Was there a resolution to the bullying? “Nope, I just kept moving schools and foster homes. I left school early in year 11 due to abuse happening in my last foster home (not by the foster parents), and as for the drag queens that bullied me, let’s say I worked my magic on stage and people loved it. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not good enough!”
Russell Harrower has grown up with deformity and disability, in foster care and with bullying a part of daily life. So much so, at times he wished his mum had let him die at birth!
all through school. I was called names like ‘no-neck’ and ‘ET’. At 18-19, I started doing drag shows; the other queens bullied me because I couldn’t move my hand like they did.”
What were you bullied for?
Did that impact your life?
“As a child, I was bulled for a deformity in my left hand, having no neck and for not fitting in with the rest of the children.”
“Yes. I prefer to be by myself, I don’t like going out and would rather stay at home in front of my computer or lying with the dogs. With one arm longer than the other, and my deformed hand, which for a long time I chose to hide, it was embarrassing and difficult and messed me up mentally.”
How did that make you feel? “Honestly, when you are brought up in a Foster Care System with abuse at home and abuse/bullying at school, it’s very upsetting, but the bullying at home was the worst of the two evils.” What was your first experience of bullying? “I can’t recall the first, but I was called ‘4 finger freak’
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Supernal Magazine
“However, at some time in our lives, we all have to build a bridge and move on, and it’s taken a while to realise this but ‘life can be crap’ it’s what you take away from it that matters.”
On the bullying issues you raised in question 1, how did they impact your life? “I have always had health issues; I was born with a hole in my heart, no bone in my left thumb and many more disabilities. I didn’t look like the rest of the kids! “I think having disabilities affects everyone differently. I often feel like an outcast. I feel like I don’t belong and wish that at birth, mum would have told the docs not to fix my heart and let me die. Yeah, that’s how I felt. But I do believe that we’re on this earth for a reason. “As a gay teenager, I expected major bullying, but the bullies didn’t care about my sexual orientation, not with my physical issues so obvious. It’s funny because the one experience that turned my world upside down, for a moment was
