I wanted to make sure everyone is aware that October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Please stand with me and take a stand against bullying. I want to create a dialogue about bullying to help raise awareness. Please share your story in the comments below and help put a face to this campaign.
By sharing your story, we can help others to understand the impact bullying has on a persons life.
Please click the Like button and help spread the word.
Post by Lost and Tired.
thefuzzycabbage Meaghan1985 @mbybee bullying is a truly ugly thing. Thank you for helping to raise awareness. 🙂 I love you guys.
mbybee MalloryOnTravel probably a good idea
MalloryOnTravel Lost_and_Tired So is this when we stand up to Congress?
That’s the way it usually works. The bullies are more often than not the popular, well-liked kids who always seem to be backed up by the authority figures–teachers, principles, etc. That’s the way it was when I was in high school. Therefore, getting help was out of the question because the people in a position to do something about it refused to do anything at all.
I was bullied so badly in junior high school that I left school altogether. I just had no social skills to speak of, I didn’t know how to make friends, I didn’t know how to fight back, I was prickly and weird and hard to be around, and the other kids made mincemeat of me. I’m sure that, if Facebook and such had been a thing back then, there would have been cyber bullying as well. This was in the late nineties, before all the “get tough on bullying” campaigns and such that go on now.
Of course it all contributed to my severe depression. One particularly vicious girl found some writings I’d done that indicated I was suicidal — which I was. She was delighted. She kept telling me I should go ahead and do it, what was holding me back, everyone wanted me to kill myself so why was I still there wasting air and stuff.
(A funny thing: a few months after I left school, I was walking and encountered a woman with a dog. I always want to strike up conversations with dog walkers, because I love dogs. I spoke to the woman and it came out that she was that vicious bully’s mom. And she said, “My daughter has told me all about you. She really likes you.” And I was like: “[…]” Your guess is as good as mine.)
Anyway, I decided I had to do something about that nasty girl. One of the things she liked to do was sit directly behind me on the school bus and take advantage of her close position to say terrible things to me and throw things at my head. I endured this twice a day. And one day, in the morning when the bus pulled up to school, I waited until all the students had got off and then I sat down on the floor in the back and refused to move. Of course, the bus driver could not park the bus and clock out while there was still a student on. And it wasn’t like they could bodily pick me up and carry me off. I was having a sit-in, basically, trying to get the adults to do something about my bully problem.
The adults really didn’t know what to do with me. They spent considerable time basically begging me to get up and go to class. I remember how powerful I felt right then, serenely sitting there, knowing I was in control of the situation.
Finally, the principal himself came onto the bus and told me that, if I would just please, please, please stand up and get off the bus, he would take me into his office and I could take all the time I needed to tell him what my problem was. So I did that. I spent the better part of an hour telling him what was going on every day on the bus. And he said: Okay, I know how to fix this. And he gave me the very back seat of the bus to myself. No one could sit behind me. No one could sit with me unless I was invited. For the rest of the year. (Which was, I think, about two and a half months. They knew at this point that I was not coming back.)
And his “solution” worked, as far as that goes. The bus bullying stopped and I got to read my books in peace. It was only much, much later that I realized I’d been tricked: usually they punish bad kids by putting them in the corner, and that’s what he’d done with me, he’d put me in a corner. The fact that I wanted to be in the corner is irrelevant: the school didn’t see the bully as the problem, they saw ME as the problem. And I’m sure when I withdrew from school that they were glad to see me go.
That’s my story. After I left school I never saw that girl again, but her destructive influence continued in my life for years, inside my own head.
I sometimes wonder what happened to her. When I was away at college I heard her house had caught fire and burned to the ground — karma? I’ve Googled her name occasionally and found nothing. Part of me hopes she’s in prison.
Please share how bullying has affected your life or the life of someone you care about.
Please share and help me take a stand.