Bullying

This post was inspired by a recent event in my family. My cousin Brooke is 13 years old and she has been bullied for a few months by one particular girl at school. On Friday while on a trip, this one bully got a group of people to throw things at my cousin. Brooke grew sick off this and finally pushed the girl over. On the night, she got home and found out that the girl had told her parents who had called the police to give Brooke a warning. The police quickly saw the evidence that Brooke had collected about this girl and left. However, I decided to write a post about this because I feel like a lot of people who are being bullied often don’t tell people or do anything about it because they are too scared of it back-firing on them like it did with Brooke. I am really proud of her, not because she pushed the girl over because I don’t condone violence at all, but because she stood up for herself.

 

I, myself, have been bullied but only recently recognised it as ‘bullying’. To me, it was just someone’s idea of a joke that I didn’t find funny. I thought about stuff that people had said to me over the years about the way I look and it made me really upset. I’m one of those people who just bury their heads in the sand or try to “laugh it off” when really all I want to do is break down and cry. In my case, I wasn’t being bullied by any girls in my school because even though I wasn’t friends with them, we all sort of left each other alone. The boys however, were vicious, vile and absolutely cruel. Not just to me, not just to my friends, but to some of the most popular girls in school. I have grown to hate that particular group of boys because separately, they were annoying but together, they became a united group of evil. My friend and I often tried to avoid them by walking either faster or slower on the way to lunch where they would throw things or shout horrible comments. I’m sure they found it absolutely hilarious seeing us practically running away but to us, it was necessary. The thing is, once one person says something, they all think it’s acceptable and it isn’t. If I didn’t have my friend who suffered as much as I did, I probably wouldn’t have written this because we did just laugh about it which I think was basically just a defence mechanism to hide the pain. 

There were times when all I wanted to do was shout at them but as I have seen, the more you fight back, the more they attack. I did try to ignore them but one particular lesson in Maths really angered me. My friend Cara had bought a drink from Morrison’s and put it on the floor next to her bag and chair. One particular boy, who I absolutely hate because of this, took the drink without her knowing and put staples, yes staples, inside the bottle. Now, another friend pointed it out before she could drink from it so fortunately, she wasn’t hurt. But she could have been. All because they thought it would be funny, guess what folks? It wasn’t. For the rest of that lesson, they fired the staple gun at us DURING LESSON and my pathetic teacher didn’t even notice. I started to hate and I mean, HATE, them.

This routine happened daily and it wasn’t until half way through year 11 that I told my mother. Of course, she responded by saying that she was going to go down there and tell the school. I was honestly horrified because she would have done if I didn’t stop her, which means that I would have been an even bigger target. I decided to put up with it for the rest of the year and bite my tongue to whatever they said and eventually they found another people to pick on and they kind of left me alone. It wasn’t the best thing to do because another person went through the same thing that I did and the bullies didn’t get what they deserved. I was a coward; I just wanted them to go away which was pretty much my motivation for the remaining months of year 11. I’m so glad I’ve now finished school and the people I hate are going to different colleges which means I can finally get away.

I know a lot of people can’t cope with bullying and because of things like social media, we are constantly exposed to people saying mean comments and it really does affect your self-esteem whether you notice it or not. You begin trying to lose weight because someone called you “fat” or start putting on more makeup because someone called you “ugly”.  It’s not fair that you should change yourselves just because someone doesn’t like the way you look or the way you dress.

I wish I had been as brave as Brooke was and confronted the people who had made my life a living hell but I wasn’t. However you can be, I’m not saying go and push them over, but at least let someone know that you are being bullied. I used to think it was a weakness because it meant that I wasn’t ‘strong’. But you know what? Turns out I’m a lot stronger than I thought. And so are you.