In a time where the support of friends is a crucial part of making it through the baby steps of the days and weeks to follow grief, I learned that bullying still exists beyond the halls of school. Bullying is not something confined to a certain place at a certain age. The people you don’t expect to be bullied from, can surprise you, and end up being the “bigger bullies” then the “mean” kids, or the strangers we expect it from based off of judgments we might have been too quick to make.

I wouldn’t say I was bullied in the school yard, or in the halls of high school. I was picked on relentlessly in elementary school, but as kids got older, things got surprisingly better. I was not one to succumb to peer-pressure. Too set in my own stubbornness to try smoking, or drinking; to try this, or that; to do this or that; just because my friends, or someone else deemed it was “cool” or that “everyone” was doing it. Peer-pressure has never held power over me, or much significance in my life. I simply could not put in the effort to do something I didn’t want to do just to gain “coolness”. Then once high school was over with, and college began, everyone was too caught up in doing their own things, to try to bully anyone into doing something they didn’t find interest in. Scare tactic and peer-pressure were something of the past. Or so I thought.

At 22 years old, I certainly would not have thought that bullying would find me. Certainly wouldn’t have guessed the bully(ies) would be “friend(s)”. It comes as a sort of surprise and slap in the face when this idea is reality. Friends certainly are not supposed to be the people one feels bullied by. Friends are loving and supporting. One could assume that a friend that is a bully is not a friend. But how do you deal with it? Do you distance yourself from those people, or do confront them and hope to move forward in the friendship(s)? It is a tough decision, especially when you are in a workplace with these people, and have to be in the company of them quite often.

I’m not sure there is a way to “get through” to bullies. They will continue to try to use force, and demeaning ways of bringing your self esteem and self worth down in order to fulfill their own selfish desires. I deal with it by crying, find the support I need in true friends, and family. Accepting that these friends aren’t people to count on, or to confide in, and instead are persons you chit-chat with to pass the time. Eventually one can hope that they grow up, and handle manners differently. Until then, I just politely smile and walk away.

 

-Anonymous

"Those who mind don't matter. And those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Suess.

Some people don't realize how much their words affect other people's lives, whether they're the victim, suspect, or bystander. Millions of kids & teens every day deal with the problem of name calling and insults. But too many of them are scared to speak up for themselves. I've seen it in the halls, heard it from conversations, and even been the insulter. We don't realize how little things like "retarded", "hoe", and "fat" offend people.

When I was in 8th grade, I remember thinking that the whole world was against me. I was 14 and I was dating a 17 year old. Many people looked down upon it, but I didn't care. I was called names every day for at least 3 months. Every day I'd go home and cry myself to sleep. I even tried to kill myself. I know that's dramatic, but that's what words can do to you. I was so lost in the world. Eventually, things got worse. Someone made a "Hoes List" in the girl's bathroom and I was #1. I'll never forget reading in and breaking down into tears. I'd never even done anything with the boy, so I didn't understand how people could be so judgmental. Things were said on Facebook and all through the school. I wanted nothing more than to be accepted. I lost all my friends, and all respect from my friends' parents. Even after the boy and I broke up, rumors were spread, words were slurred, and people were hurt. I stayed home from school one day because I wanted to catch up on some sleep (with all the stress, it was impossible). I ended up having at least 4 panic attacks because I let other people's words bother me too much, they put me in the hospital for a while. I thought my life was over because everyone was against me. Now, about 6 months later, people still bring it up. And I'm in the same situation now, but not as severe. No one should be treated with such disrespect. I've finally learned that you have to put your best foot forward and tell yourself you're better than that, because you are. If it wasn't for God, I would have never made it through this.

So be careful what you say to people, you never know what they're going through or what it does to them.

-Lexi Nolen

I am something more. It took me years to realize it, but I am! When I was a freshman in high school the bullying started, and oh my goodness; when it rains, it pours! Things got worse than they have had in my junior year. I was in the hospital for about 2 months straight because no doctor could figure out what was wrong with me. Now that we look back and realize all that was going on and put the pieces together, every sickness I felt was stress-induced. Girls nowadays are incredibly vicious and they can say so many hurtful things. I was called just about every name in the book because I was friends with a "popular" guy and the girls at the school hated me for it. Everyday I'd literally be scared because there was a group of 7 girls predominately, and they were always together. But I learned one on one? They were just as scared as I was when it was all of them. They could find nothing to say when they were on their own. It got worse a few months later, when people found out that I wasn't for gay marriage in New York. I wasn't bashing homosexuals, or even saying anything rude about them, because I have friends and family that live in that lifestyle. But because I stood for what I believed in, I was told to go hang myself on a cross, kill myself, I was threatened to get jumped, and many other things. I was scared to leave my house. My Mom would cry every day when I had to go to school and be physically sick because she would never know if I was going to get hurt that day. But you know what? If you don't react, they DO get bored of it. I couldn't have done it without God, my family, and my very few true friends. Bottom line is, you're being noticed. Therefore you must be doing something right, or people wouldn't know who you were. Stay strong in you. Focus on the people who love you and you love them. Pray about it. I promise it'll help.

-Anonymous

I was always bullied throughout elementary, middle and high school because I was one of the "short" kids.  I was never able to handle it very well and had to transfer to a private school after my sophomore year in high school.  Although, the bullying didn't stop when I transferred, but the subject changed.  Instead of being bullied for my height I was bullied for the fact that I have a "bump" in the middle of my chest.  It infuriated me to the point of almost hitting one of the bullies.  Instead I went and learned how to meditate and learned to control my anger in a productive way.  I also learned how to laugh at myself.  My advice to anyone who is getting made fun of for something physical like their height or some physical "defect" is to learn how to laugh at yourself and to let the insults just slide off and not get to you in a personal way.

-G.D. Heller

Here is a video made just for you by Singer/Songwriter Ally Burnett! She want's you to know that you ARE NOT alone, you ARE something more, and no matter what other people say you have a beautiful life ahead of you. 

Learn more about Ally Burnett and what she is doing to put a stop to bullying:

Ally Burnett on Facebook

PureVolume

We're All The Same Music Video

My name is Kayla White. All throughout my junior high years, I was bullied. I was the black sheep, the outcast, and I was very different. People labeled me, and stereotyped me, all because I was not a clone like them. I strived to be unique and different, but the more I tried, the more I was picked on and bullied. People would call me a freak, purposely make inappropriate jokes, and even had a few kids tell me to go kill myself. I wore a lot of black, and I hung out with the underdogs. I listened to a lot of heavy metal music and screamo, and everyone criticized me for it. At the time, I was going through a really rough spot in my life. My parents were constantly fighting, and they were in the middle of a divorce. I was diagnosed with severe depression, and nobody at school knew about it. I would get cruel messages on my social networking sites, and mean notes during school. At the end of that year, I moved away to new school, where I thought it would be better. As soon as I started this new school, it was all the same as before. I was the new, shy, different girl, who had no new friends, and was scared. I got ridiculed a lot for being different, I would be at my locker and get my locker door slammed in my face by kids who thought it was funny. I slowly began to make new friends, and for a while the bullying stopped. But, I eventually became great friends with a girl who was lesbian. Then, the teasing started again. People don't know how to accept others for their differences, and we were both picked on by kids because everyone thought we were together, when we weren't. I have been called every name in the book by kids who thought that bullying was cool to do, just because I was different. Not long after, my father and step mom passed away in a car accident, and everyone at the school knew. I missed 3 weeks of school due to counseling, depression, and attempt of suicide. My doctors diagnosed me with ADD and post-traumatic stress disorder. I wanted to get better, but life was hard. Nobody knows how much bullying can really hurt, until they put themselves in others shoes. I came back to school, and got many apologies, and many prayers. I even got hugs from the people who bullied me before. Not long after, I had to change schools again, because of family issues. I slowly started to heal, and I am truly thankful for all of my real friends who stuck by me and supported me through out the whole time.

-Kayla White

I've struggled with bullying all my life that got progressively worse as I grew up. At the beginning, I was just ridiculed for bringing my stuffed dogs to school in second grade. The next year I was ridiculed for walking on my toes. The next year, I was called anorexic because I was skinny. The year after that they switched to bulimic. I was nicknamed "cereal box" and made fun of for my low weight every day. People think that you get made fun of for being fat and that skinny is a good thing, but I was criticized more for being really skinny than any of the overweight kids were for being overweight. I was told that my weight was disgusting. I was called ugly. I was called a nerd. I was always too afraid to speak up. It wasn't even just at school, kids in my neighborhood would say the exact same things to me as the kids in school. I had one girl on my bus telling me every day what she thought was wrong about the outfit I was wearing. I never told my family what was going on because I was too ashamed. I felt like I didn't measure up to everyone else. I had three older siblings who were all pretty popular and known for being good looking and athletic. I was known for just the opposite. I was told that boys would never like me, I had zero self esteem, and I felt horrible all the time. The comments that haunted me throughout my elementary and middle school days were nothing compared to my experience with bullying in high school.

My freshman year, I moved to a new town with all new people and had to make all new friends. It was hard. I still felt plagued by the insecurities I had been developing since grade two. I tried to ignore them, I even quickly made new friends. Through them I made even more friends, or at least, that was what I thought. I became friends with a few sophomore boys and their freshman friend who were particularly terrible. The sophomores pretended to like me. They would smile at me in the hallway and text me all the time. They told me I was pretty and that we should go out some time. The freshman, who attended a different school, made an attempt to warn me that the sophomores were lying to me, but the other boys told me he was just jealous. Eventually, they got tired of their little joke and decided to tell me that they thought I was hideous and walked like a duck and they wanted to push me down a flight of stairs. I was incredibly hurt because I had grown quite fond of the boys. It worsened all my insecurities. I couldn't walk without thinking about what they said. I couldn't look in the mirror without believing I was ugly. It was absolutely horrible. Every weekend the boys were together and they would all harass me, saying the same things over and over. They told me I was stupid and way too skinny as well. They would attempt to prank call me. I thought that if I said anything to an administrator, it would make things worse.

When I received a phone call from my brother one night that my father, who had been in the hospital for a week due to health complications, was most likely going to die, I was devastated. It was the beginning of April vacation and I knew the boys would be together so I begged them to leave me alone for the time being and even told them why. They still tried to prank call me. When my father died the following morning, I told them I was serious, that trying to prank call me was beyond wrong and to just leave me alone and they essentially did. They asked questions about my dad, but that didn't bother me. The worst things they did came a few days later. Someone made a website about one of the sophomore boys and a fake Facebook profile to post the link on. They assumed it was me and told everyone that I did it. I had people adding me on Facebook asking me why I would do something like that and I tried to tell everyone that I didn't, but it only worked with some people. They decided to retaliate and have the freshman boy make a website about me. The entire website compared me to a horse and made fun of me completely. In the family section was the most wrong thing I have ever seen to this day: a picture of a skeleton with the label "Sorry we couldn't find an old pic of her dad, so here's a more recent one". This was just five days after he died. I was devastated. I even added the fake Facebook and started yelling at the kid who made the site about the boy that caused the whole fiasco. When the real maker of the site about the boy was revealed, all I got from the three boys was a "thanks for trying to help and defend me, but I still don't like you" from the boy the site was about.

I didn't hear from these boys again until the summer. They decided it would be fun to prank me. It was just a normal, mildly entertaining prank call until they took it way too far. The freshman boy yelled "I have to go now, my dad just came to tell me to quiet down, but you wouldn't know anything about that because your dad’s dead" and then hung up. Again, I was devastated. They tried calling again and I ignored it so they left me a message in which the freshman boy sang "Daddy wasn't there he was never there to comfort me, because he's dead" and started to laugh before hanging up. I knew it was only him on the phone, so I texted the others asking why they would allow him to do it. They said he thought he was being funny, but they didn't, but weren't going to stop him. I tried to stick up for myself by telling the freshman boy to "go to hell", but he simply replied "Sorry, I don't want to go chill with your dad". I just didn't understand how people could be so cruel to each other. Here I was, being treated in such a morally wrong way by someone I had never even seen before or did anything to that was just trying to impress a few of his friends who had already bullied me enough. After these boys, I was still ridiculed for the same old things; I wasn't pretty enough, I didn't walk right, and I was just an all around freak. What changed in high school is that I began telling my friends what was going on and they supported and loved me completely.

I found comfort in my friends and music. I began attending local shows and meeting all sorts of new and wonderful people. All my new friends were always telling me how awesome and beautiful I was and still continue to do that now. I am currently a senior in high school and in a much better place than I had been in the past. Through being bullied, I became a much stronger person. I have the most amazing friends now. Music helped me a lot when I was upset about being bullied. It helped me in unspeakable ways. I felt like and still feel like music provides a voice to the voiceless. Bullying is a huge and terrible issue, but I learned a lot from it. I learned about forgiveness, for I have forgiven all my bullies for what they did. I have learned to open up and express my feelings and emotions instead of bottling them up. The biggest lesson I learned is that in defending yourself, you should never fight fire with fire. All it does is create a bigger fire. I learned not to be afraid of seeking help. I learned that it's okay to vent about how other people make you feel and that it feels really good to listen to someone else vent and help them find their own way. There is always someone out there who loves and cares about you. Everyone is beautiful in there own way. I now hold myself in such high regard. Bullies only have the power you give them. No matter how hard it is, you should always try your best to make sure you never let them see you sweat. Bullies bully for a reaction and typically stop when they don't get one. The second a situation gets out of hand you should seek help immediately. Always remember, we are all here for a reason. We are all beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful in our own ways. We all have flaws. True "perfection" lies within the strength to overcome "imperfection" and you are never, ever alone. 

-Jen