I read a blog post about God and gays today. The post was so incredibly inspiring that I wanted to write a little something myself.
Bullying.
Just like with being in the minority in today's world (gay / lesbian / trans etc etc), bullying makes you completely isolated from everything. It hurts. You bottle up all the emotions you go through. It makes you confused. Why are these people doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this? Why is nobody stepping up to help me? Do I dare to speak to anyone, what if it only feeds my bullies even more? Why am I still here? Those were the questions that I kept asking myself a few years back. It slowly destroyed me inside.
It all started from a small thing. I "dated" (we were 13, can't exactly call it dating) this guy for a few months and when he broke it off, I started getting abuse from him. 'Whore' became my new nickname. At first it was just this guy and his friends in our class, but slowly it started spreading. The people in the year above me started calling me names. My friends helped me with it for a while, but slowly I could notice them turning their backs on me, one by one. The abuse started to target my looks. I wasn't skinny, I didn't have nice hair, I didn't use a lot of make up. I was just a normal 13 year old who didn't think that looks weren't the most important thing in the world at the time and that seemed to give my bullies the perfect ammunition to beat me down even more.
Obviously as a byproduct of bullying my grades started suffering. I couldn't sleep, I didn't want to go to bed because that only meant that tomorrow would come quicker and I'd have to face my bullies again. I skipped school. I just didn't have the energy to focus on my schoolwork with all these negative thoughts filling my head every single day. I was too scared to talk to my mum about it because I knew that if I did, it'd all just blow up when everyone got involved. I knew that talking about my problems would fuel it up even more after my bullies got punished for what they did. They would've hated me even more, wanting to hurt me in ways that most likely would've destroyed me.
I put up with all this for such a long time. Eventually I made new friends in my class, people I never spoke to before. With their support I finally managed to go and talk to the head master of my school about changing classes. The thought of not having to spend six hours a day in the same room with my bullies made me feel so much better. Sure, I still had to walk past them every now and then while going to my class, but it sure was a huge leap for the better. The fresh environment gave me the opportunity to focus on my schoolwork again. The damage was done, sure, but at least now I had the chance to start healing.
Even now when I am 20, it still hurts. I struggle with my confidence from time to time, but having to go through such a terrible thing in a vulnerable age has made me stronger as a person. I do think about how it changed me. What if I was popular back then? What kind of a person would I be now? Because of my past I understand what it feels like to be different or 'outcast'. I know how much it hurts when people say nasty things to you just because you don't blend in. I can relate to people with similar problems - and believe me, I have helped quite a few people with issues like this.
So, what if I never went through bullying in school? Would I be narrow minded? Would I hate the thought of people that are different? Would I make fun of someone who has the guts to dress differently to the general mass? I don't know. All I can say is that I am glad to be who I am today.
This is the first time I've spoken about bullying in such an open way. It took me SEVEN years to feel confident enough about it. It's not right. I just hope that people in a similar situation to mine will stumble across this post and have the courage to speak up instead of dwelling in that bad feeling and eventually doing something irreversible. Even if it's just online behind an internet alias. It is a start to a better future.
