Some people had a great high school experience. But there are others who had a bad high school experience. Those who had a good high school experience say it was great because they had a lot of friends and were engaged in extra curricular activities like sports. But those who struggled in high school, found it difficult because they didn't like the social dynamics, or they didn’t like there teachers. Or maybe, like me, they didn’t like the fact that bullies were around every corner and had to experience their constant judgement.
I was a victim of bullying when I was in high school and It really affected me. It affected me so much that I had this inner fear when I first entered college.
The bullying began when I was in elementary school and continued into middle school, but it didn't hit its peak until I reached high school. It started when I was a freshmen in high school. There were two guys in my biology class, and they started by calling me ugly and continued to do so for a few days, and then, it turned into a few weeks. The next thing I remember, they started to call me fat. I told my teacher about the guys calling me names, and all she said was "ignore it." I really tried to ignoring them, but the insults and name calling continued. The bullies continued to throw insults my way when one of the guys or both said, "no one will ever like you or ever want to date you." I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time, but it still hurt when they said that made the cruel assumption that no guy would ever like me or ever want to date me. At the time, I wouldn't have minded a boyfriend, but I was okay with waiting for the right person and the right time. The problem was I had starting to believe the bullies. I wondered to myself, how will any guy every like me? And soon, all the insults started to weigh me down. The insults of fat and ugly, became apart of my everyday thinking.
Soon a few months had passed and the bullying still continued. One of the bullies said, “Why don’t you kill yourself already?” This hurt me. And if I'm honest I actually thought about killing myself at the time. But the idea soon dimmed because I wondered about the impact it would have if I did. I wondered how my friends and family would react or what they would think if I let the bullies words become apart of my reality. Since this experience, I've told my friends about the incidents, and they struggled to believe what those guys said to me was true. The reason they struggled with the words the bullies had used to belittle me was because they knew and continue to know that I am beautiful. I am not fat or ugly. And in that moment, I knew my friends were there for me no matter what. So, from that day on I had decided to ignore the guys. Even though it wouldn’t make them stop calling me names or saying more mean things to me, I knew that I was beautiful and that was enough for now.
But, I continued to struggle with being bullied. During my sophomore year of high school, there was one guy who was "part of my group of friends." But, truthfully, he wasn’t my friend, but he was still part of the group. The reason he wasn’t my friend was because I didn’t trust him, and he wasn’t a good friend to me. He wasn’t a good friend because he was trying to advise me to comprise my values to make guys like me more, by having me dress inappropriately. I had never been the kind of girl who would do that and it was because I didn’t like how 50% of my high school actually did this to attract the opposite gender. I guess there was a silver lining to this school year. The two guys who had bullied me the year before decided to give up on picking on me when, because I ignored them.
To tell you the truth, the bullying still continued during my junior year of high school. One day, the same guy was still trying to give me advice. But, I had learned from the year before and I didn’t take it because he was only trying to control my life. He was trying to control one of my guy friends’ lives like who to date or who not to date, and what to wear. My guy friend didn’t like how that guy was trying to control his life. One of my friends who were girls was threatened by him because she and the guy (who picked on me) had a fight, and then he threatened to shoot her. I was scared when she told me and my other friends that. My friend reported him immediately, thank God. The guy was suspended from my high school and eventually expelled. I was thankful for that. I thought I had finally left my bullies in the past, but I learned that wasn't the case.
A few months later is when the nightmares began. I had nightmares about that guy for months about him going after me, to kill me. Whenever I went to school, I got scared because I kept thinking what if my nightmares came true. I told my friends about that, and my guy friends said that they would protect me and wouldn’t let anything happened to me.
But, the nightmares still continued during my senior year of high school. I saw the guy during my homecoming dance, and I was really scared because I thought my nightmare would come true. My friends and I reported it to the police that worked at my high school. The police officer got mad, but he didn’t do anything about it. The guy also attended my high school graduation. My friends and I got confused because we thought he wasn’t supposed to graduate with us. But, luckily, it was the last time I ever saw him and my nightmare was finally gone from my life.
The impact bullying had on me in high school followed me to college. You see, I was afraid to tell my friends or other people about it because I thought they might judge me or not believe me when I explained my high school experience. The impact continued when I had trouble making friends. I struggled to make friends because I had trust issues after my bullying experience in high school. My roommate freshman year was also bullied and I thought I had finally found someone to relate to. She claimed that she was one of my best friends, but it turned out she wasn’t. She was a nice girl after I met her, but after she started dating her boyfriend at the time, everything changed. She kept telling me that I wasn’t allowed to go to the library to study because she said it was for losers. She also told me I had no friends because she claimed all my friends as her own and told me I wasn’t allowed to be friends with them because they "belonged" to her. What she didn’t understand was I had the right to be friends with whoever I wanted to be, and some of my friends became my friends before they met her. My roommate also said that no guy would ever date me. That really hurt me because it reminded me of when I was bullied by the two guys in high school. Another thing she did was she made me pay for everything that she wanted to buy when she said that she had no money, but she had money in her wallet. She was trying to take over my life since the day I met her. She left after the fall semester, and I was grateful for that. But, after she left, I got really lonely because she had gotten into my head. I was so lonely that I stopped being friends with her for a while, but soon I thought she changed, so I gave her another chance.
During my sophomore year of college, she came to visit me and my boyfriend with her boyfriend. They kept giving me and my boyfriend advice about relationships and all of that stuff. I didn't mind the advice, but I wasn't quite sure she was the person to take advice from. A few months after that, I didn’t talk to her as much because it became apparent that she hadn't changed. She was still the same person as she was when she was my roommate, but she still contacted me. When she said that my boyfriend and I would break up, it was the last straw and I blocked her from every social media account I have.
Being bullied is a wound I will always carry with me. I may have been awful, but there are lessons I have gained from my experience with bullying. For example, I learned, not everybody wants to be your friend. Not everybody will think that you’re cool. But the most important thing I learned was, no one should be able to have control over your life. I learned to count on my true friends and have trust in them. Also, I learned that I can take my passion and my experience with bullying and turn it into something to inspire others. You see, I want to be a writer. So, one day I’m going to write a book based on my bullying experience because I want people to know what I went through, and I want bullying to become apart of this worlds past. I want to dedicate the book to all victims of bullying who survived it and also to those who are still going through it.
When someone is being bullied, stand up for them. Don’t leave them hanging and waiting for someone to take action. They need someone to give them courage and let them know that they’re not alone.
