Kids with Facial Palsy

Bullying problems at school and how I coped with being bullied

One of the worst things about my problem was that it was unique, I was unique.  Kids get bullied at school for all sorts of reasons, their size, the colour of their skin, their clothes, the list is endless; but there is normally more than one overweight person in a school, or more than one child with less fashionable clothes.  I felt very isolated with my problem, no one really understood, to this day I have never met another person with the same problems as me.

I suffered at school for being different, I was pointed at, ridiculed, all the horrible things kids do.  I developed quite a tough outer shell in order to cope with my problems, and I decided I wasn't going to let them get me down.  Rather than hiding away I started being very open and honest about what had happened to me.  I remember telling one of the school bullies why my face was the way it was, and he actually listened and was quite fascinated by my story, and after that I had no more problems with him.  The hurtful things that happen at school stick with you, you carry that hurt with you forever, but I wasn't going to let these people get to me.

When my friends and I started to discover make-up I wanted to wear it like the rest of the girls, but I found that it would stay on one eye longer than the other because my good eye waters more.  I've got some very strange school photos where I was trying so hard not to blink (because only one eye would properly close), that I would end up pulling some really awful faces!

I had to be very careful to protect my paralysed eye because I didn't have the same reflex as a normal person.  When I was 14 my cat scratched me in the eye, luckily I just had enough reflex to look away, but his claw caught the white of my eye and it was bloodshot for months.

While I did get bullied at school and it was inevitable people would choose to pick on the fact that I had facial paralysis, I don't actually think I had too bad a time of it.  I tend to think that if they hadn't had that to pick on then they would have found something else, kids are cruel, it's a fact of life.  As a grown-up people are more respectful of your differences and they don't point out the obvious.  A couple of weeks ago one of my son's schoolfriends asked him what was wrong with my face and was I paralysed?  Sometimes I think I am a really strong person and I have put all the insecurities behind me, but this one small comment brought it all flooding back.  I was very upset by it and couldn't talk to my 10 year old son about it.  In that moment, I realised I still live with that shell around me, and if something gets inside that shell then I am still capable of hurting quite badly, the childhood insecurities are tucked away, but never forgotten.