@WI L0UNGE

If your like me then growing up you found it hard to fit in at school. People spread rumours about you and eventually you lived up the reputation they gave you.

That is problem one with bullying – for example; you get called a freak all the time and eventually you start to believe it. then you start to change the way you dress to fit the name you have been given and then you start to ‘act’ like what you think is a freak because you believe you must be. soon you get an Internet fan base and you are now popular and start to bully people back for bullying you because now you have the control and the friends.

That is one example of how bullying can effect someone. Here is another example of the effects of bullying.

When a girl has a lot of guy friends behind her back all her ‘friends’ are calling her names assuming that she is obviously sleeping with all her guys friends. Eventually her ‘friends’ decide it is a good idea to spread around that she is… To the whole school. The boys that are involved with the rumours don’t denie any of the allegation in fear or not looking or being ‘cool’ to his mates. This girl is now being called names and all her previous friends hate her and continue to laugh and taunt. They spread more rumours. Because to them it is funny and they have the power in the situation.

This girl becomes depressed and usually goes either 3 ways
1) downward spiral turns to drugs and alcohol and lives up to this reputation
2) attempts to and sometimes succeeds to commit suicide
3) she ignores it and rises above it all

No matter what option this girl chooses though she now has this reputation behind her that others have created for her. So no matter where she goes or how old she is, she cannot avoid the talk. about 4-5 out of 10 times the people bullied choose option 1 and eventually lives up to the reputation they have been given, because it is easier for them to deal with if they make it true and it can be an easy escape from reality.

I can honestly say once upon a time I was the girl who chose option one. It had eventually reached the point where I gave up the fight to keep my reputation clean because other girls had already tarnished it beyond return. Eventually I did also discover drugs, but before that I would just go to party’s with the friends I had left. They were people who still liked to spread rumours about me so they weren’t really friends just people to hang around with. no matter what I did the rumours kept popping up.

It had gotten to the point where I felt like nothing I did was worth anything at all because I had already been ‘branded’ by lies that were far more important than the truth… The truth can be boring to these people.

Ok lets take a pause here and get something straight. I am not writing this so that you all know I was very unpopular at school, I am writing this because maybe there are some youths out there who need to read the effects bullying can have on someone. Some people just need to be bought back to reality and realize that bullying people in any shape, way or form is never ok.

I am sure at the time it will make you feel powerful and superior. You feel amazing when you’re in power and sometimes you can get ahead of yourself.

So basically my post today is another one of these awareness posts, because I have been bullied, I have dealt with the effects of it for years and I still am, to this day dealing with it.

I hope the people who bullied me are reading this now and realize they aren’t cool for bullying me. There are people out there who to this day think that I deserved everything I got and I had it coming to me. How can you have something coming to you if you never did anything wrong in the first place?

I do not see how a 14-year-old who had no friends anymore, who’s grades were slipping, who just went to school and went to work, who watched everyone else go to friends houses and underage rages deserved to have a metal ruler thrown at the back of her head in class, or deserved to be chased around the school by more than 100 people throwing rotten food and things they had found in the trash, or to be hit in the back of the head over and over again because a girl just felt like doing that every time she saw me. Nobody deserves that ever.

You see all these campaigns about bullying but do they really teach kids that bullying is wrong? Do teachers even care enough about it? Or parents for that matter? When I was in school that is what happened to me and not once did a teacher stand up and say ‘hey that’s wrong.’ They just ignored it or sent me out of class. I never once saw an anti bullying dvd either. To this day I still get called names and I still sometimes receive abuse from those I went to school with and people who are adults and should know better than that. I see bullying all over facebook older women fighting with each other, kids attacking other kids, adults attacking children, facebook groups aimed at bullying individuals, people with a disability being bullied and being the bully themselves, mothers of disabled children bullying people because they are not paying attention to their disabled child and people bullying the government for making a mistake or demanding they deserve more money… the list really does go on. Ever since the internet arrived it has just become an easier way to bully someone and get away with it.

I have many readers and every day I am reaching more and more people. I would really like your help on this, I would like the spread some awareness against bullying the most powerful way I know how – the internet and written word. I would really love to be able to start my own world wide campagne against bullying and actually visit schools and try to make a difference. But where can I start? Well I can start here on my blog.

If you are reading this I would like you to help spread this around, because it really does have to improve. Please write a post about your experience with bullying, how it effected you and the person you are now because of it. Link it back to mine so that I can read it and the readers of yours can also hear my story and my crusade and hopefully write a post aswell.

I am determined to get my message out there and hopefully help younger people avoid being in the situation I was.

Thank you