The "d" word

During  Year 6, Kayleigh often came home miserable, angry and uncommunicative. For people that knew her after she started high school, this might be hard to imagine.

Kayleigh on the whole was a bright cheerful girl who tried hard not to let things get to her, but after a lengthy period of being every Year 6 girls' butt of every joke, and copping it from everyone around her, Kayleigh self -esteem got to an all time low. Kayleigh would talk about how stupid she was and how she didn't get how to scan documents into the computer when every one else could and how she had no friends. During real low points we would get into arguments and she would tell me that she wanted to be dead, because no one would miss her and it would be easier without her. I always hugged her then, even though she struggled, and told her that it would get easier, that these girls wouldn't be in her life forever (most of them went to MacKillip). We had days that Kayleigh refused to go to school - point blank refusal - and I didn't have it in my heart to make her go.

Kayleigh often wrote on the wood under her bed, funny things, naughty rude things, and things about how she felt. A number of times she wrote 'I just want to die'. As a parent is was so distressing for us because Kayleigh wasn't doing anything wrong, she was being bullied by girls who thought it was amusing to make fun of her, cut her hair, steal her things and push her around. Kayleigh hated school then and hated herself for no good reason and the best thing that happened was starting high school and finding out that people, on the whole, are nice and would stick up for her if someone said something nasty. I look at her scribblings under her bed and think to myself that yes, sometimes Kayleigh felt that she was useless and unliked but there was no way that she did actually want to die.

The writing under the bed.