Growing up we are taught to be kind to others and if you don't have anything nice to say nothing at all--however, we are not taught the impact it has on others if we choose to not follow our parents advice.
I remember stall doors being pushed open on me, girls leaving me sitting alone without anyone to eat with at lunch, no one to dress up with at homecoming, and dreading coming to school because of what my classmates may do next to me. I was bullied. I hated high school and I hated middle school. The impact this had on my mental health was significant while the perpetrators probably don't even remember their actions.
No one knows what is going on when a kid comes home from school. The bullies do not know the issues that the victims are dealing with in addition to the bullying itself. Coming home I could not get out of bed. I was going through my own struggles at home and the isolation and horrible treatment I was dealing with at school only made things worse.
The day I decided to switch schools was the day that someone threw a book at my head when I was studying in the library and called me the spawn of Satan. Looking back I cannot help but laugh because of how ridiculous it was, but at the time, that was my breaking point.
I have realized the bully becomes numb to the fact that the victim is a person. The victims of bullying become an object and a human punching bag. The competition to gain popularity, get a good laugh, and feel good about themselves comes from the mistreatment of the victim. As the bullying continues, the humanity of the victim seems to slip away completely in the mind of the perpetrator. Scary enough, the bully seems to gain content overtime unable to recognize the suffering and long term mental trauma that is occurring to their victim.
The name calling, rumors and other forms of bullying definitely contributed to my struggle with depression and anxiety. I constantly feel nervous at first around a group of people in a fight or flight response resulting from the PTSD I have from the actions of my tormentors.
My goal here is to not to explain my story--however, to use my story as an example of the mental affects that humans can easily cause my simply not being kind to one another. It costs nothing to be kind to another while it takes so much effort to hurt someone else. Think before you speak because you never know what is happening to someone else behind closed doors.
