Bully for Them: Outstanding Australians on Hard Lessons Learned at School

In Bully for Them, twenty-two Australians share their own experiences of being bullied, revealing that not only did they survive the ordeal but also, that their experiences helped shape them into the remarkable individuals they are today.

Today is the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence and we’re sharing a piece from the book by musician Missy Higgins.


Sensitive, shy, and skittish when it comes to attention, Melissa ‘Missy’ Morrison Higgins is no likely candidate for pop stardom. But despite buckling under depression and self-doubt at school, today Missy Higgins is one of Australia’s most cherished and successful singer–songwriters. Her first album,

Having loving parents, a stable home, and two adoring older siblings didn’t protect Melbourne-born Missy from a despairing childhood. Emotionally she was a small, battered craft on a turbulent ocean, and the effort required to stay even-keeled led to recreational drug use and a dramatic implosion in Year 11.

Finding school an unbearable pressure, Missy’s coping mechanism was music. She’d learned classical piano as a kid, but at boarding school she discovered the alchemy and release of songwriting. Locked away with a piano at every reasonable – and unreasonable – opportunity, Missy poured her pain and alienation into composition. At 15, prodded by a school music assignment, she wrote a song for her then boyfriend, ‘All for Believing’. Nicola, Missy’s sister, secretly entered it into Triple J radio’s Unearthed song competition; it won, and Missy had a recording contract before she left school. These days Missy is a seven-time ARIA award winner, renowned for her transformative, poignant ballads. The vulnerability that plagued her at school is now her creative fuel and greatest asset: turning insecurity and fear into art is Missy Higgins’ career, and she’s found the connection she craved through performing.


I was a freak, basically. I was always a deep thinker as a kid. I’d baffle my parents with questions like, ‘Why are we here?’ and ‘What is the meaning of life?’ I always had this instinctive feeling that I was from another planet, that I was cut from a different cloth. For years and years I wrote in my diary: Why am I so different? Why does nobody understand me? Oh, and lots of esoteric poetry. I never felt the same as anyone else, and I thought that would be it, forever. My problems, really, were mostly internally generated.

It’s weird, because until I was six, I was extroverted. I’m the youngest, so I got all the attention, my family loved me, and I was a happy little outgoing kid. And then something happened, I don’t know what, and I suddenly became self-conscious, sensitive, aware of myself. My parents said they noticed this sadness, a melancholia, descending on me when I was six or seven. I’d realised that people have opinions, and could be judgemental. I’d realised I needed to be a certain way to be liked. And I really wanted to be liked. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone hating me. So I made myself small. I didn’t want to be noticed. That way I wouldn’t say anything that might get me laughed at.

I wasn’t really bullied in primary school; I just never felt like I fitted in. There were lots of girls from the housing commission. They were rough, tough, wouldn’t take shit from anybody, and they scared me. I didn’t connect with anyone. I used to come home crying and saying I didn’t want to go back.

I was a tomboy, and pretty shy. I was an especially complicated child. Always a bit socially anxious, I attached myself to more confident kids to fit in; I’d find some and follow them around, walk in their shadow. I had this one friend, Victoria, and she was the class clown. I was like the sidekick. I’d whisper things in her ear, and she’d say it out loud and get a huge laugh. I was never a leader or a cool kid. What I did was … watch. I did a lot of watching. I was very much inside my own head. Looking outwards. Observing.

My parents let me change schools, and when I left in Grade 4, I have the clearest memory of everyone else hugging, and crying, and saying ‘I’ll see you next year’, or ‘I’m going to miss you’, and I didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I just walked out the school gate with my backpack on, and a big smile on my face. I was so happy to see the back of them.

In middle school I was a completely different person. Much more sure of myself. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because there were only five girls in my grade, but it was also a more carefree school. I still had the feeling deep inside that I wasn’t like any of them, but it was alright, because I had some friends to laugh with and I was beginning to understand that everyone feels misunderstood.

Then I went to boarding school in Geelong in Year 8. On the one hand I loved it, but again there were some pretty hard-core girls. I was toughening my skin by that stage, but there were a few times I was definitely bullied. There was one girl who’d pick on someone randomly, and put her entire energy into it. She was a powerful girl – sly, secretive, and manipulative – and there was no standing up to her. I got picked on for a while.

She always got someone else to do her evil errands – she had this little ‘slave’ girl who did everything – and she got her ‘slave’ to break into my sports locker, and get my undies, which had my nametag on them, and put soy sauce on them so it looked like dried blood. Then she put my undies on the end of a stick, took them around to the Boys’ House and showed them off: ‘Look! Missy had her period! It’s so gross! Look at the blood!’

That burned an indelible image on my mind. It was so harsh; it really threw me. I felt like I’d been betrayed and humiliated for something that was a complete lie. Of course I was far too embarrassed to go to the boys’ house and say, ‘It’s not true!’ It was awful. I just wanted to go home, or stay in bed and never come out again.

For quite a while the boys would snigger when they passed me. Kids love stringing things out when they happen to other people. That feeling of humiliation and betrayal lasted for ages, as it does when you’re at school, because it’s your entire world, and what other people think of you is so important. Luckily I had a couple of friends who knew what really happened, but you still feel isolated. I put a lot of time into avoiding that girl; I didn’t want to be chosen again.

In Year 9, I went to a different boarding school for a year. It was one of those places where parents send their kids if they can’t handle them, or they don’t want to parent them, or their kids are screwed up, or they come from families that are dysfunctional anyway, or because they have a lot of money. Everyone had intense problems.

In my unit of 16 girls, there was a cutter, a couple of bulimics, two anorexics, one girl who was constantly suicidal, a couple who were manic depressives, and one girl with chronic fatigue. It was crazy. For probably the first time in my life I felt like the most normal person there. It may have been a blessing in disguise as I realised everyone my age had problems.It’s such an intense age as a girl, 14, 15, because you’ve just got your period and your hormones are off the charts. You’re all over the place. All this stuff is happening to your body, emotions, and mind, and none of it makes sense. To be at boarding school, sleeping in a small building with 16 girls who didn’t know what the hell they were doing either, was like being in a pressure cooker. The tumultuous friendships! The fights! The drama! There was nothing to hold on to, because the likelihood of your friends going through something serious and destabilising was very high.

I was struggling with my own issues – with happiness a lot of the time – and I remember it being hard. I had a fever one night, and a night terror. I woke up and started screaming, waking everyone. I’ve always sleepwalked, but I was jumping around the room like a monkey and banging my head on the floor, pointing at my best friend and screaming, ‘You don’t understand! It’s coming! It’s coming for her!’ I could see this black heaviness descending on her, and it was consuming everything in its path. It was my fault somehow, and she didn’t know, only I knew, and no one understood. That’s a reflection of how intense things were. Now it feels like a metaphor for depression.

This is when I discovered songwriting. There was a little room with a piano in it next to the dormitory. I’d been inspired by music class, where we had to write a song for a project. Composing gave me this flooding sensation, and I knew immediately it was a way to let things go. At this point it was all a bit Celine Dionesque, because that’s what I was listening to. I try and pretend that time never existed …

In Year 10, back in Geelong, I was songwriting in earnest. I’d go and lock myself in the music room, with the piano, for hours and hours and hours – at recess, and lunch, and after school, and on weekends. No one else wanted it on weekends, so I was usually the only one there. I discovered that I could put all my questions about life into my music and lyrics.There was a comfort in music that I wasn’t finding anywhere else, because it was non-judgemental. I’d get a warm feeling, that I was in a place where I was meant to be, where I was accepted. And it was an incredible way to be understood. I could express myself in a way that I couldn’t through conversation, the way that normal people did. I ended up performing at every assembly, every school concert, any opportunity; singing this heartfelt stuff to a bunch of kids that I’d never have the guts to say in real life.

My world was completely blown open towards the end of Year 10, when my sister took me out for dinner one school holiday and confessed that she and my brother had been taking party drugs for a few years. My sister and brother were seven and eight years older than me, and I worshipped them. They were going out to clubs every weekend and taking ecstasy, that’s what everyone was doing, and I’d had no idea.

I couldn’t believe it. Up until then I thought drug addicts lived on the street and killed people. I’d told my sister that a friend and I were considering taking acid, because we’d heard on the grapevine it could be fun, and she told me that if I was going to try drugs, she wanted to be there to oversee it and help control it, and to find the drugs for me. From then on, I was doing it.

It turned out that the guy I was dating, who was a couple of years older than me, was really into ecstasy and partying, and had been high all these times we’d been together. He’d kept it from me, and told my sister not to tell, because he didn’t want to expose me to it. But then I started too, and I got right into it. At first it was pretty fun and amazing. I was coming from a headspace where I was always disconnected, and to suddenly feel connected to the people around me and the whole world … It was exactly what I’d been looking for, really.But it got hugely detrimental. I was 16 and going out to bars, hanging with my brother and sister and their friends. Fake ID was big currency in those days. You’d buy them off your friends’ older sisters. I probably used to look older than I do now, I wore so much make-up, big high heels, short skirts, everything I could do to oblige the bouncer to let me into the club. It’s funny, yeah? I feel like I was a completely different person back then.

Going between school, and being out taking drugs with people in their mid-to-late 20s, was a really weird thing to do to my still-developing brain. I just couldn’t function after these big weekends. I couldn’t ever get my emotions together because I’d be a wreck for the next week or two. It was awful.

I was terrified of all of the new feelings I was having anyway, I was trying to figure out who I was, my place in the world, and I still had that feeling of not being understood. And I was so self-conscious too. Ooh, that was big. I was self-conscious about what everybody thought, what I looked like, and I assumed everyone was being critical. Yeah, so that combined with the effects of the party drugs … It was just too much.

I haven’t been interested in drugs for a long, long time now because the comedown is so severe. They have such a bad effect on my mental health. When I think back it’s a creepy feeling actually. There were so many half-blackouts, my vision literally jumping four feet one way then the next, and having complete out-of-body experiences for two seconds at a time. I remember getting into cars with lots of strange men, taking drugs given to me by strange older men. Lots of stupid, stupid things. I was way, way too trusting. I can’t believe I survived it.

At the time I dealt with it by getting stuck into studying, because that was the one thing I could control. It became obsessive. I studied and studied and studied. There was so much going on that I didn’t understand, and maths problems were something that I could solve. I could tick that box. The teachers clearly had no idea as they even made me a prefect, which is quite ironic.

It would have been hard for anyone else to see what was really going on. My hard time was entirely self-generated. I was a master at keeping all the anxiety in my head. I swallow it in. I’ve been told I looked really confident, and people even thought of me as one of the cool ones. It certainly never felt like that. I was having a completely different experience to what people saw. I still do that to this day, I think. When I’m struggling I just become very absent. Internal and aloof.

In Year 11, I was a straight A student, and I was not coping. I was manic, stressed, and trying my hardest to not fall apart emotionally. Year 11 is when they really put the pressure on you. All of a sudden it’s not enough to be working out who you are, or what so-and-so thinks about you. You have to get good grades and figure out what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. So much pressure! It was coming all year, but then I had a collapse. A literal breakdown.

The feeling that I wanted to die, which I often had, had been creeping up and getting louder and louder. Accumulating. Even though I studied hard, I had a lot of trouble with keeping my head above water when it came to schoolwork. I’d get this project done, then this project, then this project, and I managed most of the time. But then close to exams about five or six came in at once, and I thought, there’s no way I can get all that done. No way. So I put it off, and then I didn’t have enough time to do it all, and then it was too much. An overload. It was crushing me, and I didn’t know how to manage.

The girls I envied were the ones who seemed to have their shit together. They were incredibly focused, and able to balance sport with social life with studying. I really don’t know how they did it. How do you know at that age which direction to go in? How? I felt like I was on a galloping horse without any reins.

In the dining hall one evening, I was looking at my friend sitting opposite, and feeling completely in another world. Everything was spinning, I felt so depressed, overwhelmed, and disassociated from her and everyone in the room. The world was coming in on me really heavily. I’d been trying to keep it at bay for so long, and I couldn’t, just couldn’t do it anymore.I wanted to die so badly. I was so resentful that I couldn’t just switch myself off. I left the dining hall thinking, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ and collapsed. I wanted to die or leave my body, so I switched my body off and fell to the ground. I was still conscious, but pretending not to be, because I really, really, didn’t want to be.

I remember the sound of people running, and this sweet boy called Andy Hunt picking me up and running with me. At the boarding house the housemaster looked me over, and began shaking me and shouting at me, and it all became very urgent. Then at the hospital they poked and prodded me, and opened my eyelids and shone a torch in. I heard, ‘Looks like she hasn’t fainted. Her pupils aren’t dilated,’ and I’m thinking, ‘F**k’. And I started crying, and the game was up.

They put me in hospital for a while, and then I went home. I still don’t really know what happened. There’s depression in my family, but I think the drugs made it into something I couldn’t deal with. It’s hard to know what’s hereditary. I was overwhelmed by the pressures of growing up and not knowing who I was, not ever being as happy and carefree as the other kids. I guess I always felt this weight on me, and I just gave in one day.

It helped in that I had to admit to my parents that I was really struggling. I look back now and can’t believe it, but I hadn’t told them anything before. Maybe if I had I wouldn’t have needed such a big breakdown. But every time I tried to explain, I could never really articulate it. That’s why my diary was full of sprawling existential anxiety attacks.

I phoned home on the day, from the hospital, and said, ‘Dad, I think I’ve got depression.’ He was quiet on the phone for a bit, and then told me about the depression in his family, and how he’s been on antidepressants for a long time. And then he apologised because he said I probably inherited it. But for me, really, it was nice, because for the first time I’d found someone who did understand. It helped a lot. We spoke the same language.

The big relief was that I won Triple J’s Unearthed, which got me a record deal, and I was able to relax and enjoy Year 12. I knew I was going to be a musician, which meant I didn’t have to try so hard with school. I was able to hang out with my friends and not be strung out about grades and stuff. I was like, ‘I’m not going to uni anyway.’

I’m still a sensitive unit, and it’s funny, I still don’t really want to be noticed. But there’s a difference between expressing my feelings through abstract metaphors to an audience of quiet, well-behaved, sitting-down people who I don’t have to interact with, and, you know, getting up in front of 20 friends in a room and confessing my deepest feelings. I can never do speeches at parties or weddings, because I get up and my voice starts shaking.

Performing, to me, is much more comfortable than person-to-person interaction, because performing is a controlled space. When I’ve written a song it expresses a part of me in exactly the way I want to express it, in exactly the way that feels good and right to me, and I don’t need to give away any more than I want. It’s a controlled way of connecting with people, I guess. It’s great.

But plenty of people who are shy as teenagers go on to perform. It’s really common. A lot of shy people find it hard to express themselves in other ways, and sometimes you need to have come from that to make good art.

Performing ended up being the way of connecting with people that I was looking for. The ability to turn my struggles into an art form is pretty much my career. If I didn’t have any internal struggles going on, and I was able to express myself freely, and life was just a breeze, I’d have no reason to pour myself out into my songs, and I’d have no real subject matter.And I’d have had no reason to turn to music as a refuge. Music became my channel of expression because I couldn’t express myself in any other way. That’s why it became such a passion. There’s nothing like going through some hard times to come up with creative ways of expressing yourself. I have no doubt it’s helped me become the musician and artist that I am today.

Obviously I still struggle with depression occasionally, but I know how to exorcise my demons. And in a way that turns the ugly stuff into something beautiful. That’s a great thing. Who knows what would have become of my life if I hadn’t gone through all of that and found the necessity of writing it down and turning it into music?

For some reason, when you’re a kid, not fitting in is a bad thing. You’re not allowed to be an individual at school. The big moment for me was when I realised my differences were actually a positive. Particularly in the creative world, because to do anything worthwhile you’ve got to think in a way that no one’s thought before. To come up with something truly original you’ve got to be a truly original person.

And not only is it okay to be different, but I’ve also worked out that I’m not as different as I thought I was. We all have fears and insecurities, and those similarities are ultimately what connect us.

I’ve also learned how to share. It’s hard to be understood if you don’t. That was a great learning curve for me. If you’ve never shared your problems, it feels like it would be humiliating and make matters worse. You don’t realise how common what you’re going through is. It’s even really hard to admit things to your parents; I mean, you want your parents to be proud of you. But when I spoke to my dad I felt a weight lift off me straight away, and I continue to learn how good it is to express and share yourself. It’s definitely better in the long run, no matter if it feels counter-intuitive to let your guard down.

These days I’m kind of addicted to it. I’m a confessor. I know if I hold on to things, it’s only going to cause me trouble. Obviously you can’t do it with everyone, but to talk to someone who will respect and support you can be just life saving.

I reckon that those who struggle in high school are often sensitive, and deep thinkers. And that’s a hard thing to be amid a heap of kids who have a more confident personality and a thicker skin. You’re gonna get crucified. But it seems you have to struggle and have a complicated brain to come up with these colourful ways of presenting your inner world outwards. It’s how artists are made. It’s a shame, almost, that it has to be that way, but at least it’s turning struggle into something beautiful that the world needs.

Whenever I meet a kid who’s in Year 11 or 12, I want to say, ‘Don’t worry. It really doesn’t matter that much.’ Unless you want to be a doctor, or lawyer, and you really need high grades, in the end it’s not the be-all and end-all to get 99 per cent in your VCE exam. It’s too much to put on a kid, way too much. The kids who really want it can cope with it, but if you don’t, it’s a ridiculous pressure.

Once you leave school it’s like it was all a dream. When you’re there it feels like it’s your life, and the school system is built that way too; it’s your universe. You think, if you don’t fit in here, well, you’ll never fit in, and everyone will always be mean to you because you deserve it. You don’t have enough life experience yet to realise that it’s their problem. But, looking back, school is just a holding pen. It’s to keep you occupied until you get into the real world – and be free to be whoever you want, and do whatever you want.


Bully for Them is available now, in-store and online.

Cover image for Bully for Them: Outstanding Australians on Hard Lessons Learned at School

Bully for Them: Outstanding Australians on Hard Lessons Learned at School

Fiona Scott-Norman

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