Dixie

I couldn't fit my entire question in the title but here it is:

Are deaf/hoh kids bullied and/or harassed more frequently than their hearing peers within mainstream schools?

I say they are because I was the only d/hh kid in school and I was a constant easy target.

I was bullied, sexually harassed where boys would reach up my shirt and play with my breasts, they would stick pencils in my pants and I recall once that a boy walked past my desk. He grabbed my head by the hair and shoved my face into his crotch. When I tried to move away he would hold my head there longer. He was a huge football player for the JV team and I was just me. They would then spread notes all over school calling me whore slut and the whole lot. If I tried fighting against it I was labelled as homosexual, lesbian, dyke. I couldn't escape.

I was taunted, and I was seen as some sex plaything. When I tried to get them to stop, they would force their way on me more.

This triggered my depression, my anorexia, my hurts.

During this time I got to the point that I no longer cared about school. I just wanted to drop out, run away, and never return. I begged my parents to let me transfer to another nearby school but they wouldn't hear of it. They said I needed to face to them and deal with it.

By Christmas of my senior year I was threatening to drop out altogether I hated it so bad. I wanted out. But my parents would not have it. They forced me to stick it out. That's when I really started to rebel. There was something in me that just fired off and was ready to tell the world to **** off because I'm done. I was still bullied, I was still tormented, but I found myself taking it out on me through anorexia, extreme obsession to exercise. I hated the world, but I also hated me.

Still I was tormented. At this point I was beginning to drink heavily to escape from the pain. Get drunk enough and you black out and you forget for a while. I think a few other students knew, but in this small town, who doesn't drink? It didn't solve the fact I was bullied/harrassed, it just hid it when it became too much to bear.

It got to the point that I was literally bullied right out of my senior prom. That night I never felt so unbeautiful. I ran out embarrassed, ashamed, defeated, humiliated. I ran not home to my parents but to a friend's house, my only friend. I ripped off my borrowed second hand prom dress (my parents refused to buy my prom dress), tore my hair down, ripped out my jewelry. I washed the make up off my face. I changed into jeans and a t-shirt, and lay there on her couch covered in tears.

After that day, I never went back to school. I maxed out the number of days I could miss school and still graduate. When it came time to graduate. Everyone got to pick a friend to walk with. Well guess what, no one wanted to walk with me. I remember walking into the gymnasium to the stares of the crowd and thinking dammit, if I am going to stand alone, the least this damn place can do is reassure me that it's alright.

Needless to say I was never invited to our class after graduation party. What did I do? I stole a bunch of beer out of my parents garage fridge, hopped on the fourwheeler and went riding and drinking in the woods at night. I remember waking up the next morning to a sunrise in the middle of nowhere and a painful hangover. But I thought - shit, it's finally over. All that hurt is finally over.

So that's my story from the social side of mainstream school.

So do you think deaf/hh kids are targeted more frequently that hearing kids in mainstream schools??

A penny for your thoughts.

__________________
Oh, you will. It is all a dream and since matter cannot be created nor destroyed, the dreams must be real in all their myriad forms. -Beowulf
This Delicate Thing God Has Made
The world is measured in peasants; smaller than a unicorn but, bigger than a tidbit!