Invisible until loved

I don’t remember a lot about being little.

Not the toys I played with or the cartoons I watched. Not birthday parties or school trips or any of the things people usually smile about when they talk about childhood.

What I remember is hospitals.

Bright white lights.

The smell of disinfectant.

The sound of nurses talking quietly outside curtains while I struggled to breathe through a nebuliser mask.

I had chronic asthma growing up, and it controlled most of my childhood. I was constantly in and out of hospital, constantly sick, constantly taking steroids that made my face puffier and my weight harder to control. At that age, I didn’t fully understand what steroids even were. I just knew they made me feel different from everybody else.

Different.

That word followed me everywhere.

But the truth is, my childhood wasn’t bad at home.

Mam and Dad did everything they possibly could for me and my siblings. We had love in our house. We had movie nights, laughter, family dinners, little trips out when we could afford them. Mam was always caring for us, and Dad worked hard and still somehow had energy left to make us smile afterwards.

I was loved.

And I think that’s what makes this harder to explain.

Because people assume if someone struggles mentally growing up, something terrible must have happened at home.

But my pain wasn’t waiting for me at home.

It was waiting for me every morning at school.

No matter how much love I got at home, the bullying slowly became louder than all of it. It followed me everywhere until even when I was safe sitting on the couch beside my mam, part of me was still carrying the shame and fear from school.

I don’t think I was ever truly happy as a child.

Not fully.

Because even during the good moments, school was always waiting for me again the next morning.

I remember sitting in class during primary school listening to the other kids laugh together while I tried not to cough because once I started, I couldn’t stop. My chest would tighten until breathing felt like dragging air through a straw, and suddenly everybody would turn around staring at me like I was disgusting.

“Are you dying or something?” a boy once laughed.

The class laughed with him.

I laughed too.

I learned very young that pretending something didn’t hurt was easier than letting people see it did.

The bullying started slowly at first.

Little comments.

Whispers.

Laughing when I ran during PE because my breathing got bad quicker than everyone else’s.

Ben was the worst.

He liked making people laugh, and I became his favourite joke.

“She runs like a penguin,” he shouted once across the yard while everybody stared at me.

Another time he snatched crisps from my hand during lunch and laughed, “Jesus Aoife, leave some food for the rest of Ireland.”

I remember everybody laughing while my cheeks burned so hot I thought I might cry right there in front of them.

But I didn’t.

Because crying only made it worse.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about bullying when you’re a child. People think kids don’t understand cruelty properly because they’re young, but I think it hurts more when you’re young because you don’t understand why it’s happening.

I used to lie awake at night wondering what was wrong with me.

Why was I always the one they laughed at?

Why did nobody want me on their team?

Why did walking into school every morning feel like walking into a room where everybody secretly hated me?

Mam knew something was wrong.

No matter how hard I tried to hide it, she always knew.

Sometimes she’d sit on the edge of my bed after school and ask softly, “Did something happen today, love?”

And eventually I started telling her.

Not everything at first. Just little bits. The names. The laughing. The comments about my weight. The way I’d pretend to be sick because I was scared to go in.

Mam tried so hard to stop it.

She went into the school more times than I can remember. She spoke to teachers, the principal, anybody who would listen. Every single time they promised they’d “deal with it.”

But dealing with it usually meant dragging the bully into a room and forcing them to apologise while glaring at me like I was the problem for speaking up.

“Sorry,” Ben would mumble with a smirk on his face.

Then the teachers would smile like everything was fixed.

It never fixed anything.

If anything, it made the bullying worse.

After that, they’d call me a snitch. They’d laugh harder. Whisper louder. Make sure I knew nobody liked the girl who told on people.

I remember Mam keeping me home from school a few times because I’d be crying so hard in the mornings I could barely breathe properly. Those days felt safe. I’d sit on the couch under a blanket while Mam made me tea and told me things would get better.

I think she believed it.

I wanted to believe it too.

But she couldn’t keep me home forever. The school started warning about attendance, and Mam was scared she’d get into trouble if I missed too much.

So eventually I always had to go back.

Every morning I’d stand at the school gates with my stomach in knots feeling like I was walking towards something dangerous instead of somewhere children were supposed to learn.

I started becoming quieter after that.

I stopped raising my hand in class even when I knew the answer because I hated people looking at me. I stopped asking kids if I could play with them because hearing “no” over and over again eventually breaks something inside you.

Mam used to ask me how school was every evening even when she already knew the answer.

“Fine,” I’d say automatically.

Fine.

I became very good at pretending I was fine.

The truth was, I hated school even then. I hated the fear that sat in my stomach every Sunday night knowing I had five more days of feeling embarrassed before I could stay safely at home again.

Home was the only place I felt normal.

At home, I wasn’t the fat girl with asthma.

I wasn’t the girl who got laughed at during PE.

I wasn’t the girl everybody whispered about.

I was just Aoife.

But eventually even home stopped fixing the damage school caused.

Because after hearing something enough times, you start believing it.

Maybe they were right about me.

Maybe I really was ugly.

Maybe I really was different.

Maybe there was something wrong with me.

I didn’t know then that primary school was only the beginning.

Secondary school would destroy me in ways seven-year-old Aoife could never have imagined.