I was made fun of at secondary school because of my behaviour. How did that affect me? It taught me how to behave around other people, how to work on my flaws, and how to take a joke. By the end of my time in school, I was fairly popular because I learned the right lessons. One of these lessons was not to let my life revolve around my sexual orientation.

To be fair, none of those who picked on me went too far. I was never injured, I was never robbed, I was never made into an outcast, nor was I ever given the silent treatment. I was called names, I was joked about, I was told to go away and so on. This happened to everyone at school, so I wasn’t alone in this. Because it never went too far, I was not traumatised by it, but the right amount of it did happen to me, so I still learned. There is a degree of students picking on each other. Sometimes intervention from adults is needed, and sometimes adults need to not intervene.