that people were talking about you without ever quite being able to prove it. I was often sad around that time and started building a wall around myself. Eventually I would sit away from everyone before anyone else could exclude me, put my headphones on and disappear into music. I told myself I preferred being alone and didn't need them anyway, which was partly true, but it was also a way of protecting myself.

There was also one person from my village who stayed in and out of my life for years. Growing up in a small village can create these strange almost forced friendships simply because someone is there. Whenever we argued, I knew school was going to become uncomfortable, because she would go around telling people things about me and trying to pull others onto her side. For a long time, I thought most people eventually grow out of this kind of behavior. You get older, gain perspective, become kinder, or at least stop deliberately trying to hurt people. But some people really don't change.

Even as adults, she would occasionally contact me, and the messages were often just as mean as they had been when we were teenagers. She told me I was basically letting my husband financially support me, as if that was something she needed to shame me for. More recently, she told me that autism and ADHD were somehow the result of a "failed relationship." That was the point where I finally thought: enough. I removed her from my life at almost 35. I had spent years assuming that the person I knew at school would eventually become a different adult. She didn't. Sometimes it takes a surprisingly long time to realize that you are allowed to stop waiting for someone to change and to stop giving them access to you.

All of these experiences changed me. I became melancholic, guarded and very good at being alone. I looked different, I felt different and I was different. Today, I embrace that much more. That doesn't mean all the old wounds and insecurities magically disappeared. Some of them are still there, and they are allowed to be. One of the things that helped me most back then was having friends, hobbies and communities completely outside the places where I was being bullied. Places where the social hierarchy from school suddenly meant absolutely nothing. That gave me something solid inside myself and reminded me that the version of me those people had created wasn't the only version that existed.

And that's what Ricochet is about. In the painting, there is a unicorn that looks a little different from everyone else. There is already an arrow stuck in its arm, but it is still reaching for the stars. The geese are gossiping. The fish are watching and doing nothing. And there is one friend who stays, playing the console built into the unicorn's belly. Because sometimes you don't need everybody. Sometimes one person who stays can change everything.

I didn't want to paint a story where being hurt simply makes you stronger and everything is suddenly fine. The arrow is still there. Sometimes the things that happened to us stay with us, but we keep reaching anyway. You make things. You find your people. You become louder about the parts of yourself you once tried to hide. You turn weirdness into something you no longer apologize for. You ricochet.

And because this work is so closely connected to my own experience, 20% of the ongoing print sales from Ricochet will be donated to an organization working against bullying in schools. I can't undo what happened to the kid I was, but I can make something from it now and maybe help another kid feel a little less alone.

If parts of this story resonate with you, I’ve written more about growing up feeling different, neurodivergence and eventually learning to embrace the parts of myself I used to question in Being an Autistic and ADHD Artist and Being a Neurodivergent Artist: Living Between Categories.