(Re-posted from old Blog) 
Every day I see more and more news articles about children committing suicide because they were bullied because of a disability, their sexual preference, a health issue, their weight, their cultural preferences, their religion, or even just because they are different than the others, thus easier to pick on.
I recently read an article that a friend on Google+ shared about a child with Muscular Dystrophy that committed suicide after he was attacked. He was defenseless and could not even stand up for himself because of his disability and fear. Sadly, nowadays people are picked on and bullied for even less, like I was.
From elementary school, I was basically an outcast. I had bullies torment me every time I went to school, even though can’t remember it. My mom told me a story about how someone threw away my box of valentine cards that every child in the class got just to be mean to me, and how upset I was over that. Though it was sad to hear how I was picked on from the start, I was not very surprised that it happened even if I couldn’t remember it myself.
In junior high, a few of my friends and I were bullied every day. The boys who thought it would be fun to intentionally harm us would throw their football at us and steal our things when we weren’t paying attention or trying to get out of the way of the football. Once, one of my friends was even hit by the football. This spiraled downwards as we attempted to bring the principal and vice principal into our problem as to solve it, but they did nothing, either not thinking we were telling the truth or not caring. We were all outraged by this indifferent behavior and though we tried to solve it through less violent methods, that never helped, so we decided it was time to take it into our own hands and see if that would make a difference. It never did.
A few days after they started throwing food at us at lunch and before school, we confronted one of them, wanting to know why he threw an open carton of chocolate milk at us. He struck one of my friends on the face, and we all jumped to attack, enraged that he would dare hit a girl over being asked why he was bullying us. Before I lost all sight, my mind and eyes flooded by sheer red color, I remember throwing a punch. When I was snapped from my blind rage, another boy was holding me back as the guy I hit took off, my friends chasing after him. I cannot remember the words I screamed at him, but I was let go, only to find my friends being pinned to the lockers and restrained by the gym instructors. They were suspended but I was not. Why were they in such trouble after the principal, the whole school, knew we were being bullied for so long without any rest? Why were we punished when they were not? We had dreaded coming to school for weeks because we knew the torment would not stop for anything. I was only suspended for not wanting to leave until I knew my friends were alright, the way that they were being held in a very uncomfortable and painful way. The principal was not convinced that I hit the bully though, so I was only gone for one day.
When I returned to school, I was plagued with curious students, wondering what happened and if I really did strike him. The day was peaceful, as if the bullying had stopped. That was short lived though. The boy I hit never showed himself to me again at the school, though the rest of the bullies had decided that their new target would be to get us all suspended again by aggravating us to the point that we snapped. This never happened as we suffered through the rest of the school year without the care of any teachers or the principal.
I never once thought of committing suicide because of that, but then again, I was not beat up and had stuff stolen from me. Occasionally they took jabs at my religion, which I have since left, but my sexuality would remain unknown to them until high school, not wanting to give them another way of hurting me. It broke my heart to see them treating my friends and I that way, though I now knew how to form a wall between myself and them, not showing anything more than anger and aggression. They would not know they hurt me and caused me to cry at night. Oh no, they would only feel the anger I had toward them. Some days I wished I could torture them as well, though that was only a daydream to get me through the rest of that day so I could go home and wish I was another person and that they did not bully me. Those days I hated who I was and what they had made me. Why did they choose me? What had I done to them to make them hate me so much?
Sometimes bullying is as simple as that. Other times it’s much more complex. From personal experience, I can say that it does effect the bullied in more ways that you may think and from the recent news articles, it can cause a child to take his or her own life. This is a problem that no one but people who have experienced first hand really understand how crucial it is to stop. Our youth has grown up thinking it’s okay to treat others like dirt, like they are below them. How many children have to die before America sees this as a major problem and starts on a path to fixing it?
(Sadly, I don’t have the link to the article to share with you as this is an old post but I’m sure you could easily Google it and find that article and many more like it because it’s not like these things don’t happen every day.)
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