What do you do when, as an adult, you are subjected to the most unreasonable discrimination and ill treatment? What are you supposed to when, day after day, it becomes entirely evident that nothing you can do satisfies, no matter how relentlessly you struggle to impress, or merely to escape the browbeating and chastisement for a few unblemished hours?

At school, I was always a good girl. A little lazy at times, perhaps, but I always got done what needed to be done. I was polite and punctual. At times, earlier on in my education I was desperately unhappy, and I had reason for resenting fellow students and teachers alike, but I never really felt that spiteful. So why do I feel so hard done by now?

If I were at school, I’d tell my mum. She and, no doubt my Nan, would storm down to the school in a blaze of matriarchal umbrage, safe in the knowledge that their angelic daughter/granddaughter could do no wrong. I was never one to stand up for myself very much. I had people to do that for me and it only causes problems anyway, doesn’t it?

I begin to wonder whether the uncomfortable position I find myself in isn’t much worse than any upset I may cause by springing into action. The belief keeps tearing through my thoughts- “I don’t bloody deserve this. I don’t. I really, really don’t. I know my shortcomings you have no right to make me feel this way.”

When I was 12, I was standing at a bus stop when two lads, several years older than I, decided to cover me in a veil of phlegm and spittle so extensive that I was forced to run home, in tears, where my distraught mother, called the police. The culprits were given formal cautions and curfews and the parents had to pay for the cleaning bill. Later that week, a group of boys aged about 14-18, in large and threatening gangs, gathered outside my house. They were angry because their friends couldn’t come out - no doubt to terrorize some other innocent bystander. They threw rocks and eggs at my house, causing my baby sister to scream and my dad to go out on some sort of vengeance mission, vowing to kill them all.

I felt frightened, yes. I was upset, worried about my family and even guilty that they should have to suffer like that on my account. But mostly what I felt was the overwhelming unfairness of it all. The complete and utter lack of justice was tangible to me.

How could people possibly make others feel this way? I would find it impossible. How can you make somebody else feel worthless and still sleep at night, let alone take active pleasure from it, as I suspect the aforementioned boys did? I comforted myself with the fact that they were children, or near enough so. I reassured myself with the fact that they were ignorant, unaware, and unlikely to face a future as bright as I would make sure mine was.

And now here I am and I have that exact same feeling. But the people I face aren’t young or uninformed. They don’t have deprived backgrounds. They have no reason to feel jealous or resentful of anyone. They are cultured and knowledgeable professionals. They have absolutely no reason to deride and condemn someone to the point that they feel as if everything they do is utterly without value. Make no mistake- I expect to be given suggestions and assistance in becoming better than I am. I would be miffed if all I had was indifference but that is not what this is.

It is bullying- and I find I am stunned that it exists away from the playground.