I was bullied in fifth grade.
Every day for most of the school year, this group of 5 girls would surround me during recess and punch me, pull my hair, pinch me, and tell me what a horrible person I was. I was new to the school, so I felt alone, vulnerable, and afraid.
Finally, in tears, I gathered my courage and told my mom about it. I remember feeling embarrassed, thinking I must have done something horrible to bring this on myself.
My mother was great! She explained to me that I was not to blame, that the bullies were the ones in the wrong.
She told me to look in the mirror, and that what I saw there was a wonderful person who was strong. She said that the girls who were picking on me probably saw that strength and were intimidated, that that was why they were being bullies. They were afraid of me!
She then went on to say that those horrible girls, the ones who tortured me on a daily basis, probably really wanted to be my friends, but didn’t know how.
That was a long time ago. I cannot remember exactly what I said, or what I did. What I do know is that my view of the girls changed and my attitude toward them changed right along with it. They lost their power over me.
Since I no longer reacted like a victim they gradually lost interest in me and began to leave me alone. So my mom was right, I was a strong girl who could handle it. But she was wrong, the girls never became my friends.
Or so I thought until a couple of years later. We had a large group of new students move into our school, and for whatever reason several of them decided I was the perfect person to bully.
Before I had a chance to react to these new attacks I found myself surrounded by the very same girls who had once been my tormentors.
Only this time, they were there to protect me.
There is a lesson to be learned here while some are cases in which bullies are being malicious for the sake of being malicious, other times they are being malicious simply because they do not communicate their feelings. Many children at primary school and high school assume that time the parents that they are being bullied is a sign of weakness. However it is something that needs to be sorted out as can be crushing to think that your horrible person for no reason. Great post keep em coming!
Sometimes I do wonder the motives for why people are evil to one and other, especially during the high school period when teens should be far more concerned with their work and making valuable decisions that will influence the rest of their lives. Bullying in any form is just petty, and people who are being bullied deserve to know that they are so much better than them regardless of what they might say.
It seems like there are many cases where people bully others simply out of a lack of understanding as to how to show their true feelings. In my case my current best friend used to bully me back in high school, and he remained one of my biggest enemies until he opened up to me about how he really felt. He actually thought that we were just messing around, and he felt sincerely sorry for all of the times that he made my life so miserable in the past. It's interesting how things can turn out!
Honestly, the confusion between bullying and "just messing around" is the reason I named my latest book Gray Zone. A lot of people, especially young ones, can't see the difference. They don't know when it stops being all good fun and turns into torture.
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