We Were Bullied

Everytime you look at me and open your mouth to say something bitchy, I want to thank you. Thank you for reminding me why we are different because we are. You are superficial, you have something so bad in yourself that you want to point out something in bad in me - someone you dont even know. You are bitter and narrowminded. Nothing will ever be good enough for you. How hard must the people in your life have to work to be part of your little clique?

I am intelligent and sensitive. And sensible. So thank you for reminding me of all my good qualities. And contrary to your sight and opinion, when I look in the mirror, I see the good qualities and when I look at my fiancee, I know how much he loves me and how highly he thinks of me. So despite you’re doing your best to point out how embarassing, unworthy and laughable I am, I am the world to someone. Someone who not because of their love for me but because of their actions towards others is ten times the person you could ever be.

Girls and boys, thank you. I never fit in and when I see what it takes and what one has to look like to fit in, I thank you!

Love

Because actually no hard feelings

When I’m the luckiest woman in the world!

Starting in 6th Grade I had a small group of friends, but they slowly faded away. They became meaner and one started prank calling me. I am black in a predominantly white town, which was very hard as I would get racial jokes thrown at me all the time. I had to go to the counselors multiple times because people were concerned about me but I refused to talk. I started cutting myself in 7th grade, and never told anyone until freshman year (a close friend), But that stopped when I ended up in the hospital. Starting in high school things only got worse when a bunch of boys started kicking my chair in math class (I was that one kid that had an A+ in the class and I guess they were jealous) and saying things like ” why don’t you die already?” and “you’re so ugly” Sophomore year I was cyberbullied multiple times, which I feel like is worse than actual bullying, because the results are amplified. I was too scared to say anything, but luckily my friend stood up for me. Then junior year I was physically beat up by some other black girl, who thought I was “cramping her style” in front of a class of 30 students. My parents literally could have sued my school because I was bullied so much. at the end of Junior year I was scared of going back to school, because I didnt want people to make fun of me. Then a girl started throwing paper airplanes at my head. I asked to go to the nurse and just sat there feeling bad about myself. I know people have it a lot worse out there, but at this point in my life I was seriously debating meeting my own end. So some day Junior year, I sat in my closet with the barrel of a shotgun aimed at my head. I was seriously considering friend pulling the trigger, but I remembered something my friend had said, and I dint pull it. I am glad I didn’t commit suicide because I recently got into a really good college,but for however smart I may be, I still think about what people did to me everyday, and their voices ring clear in my head, like a ballad of torments. I still thin about bad things sometimes, but things have definitely gotten better, and I look not to the past, but to the future.

Sitting in that dark empty room, I realized I had started taking a likeliness to both. Darkness. And solitude. I wasn’t like this before though. Two years ago, I wouldn’t be wrong to say that I was a very happy person. Carefree and content. I was the only child of my parents. Naturally, I was over-protected. And I never complained about that. They meant the world to me. I knew that all I had to myself were my parents. My father was a well-known doctor so I was congenitally famous. And with that came jealousy and hatred. I could sense that the people of my age group didn’t really like me. But I never cared at all. I was shielded from everything by my two guardian angels. Till the day I got enrolled in this medical college. Life took a 360 flip altogether after that. I was out of my protective cocoon for the first time in my life. No one was there to serve as a human armor to the hardships I was about to face. I never saw it coming. But when it did, it tore apart my life. My career almost reached the verge of being doomed forever. The bright colorful bubble I virtually lived in, popped all of a sudden. Everything wasn’t that bad in the beginning. The first two months were, in fact, quite good. I was a bright student. The teachers acknowledged that. I went to college everyday. I even dreamed of winning a 100% percent attendance award. How wrong I was! Cause one fine day, everything changed. A handful of people started behaving oddly before me, as if I was some psycho. The boy who was in the room next to mine in the hostel, and some of his friends, started throwing things in my room. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Soft balls, plastic cups, wrappers. Even the garbage of their room. Then some of them started peeping into my room through the window. They would beat at the window pane and wake me up in the dead of the night. And often called me names. There was a single bathroom between the two adjacent rooms. When I went to have a shower or to the toilet, they would bang the door and run away. I could hear them joking about me from my room. I used to sit up in my bed for late into the night, completely sleep-deprived. But still, I was determined not to let them take over my subconscious. They realized that probably and upped the ante. My photos were clicked randomly whether I was in my room or in college. Videos were recorded from the window of me sleeping or studying or whatever I would be doing. These photos and videos were posted by the bullies in their facebook profiles, often describing me as a skunk or an Al-Qaida agent. And once as a retarded monkey. I had become the laughing stock of the whole batch by now. No one talked to me straight. Every person ignored me now. Made faces when I passed. Laughed among themselves over me. Even when I went to a movie or to some place, they would circle around me and call me names. It surpassed my levels of tolerance. I stopped going to college altogether. I would cover up myself with a blanket and cry endlessly. I ceased going out of the room completely. Not even to have food in the canteen. My health started deteriorating at an alarming rate. For five days at times, I would go on without a single morsel of food. Just water. I would sneak out in the night sometimes and bring myself some food from the local restaurants. When I saw the others merrily going to class and enjoying their lives, I would again start with my bouts of weeping. I was in semi-depression. Like someone with Persecution Mania, I had started fearing everybody. I stopped trusting people. I thought everyone meant me harm. Even when I chatted with my hometown boys and girls on facebook, I would feel painfully low even at the slightest of remarks. Or even when I saw pics of them. Their happy faces cut through me like a toothed dagger. But I remained more in that virtual world than the real world. It was an escape route of sorts for me, from my grim reality. I had developed a chronic escaping tendency now. I couldn’t believe that I would arrive at such a point were I would be looking at a future with nothing but failures to my name. My result graph had hit the Mariana Trench of my academic career. I had always been one of the best students in my batch. In my college and even in my hometown. And now, frightening thoughts had started filling up my head. I couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. I finally told my parents everything. My mother fell ill after some days. Diabetes. And my father became hypertensive but didn’t tell me then. They rushed to meet me. When they saw me first, they could not believe it was me. I used to be rather plump before. But now, I had lost 18 kilos. Painfully thin. A decrepit wreck. Unrecognizable of my own previous bodily self. They started crying. I had developed vertigo as a result of a fluctuating blood pressure ailment. And I was only 19 then. In a fit of rage, my father threatened some of those bullies to stay away from me. This proved suicidal. Cause now began another phase. The phase of socially boycotting me. Not a single person spoke to me in class. But the laughing-among-themselves-over-me part continued. I went to college but it was too late. My attendance was just 40%. My name appeared in the pre-detention list before the first year final exams. That broke my confidence totally. Even the college wasn’t supporting me now. My parents came again. They requested my profs to allow me to sit in the exams. I was given the permission. I made up my mind not to think about anything for the moment other than my studies. As a result, I did pass the exam. I am now in my 2nd year. But the bullying hasn’t stopped till now. I still fear going to college lest that nightmarish phase comes to haunt me back again. Thankfully, I was always optimistic enough not to develop suicidal tendencies. There might be an Anti-Ragging Committee in the college but no one thought of an Anti-Bullying Committee. Cause most cases are never reported. And no one ever takes evasive actions even if done so. Ironically, many of the bullies are a part of the Anti-Ragging Committee, as well as on high posts in the Student Council. Bullying has always been encouraged. And I still can’t think of a way out other than leaving the college and moving to some other one. But there is still no guarantee that these things won’t happen there too. I discovered just one thing out of this mess. A hidden talent maybe. A flair for writing, which never was there in me. Now I could write anything. Poems, stories, essays. Anything. Maybe it was because of sustaining those vast range of emotions. Or maybe it was God’s way of providing me with an alternative outlet for the pain inside me. Whatever it was now, I had accepted my fate and reconciled with it. I don’t know if those bullies will ever become doctors in true sense, but up till now, one thing is for sure. It is actually these people who really live their college life to the fullest. And our educational system makes sure that they continue to do so. I just hope no one out there goes through the things I have gone through. It leaves perennial scars, deep down inside, which never ever heal completely. A slow venom killing you from inside. Always…
”Things unsaid, things unexplained, battered down his brain.
Faces from his past always haunted him, driving him insane.
It won’t change as long as they were alive, he knew that alright.
His hands slit their throats but his mind played images of delight.”
 

I moved a lot as a child and a teenager, which made it hard to make friends and get to know people. I liked learning, and I studied hard. I also made a lot of my own clothes, because I found the things I bought at the store boring. It’s interesting how things people are congratulatory to you for as an adult are things that children are cruel about. 

My elementary and high school years were difficult. I spent most of this time living in a town called Gananoque, which is north of Kingston in Ontario. My mother, brother and I moved there when I was in Grade 5, and we stayed in this town until I was in the early years of high school.

For some reason, the other kids didn’t like me or my brother. It was a small town and everyone dressed the same; if you didn’t have the same shorts and T-shirts and like the same bands as everyone else, you were considered a loser. Being a loser meant physical and mental abuse, and no teacher would ever bother to step in to stop it. At first, I was friendly to the other kids, but they turned on me pretty quick. I was pushed down in the schoolyard (still have scars from that; I’m now 28 years old), mocked for being ‘poor’ (most kids were in that town…), called stupid, and worse. I was pelted with snowballs packed with ice on the way home and I eventually was afraid to go to school.

I stopped talking to people. I stopped making eye contact. There were several occasions where people would open a conversation with mock kindness, only to speak out against me or push me down (literally) afterwards. I have been pushed down hills in garbage cans. I’ve been followed home. I’ve received death threats, was mocked by the other children for my last name (It was a common name, but kids make fun of anything) and I remember crying about going to school. I never went out of the classroom for recess, and when I was in high school I used to stay in the cafeteria.

I slit my right wrist in Grade 8. It wasn’t a cry for help, it was an attempt at an escape. Everyone around me kept telling me how worthless, unattractive and stupid I was, and I was starting to believe them. 

I told the school this was an accident, and that I fell. They believed me. There was no adult interjection. 

I’m older now, and I realize this was wrong. I don’t blame these children. I blame their support network. Their families and the adults who were supposed to be supervising them were not doing their jobs. I still shudder when I think of this situation; why did it happen? Why does it continue to happen to other children? Things are better now. I’m an active part of my community and I have the freedom to surround myself with positive individuals. But kids can’t always do that. They’re kinda stuck with the colleagues they have until they leave school.

My life was a living hell until I left Gananoque. I will never, ever go back there. I simply don’t think children should have to live with this kind of fear. 

C.V.

I was born Autistic and ADHD in the 1970s.  I was not given any diagnosis beyond “hyperactivity” and the vision issues that required frequent surgeries and daily, humiliating application of an eyepatch, which everyone blamed for my social “disinterest.”  They didn’t know, and in many cases didn’t care, that said “disinterest” was a mix of my autism and an intense dislike for other children. Bullying began in nursery school, at the age of three. At that age, it was less verbal and more physical. I still have a deep scar on my face from being violently scratched by another child. My things were taken, I was often hit, and namecalling began.

Primary school wasn’t much better. I had learned to avoid others though, and even though there were physical fights, I was small and fast, and even bigger kids soon realized that while they may hit harder, I hit much more often, so things did not come to a head until Grade 4.

That year, the worst bully of them all was my teacher. He was famous for his grotesque, used-car-salesmanesque suits and his short, reedy build. He bullied children because it was the only way he could feel like a man. He chose a handful of ‘misfit’ children every year and made their lives absolute hell for the duration. This had apparently been going on for as long as he’d been teaching, an open secret throughout the school board.  Unfortunately, during the year I had him, his own child was ill with leukemia and I think he resented kids who were healthy when his own was so ill, and the bullying took on a viciousness that was beyond everything he’d done in previous years.

I was not the only child bullied in my year. Two boys and three other girls were tortured by him that year, for the supreme crimes of being overweight, being part of a single-parent family, being in a family on welfare, being gifted, having a disability, and having parents who were divorced. None of these things was any child’s fault, but we were tortured daily for them. He also vocally encouraged classmate bullies to target us in any way possible.

The worst wasn’t being smacked across the hands, face, back or buttocks with the blackboard pointer. It wasn’t having our desks upended and dumped out in front of everyone. It wasn’t even being called horrible, vulgar names in front of everyone. It was his unrelenting meanness and sarcasm that hurt the most. It was the fact that for me, he used my learning disability to make me out to be stupid, constantly belittled everything I said or did, and scrutinized me like I was a germ on a microscope slide, always looking for new ways to inflict injury. The worst was that he made my own parents complicit in the torture by means of adding hours of math homework no one else got (my LD is in math), even after I was diagnosed with the math LD and math-phobia, and by making me bring home a ‘behaviour book’ full of nasty lies every night, guaranteeing that I’d be punished by my strict parents at home.

My mother was a teacher. When I told her about the physical abuse (meter stick, blackboard pointer, fists), and the psychological torture, she refused to believe me. She didn’t want to think about another teacher doing those things, so I was accused of lying and left to fend for myself. 

I was suicidal at nine years old. I scoured the house like a cop with a warrant, looking for my father’s handgun. I planned to take it to school and use it to kill him and the dozen or so of the worst child-bullies in the class. I never gave Dad much credit for being aware of what was going on — he was the type of Dad who left the parenting to Mom — but he somehow knew what I was doing and sold the gun before I found it. I began self-injuring that year. I also retreated deeply into a world of obsessive fantasy based on Star Wars, refusing to speak any language but those heard in the movies, talking and playing Star Wars constantly. My obsessive autistic nature was giving me a way to avoid a real life that had become untenable. Living in fantasy as much as possible gave me a much-needed respite from the hell of my reality.

We moved that summer. I began Grade 5 at a new school. My teacher noticed that I had fears, unusual outbursts, and such a deep withdrawal from others that I wouldn’t speak in class and she got me in for testing and some much needed therapy at CPRI, where a lot more of the abuse that I’d endured in Grade 4 came to light. My parents had to face the reality that I had not been lying. By that point, we had no relationship. I hated them for abandoning me when I had come to them for help, hated them for punishing my obsession with Star Wars when it was the one thing making life worth living for me, hated them for believing the abusive, bullying teacher over me. Our relationship remained severely damaged for many years and there are still undercurrents today, despite my now being 36.

I have also been left with PTSD, depression, low self-esteem, frequent urges to self injure, an opiate addiction, issues with authority, and a violent temper that quickly turns physical if I think someone is trying to bully me or shows me disrespect. It has only been luck that has kept me out of the justice system, and I know that. I fight against these problems every day. 

I never got the help I needed when I needed it most. The hurt is still there, still raw.  I still hate him for what he did to me and to the other kids in my class that he bullied.  For many years, I wanted to kill him in painful, lingering ways. I know that if I’d never been his victim, my life would be very different than it is, and I resent the fact that I have these scars because of him. It makes me furious that other teachers knew, the school board knew that he was a child abuser, and no one stopped him. So many people carry blame in this systemic failure that allowed a child abuser to go on teaching until his retirement when it was known that he was victimizing children less than 10 years after he began teaching. People knew he was an abuser for more than 20 years and did nothing to stop him. 

I’m not sure why I became a target of bullying. It didn’t start until junior high for me, but that didn’t make it any less painful. I was always the girl who was really good at having fun. I didn’t care about what people thought about me, until they made their thoughts extremely public.

Often other girls would write hurtful things about me on the desks in the classroom or scrawled across the walls. On more than one occasion I went to school early just to wash the hurtful things off the walls. I lived in a very small town and if I took my dog out for a walk, I could count on the same girls to yell at me from the windows, calling me horrible names I never deserved. I was close with my few girlfriends and this prompted my haters to call me a lesbian slut — often calling me to taunt me over the phone, calling collect, sending me emails… egging my house or damaging my things.

I used to write a lot of poetry and one time I accidentally left my binder in the classroom. When I found it, the bullies had written “lesbian” “slut” “fatty” “gross” on every single page, with notes in the margins making fun of my work.

I was called fat so much, but looking back I see now that I was an extremely healthy weight — thin even! I still don’t understand why they called me fat so much. The boys called me “bacon” or “chocolate milk” and made up rumours about me I’m too ashamed to repeat.

I suffered from severe depression then, even though I didn’t know what it was yet. Today, 10 years later, I’m in therapy for depression and social anxiety, and I can’t help but think one of the main reasons is this bullying I endured. I wanted to die so much back then, I don’t know how I made it. I don’t know why they chose me.

It started on my first day of school. The girl was in Grade 2 and took my lunch treats from me every day. Her favourite were the cream-filled cookies and the small bags of potato chips.

I was never one to just sit back and let someone take advantage of me so I told my teacher. I was told not to be a tattle tale and if I wanted to make friends I should be quiet.

The bullies in school from that day on were trained by the adults in charge that their behaviour was acceptable, exempt from punishment. An adult mind thinks it’s silly for young children to be fighting with each other over something so small as a cream-filled cookie. However, the young girl who delighted in my lunch snacks each day was given the green light in her childish mind to continue on to bigger ways to make my life miserable. Others watching soon joined her.

My mom told me to stop being silly, and my dad thought the solution would be to send me to school with a case of chocolate bars to hand out to all the kids. As if one could buy friends with chocolate. The new plan was to intercept the chocolate from me before I arrived on the school grounds. Bulling now morphed outside the school limits. I refused to let them win even though they seemed to have all the power. I crushed my chips each morning before school in small pieces and I separated my cream cookies and licked the icing. As I watched the girl and her friends enjoy my lunch treats I kept telling myself that I was the one winning the battle. I didn’t like junk food anyway.

From the first day of school, my undisciplined, adult-trained bullies grew into bigger bullies. I was told I was ugly and worthless on a daily basis. I had to walk home in the snow without boots several times because they would steal them. The teachers wouldn’t let me keep my boots on because I must follow the rules and take them off while in school. Yet, what were the rules for stealing someone’s boots?

I moved to another school. I was greeted by another set of well-trained bullies and the school principal who hated my father. I told my father about the bullies, but his solution was to buy them food. I learned that you can’t feed, bribe, or encouraged a bully. I didn’t tell my father about the school principal. My dad would have gone to the school and killed him. I endured two years of bulling by this man. He would come to class and single me out and make fun of me. He would say bad things about my family and he would call me into his office and yell and scream at me. My growing crowd of bullies would eagerly watch this behaviour and learn some more bully tactics: glue on my seat, cutting my hair, beating me up, spitting, spreading false stories about me, and the endless name calling. All stuff that grownups call silly. All stuff that the adults in charge call ‘preparing you for the real world.’

I endured it all but I soon started to believe I was worthless. After all, the teachers saw and heard almost everything and looked the other way. The principal would tip me upside down and put my head in the garbage can, and my teacher would just sit silently and not say anything.

I would pray each day that God would make me invisible so my bullies couldn’t see me. I wouldn’t let them win, though. I wasn’t going to go away. I would focus my thoughts on the kids in school who had worse lives then I had. The young boy down the street who witnessed his father’s suicide and feels it’s his job to look after his three young siblings and his now-depressed single mother. The boy was only in Grade 3. I became his defender and stood up to his bullies. The new young batch being trained by the adults in charge. I was only in Grade 7. I had five more school years to go.

High school looked promising. After all, when children hit puberty they become mature, right! Wrong! My bullies became meaner. They would steal all my notes in class, take my homework, take my clothes during gym, write sexually explicit notes to other boys and male teachers and sign my name, and endlessly call me worthless names. I sometimes feared for my life. I was a good girl, pretty, good grades when I could actually keep my notes, and I was polite, quiet and nice. I would stay awake most nights meditating on how this could be happening to me.

The teachers just looked on in silence. I could see it in their eyes that they didn’t approve. They gave me good grades despite the fact that I failed to hand in most of my work and failed my exams. They felt sorry for me I guess, or it was their way of doing something without becoming involved. I suppose they were training the bullies so that they could someday rule the world when they graduate.

I resorted to unnecessary survival methods. I got a job and paid bigger bullies who were bullying other kids to take care of my bullies. I supplied the meaner, more trained bullies with drug and alcohol money so they could beat up and scare my bullies away from me. I spent thousands of dollars so I could spend my last few years of school learning in peace. I reasoned that instead of escaping my reality by becoming depressed and drowning myself in drugs and alcohol like the other bullied kids, I would silently kill off the bullies by supplying them with the stuff that could kill me. My reality and my reasoning was clearly affected by the bulling, affected by the adults that would look the other way.

I still wasn’t going to let the bullies win, but I was alone with no one to turn to. I cried every day, and I sometimes wished I would die. I hated those feelings, but the loneliness was haunting. I would survive by looking for others who had it worse than I did. I would fiercely defend them like some cartoon crusader. I would have to daily remind myself that school will be done soon and I will then have more power over my life.

I am now married with two wonderful children. I graduated school with good grades and before I became a stay-at-home mom I had a good career. Did my bullies win? In a way they did. The scars of my past are evident to this day. I have to remind myself every day that I matter. I have to fight my tendency to think that I’m still a worthless person. I have to still fight bullies as an adult. The bullies of the world grew up, too, and they are out there; well-trained from their lack of discipline on their first day of school. I have to fight my trained tendency of allowing people to walk all over me. I, too, was well-trained by the same adults who looked the other way. I was trained to shut up and not say anything.

Bullies will always be part of everyone’s lives. They really are not the problem. The problem is the responsible adults who look the other way. The problem is the lack of discipline when bullying starts at the early stages. The problem is that bullies are not punished for their behaviour and the problem is that no one wants to become involved. That is why I am setting the example as a responsible adult and I don’t look the other way. When my son was bullied in a kids’ indoor play place, I threatened to call the police when the other boys’ parents looked at their son so proudly, calling him a true leader. I had to actually start dialing before the staff realized I meant business and told the other family to leave. Yes, I acted like a crazy, over-possessive parent, clearly showing my own battle scars from bullying. I don’t care, because I am a hero to two wonderful children who are not safe from bullying but safe because an adult wasn’t afraid to do something about it. I didn’t look the other way.

People fear those who are different than them. Twenty years after my own bullying started, I know this to be a fact.

My bullying began when I was five by older children, ranging in age from 9 to 12. I was told unlike my friends, I was too ugly to get piggybacks or get taken for ice cream or special trips. I was cornered once and had my new necklace ripped off by a girl claiming I’d stolen it from her. I pointed out it was an “N” and not a “K,” but it didn’t matter. 

We moved back to Canada at the age of eight after living in Germany for three years. Coincidentally, I also began life at my new school with a pair of glasses. I used to hide them. That year continued with older kids picking on me after they saw me perform in a school play. The next year in my split-grade class, I faced bullies in the classroom for the first time. One photo day I was kicked in the chest by an older boy who said he hated my dress. I wore gym strip for my photo because I didn’t want the shoeprint to show and didn’t try wearing a dress again for another four years. That year was also the first time I ran away from school, after several boys ganged up on me and kept applying “kick me” signs to me and my desk. I’d rip one off and a new one would appear, all while others took a kick at me. The teacher was out of the room at the time.

We moved again when I was 10. Things were thrown at me, I was teased for not wearing the right clothes, the way I walked, my name, for wearing glasses, my military father walking me to school and I was jumped at the top of the stairwell by a boy. The worst time was when I spent a lunch hiding in the bathroom because the boy who had jumped me in the stairs had heard I called him a “b@#ch.” In that case, a Grade 7 student came in and kicked me. She said she didn’t want to do it, but Shane had asked. In that case, I told the teacher and long talks came about that didn’t yield anything except an apology. 

In Grade 6, I took a turn. I was a bit of a bully that year. Someone who had bullied me the previous year took me in. I did it to be cool and win her over. I regret it. The following year I paid for my teasing when she turned on me. Things were written all over the playground at school and on the military base (___ is a lesbian). It was done by someone else who was trying to win my former friend’s favour. They covered the permanent pen over with what I discovered years later was washable ink. When I was 16 I scraped it off with a rock.

High school was more hell until Grade 12 when everyone suddenly seemed to have matured. Even my former bullies could manage a conversation with me. I’m very glad that social media hadn’t invaded the internet.

Sometimes I look back and think, “Did I deserve to be treated that way?” I think in some respects when I was older, then yes, because I did allow myself to stand out. I do wonder what kind of person I would have turned out to be if I’d faced only the garden variety type of bullying. I still have trouble with bullies, particularly females at work. I don’t know why I become their target, but it certainly affects my morale and in one instance it really impacted my work. It’s like the taint of having been bullied has followed me. I know I’m a stronger person for everything I’ve faced and overcome, but it doesn’t make me feel better.

I was always a target of various bullies throughout my life but the story I’m about to tell will always stick in my mind.

When I was in Grade 9, I made friends with a classmate because she seemed cool. She was athletic, had stylish clothes, liked to party and was a generally loud and outgoing girl. I was shy, artsy and a bit of a doormat, so I felt like her personality was something for me to aspire to, and she liked my clothes and creative nature, so we had somewhat of a symbiotic relationship. It worked out, for a while.

Within a few months I grew tired of her abrasive attitude and was feeling used (“Hey, can I borrow your clothes/some money/CD’s/not return it/etc?”) and learned through the churning gyre of teen gossip that she was making fun of me behind my back while posing as my friend. I ended the friendship then and there through the usual passive aggressive pre-text message method: a note. This proved to be a terrible mistake that lead to a solid year of constantly fearing for my safety.

Within the first few days of ending our friendship, I heard through others that she planned on killing me. I received threatening letters from her, as she attempted to rally others to her cause. I remember having to share both a science and an art class for one semester with her, and in both classes she attempted assault through a couple of her guy friends (this thankfully never followed through due to teachers walking in just as they were about to come at me with a paper weight, and another time with a lighter in attempt to burn my hair). I was always looking over my shoulder (don’t go to the washroom/walk home/walk the halls alone). When I think back, I wonder where my friends were this entire time? Oh yeah, they were sitting next to her, too spineless or apathetic to stand up for me. This went on for exactly a year, which isn’t much compared to many brave people who have had to endure a lifetime of abuse, but it was a terrifying and dark period of my life where I felt like none of my peers cared enough to stand with me.

Fortunately for me, in the end of it all she was all talk. I will forever be thankful to my mother and my guidance counsellor who didn’t take kindly to death threats, and ended the cycle before it escalated by severely reprimanding her.

Back when we were still friends, she confided in me that her mother was verbally and physically abusive toward her. She would call her “ugly”, “slut”, “whore” and belittle her in many other ways. In the end, I just felt sorry for her because I knew where her abuse directed at me was coming from: her mother. Abuse breeds abuse. I’m not sure where she is now, I talked to her a few years ago when I was in college and she still seemed like a bitter, battered soul. Even though she was terrible to me, I hope to this day that she has found peace.

When I was in Grade 7, the entire class decided to shun me. This lasted for months. My bicycle seat was covered with spit when it was time to ride home, and everyone tittered behind their hands. When I asked to share a canoe on a class trip, I was told I was too thin.

To this day I do not know why I was chosen as the target. It may have been because I was the only non-white in the entire junior high school in Kitchener, Ont. Maybe it was because I had a near perfect GPA. My life was a nightmare, and I dreaded going to school. I do not know why I did not tell my parents about this. I can only guess that I did not think of my parents as people I could go to with my problems.

Before this happened, a new girl and her friends accepted me into their circle. When the whole class turned on me, they asked her to participate in the bullying, and she refused.  She was very brave. But I still was not asked to hang out with her circle when this was going on.

Looking back, I believe that the teacher noticed, and the following year I was placed with the best teacher, a principled man. The bullying ended, and I was selected for student council. I am so grateful to the school.

Even now, I still harbour a lack of confidence in social situations. I have great and long-time friends, but I still worry about whether people like me. Children can be very unkind, and I hope to raise my own children to stand up for others as my friend did for me so long ago.