Tag: dailyprompt-1905

important part: this is about a lot of different topics so it might seem very not related to question. But I did learn this in my early to late teenage years, it’s a very big part of my life actually still today.

I had mostly non-European origin friends in my youth and we went to same school and same class. My friend from Uganda had extreme ADHD and troubled with a strong tendency to bullying behaviour, especially toward one of our dyslexic classmates. And I had a Kurdish best friend, we had a lot of fun between severe arguments and ignoring each other afterwards.

We had a Norwegian supremacist teacher who hated non-European origin youth like my friends. He also strongly disliked people like me with undiagnosed, untreated severe conditions and importantly my far-Northern roots. I’m of Sámi/Kven origins as well as Norwegian and this teacher was discriminating against us, both my friends and myself he said to other adults the worst racist comments and related misogyny.

In my time taking Sámi language lessons in a nearby little town I remember once being called strange racist slurs, I was so surprised that young boys were shouting to a much older Sámi girl. 

I also experience this in adult life, people judge by appearance what ethnicity you are and one tine we were visiting another town in our county when a local man asked two men there if they came from our town, but they were instead from Porsanger and local man said in essence ‘you look that way, like not from this town, Saami or Finnish rather than us Norwegians’. Strange man, my grandmother and me had conversations after this, what was he thinking about us we were from the largest city here, that he was referring to.

I’m rambling now, but I felt like writing exactly my perspective on this.

Thank you all for listening ❤

Note: this is mostly about my relationship with my father as it relates to my life in teenage years.

I didn’t have contact with my father after we left in 1995 due to his addictions and other severe troubles that affected the rest of the household very strongly. But in beginning of 9th grade he made contact with us via advocate/lawyer(?) that he wanted to meet me and we met soon after in a safe supervised setting and spoke together about different topics. But I learn the hard way he was quite unstable and broke promises to share to me important information on his experiences of his biological father and the pictures I wanted to see of him when he was my age.

And he was unfortunately quite manipulative toward me, he tried to make me dislike and distrust my mother along with trying to make me feel very guilty when he was hospitalised for significant injury at his job, I care about his well-being a lot and honestly it was quite cruel to to this manipulative thing toward a 15 year old autistic girl. I hadn’t even got a message so how would I have known this?

But he gave me quite expensive gifts and shared a little information on his biological father and his family. This I’m very grateful for and I know his childhood and youth were extremely hard for him and his family, he was severely bullied and even a victim of racist violent attacks by xenophobic youths who beat him severely with metal chains when he was just 12 years old. His family contacted the police but nothing came of it so they got away with this hate crime.

I love him no matter what and I hope he is doing okay with the poly-drug use and severe alcoholic condition. The school system failed him completely and should face serious effects. There are organisations for adults who were bullied that can help bring the school and other abusive treatments to justice for this horrible things. And I hope also that he gets help for his traumatic memories and the mental-health conditions often related to trauma and adversity.

Thank you for listening and I wish you all a good weekend ❤

Daily writing prompt

Describe something you learned in high school.

View all responses

note: this post is about everything related to my experiences in teenage years and read it with this in mind.

Our Norwegian system of youth education is 10 years obligatorisk education/school including ‘ungdomsskole’ and three years of necessary but not obligatorisk ‘videregående skole/opplæring’ after this. I finished ungdomsskole but not videregående because of my untreated schizoaffective and autism spectrum condition.

In ungdomsskolen I learn some from the teachers and books, but mostly learn from interaction with people including teachers in different settings and my same-aged people. And it was hard, being very unfair and sometimes abusive in nature.

One thing I really became more aware of in these early teenage years was my roots and our different cultures in relation to my school environment. I’m of a type of European Arctic indigenous people called Sámi or the old mostly negative sounding term “Lapp” and the native languages are very different from Norwegian language.

I didn’t really get that good education for considering my untreated severe mental-health conditions and in addition the undiagnosed Asperger syndrome made school difficult in many different ways.

And I love learning from own effort and learning from others, my mother is a teacher and we meet every day including now in my early 30s. We deeply value knowledge and real learning, knowing something inside and out, not on just surface that doesn’t stay with you.

I hope the youths of today will see how society really need awareness and passion for big changes in social and political arenas. Without deep awareness and passion we are not really helping make a positive difference.

Thanks for reading ❤