I viewed some of Amanda's pictures and she seemed like a happy normal teenage girl in all of them for the most part. Of course we all know that cheerful smiles and cute posses can mask the pain that someone is going through. Cummings was heavily bullied in school and even had her possessions stolen from her by her bullies. I also understand that there was some cyber bullying action going on on facebook as well. I can no express how angry I get when I read articles about teens that kill themselves. I myself was heavily bullied in 10th and 12th grade. I went to high school in a very rural area both of these years and of course, the fact that I was a hispanic, alt. girl pretty much meant that I was a prime candidate for ridicule. Every day in class i was subjected to some sort of harassment. Girls would throw paper at me. people would constantly remind me how ugly I was, one girl in my biology class even called me a retard, I honestly think she thought I was mentally ill. That hurt me the most. I would run to my principle and teachers and tell them that I was being bullied but of course none of them every really cared. I always got the same response " Well I will talk to so and so, call them down to my office and talk to them about this issue". All that would ever happen after that is that the person would get a "stern: talking to and then they were told to never do it again. Of course after they were sent to the office the bullying became worse because then they had a reason to be angry with me. I got them in trouble, I was a snitch, so now there would be no mercy for me.
I eventually started to abuse nyquil because I wanted to find away to forget about things for a while. Everytime someone at school would hurt me I would come home and drink a cup and a half of it and sleep until the next day would come. I just wanted to die and I felt like if I did no one would miss me, not even the boyfriend that I had at the time. I think the most hurtful thing was that my boyfriend and my friends rarely if ever stuck up for me. The only time someone would stick up for me was when I would start to cry in class. That was the most embarrassing part, is when people made me cry. I often started to pretend I was sick so that I would not have to go to school. My mom noticed that I would often come home crying. She ended up calling the principle and of course, he did not care much at all. But in 12th grade he all of a sudden started to care.. not towards my benefit however....
Sadly no major action ever takes place until one of the two things happens, the child that was being bullied takes their life OR the child that was being bullied ends up taking a gun to school and shooting all of their bullies. Then bullying becomes an issue. Only after it is too late to do anything about it. When I was in 12th and 10th grade I ended up fighting two of my bullies. I did not get in trouble for the first fight but my senior year I ended up getting suspended for a whole week. I was busted in the middle of that fight, a very large office assistant grabbed me by my arm, dragged me into the principles office and began to tell everyone that I violently attacked another student. I was crying at this point. I cried so much that I honestly thought I was going to throw up. The principle looked at me in disgust. I sat in the chair in front of his desk and was screaming and crying and he just gave me a cold stare. As if he was saying I DO NOT CARE. He automatically started to put the blame on me and told me that my actions were inexcusable. The other girl did not even get sent to the office and here I sit, getting written up a suspension letter for 7 days plus saturday school. I was automatically sent to in school suspension and held there the whole day until the end of the day when my parents had to come pick me up because I was not allowed to ride the bus home. My parents were furious, not with me though, they were furious with the school administrators. My parents wanted to know why they were notified at the end of the day about this issue when it had happened first thing in the morning. My assistant principles excuse? "We had a pep rally today and things have been very busy around the school because of it" She began to tell my parents what happened, she told them that I tried to fight a teacher when he was restraining me which was not true, He claimed that I kicked him on purpose. Again not true. My dad asked what had caused the fight. I told him that the girl had thrown a hard object at the back of my head. My dad then told the principle that if that would have happened to him he would have punched someone's lights out as well. However the fact that I fought back was not seen as self defense, Apparently schools like to teach that all forms of violence are bad, even when it is in self defense. So basically what we are teaching kids is that if someone walks into your house with a gun and starts shooting at you, you should just stand there and await death instead of going to the closet and grabbing your shotgun and firing back. Anyways to make a long story short, in the end I was seen as the "bully" and the other girl walked away scott free without any kind of disciplinary action what so ever. And as far as my "punishment" goes, being suspended for 7 days was what I wanted anyways, what kid doesn't want to stay home and listen to music all day long and not have to go to school to get picked on some more?
I think the worst form of bullying would be the kind that goes on online. Cyberbullying is a mass form of bullying and everyone on the internet can feel free to chime in. I myself have been a victim of this form of bullying. I especially remember this one time on myspace (back when people still used myspace) when a girl that bullied me wrote a blog post about me. She told everyone that I was "a dirty Indian and that I needed to go back to the country I cam from because I was nasty". One I am not indian, two I am not dirty, and three I was born in America. Had I seen something like this written about me today I would just shake it off an not care and find it funny. However when you are a teenager you re act to things very differently. I remember going to my room and crying the whole entire night. I cried until I started to feel sick. I will never forget that night even till this day. Cyberbullying is very hard to control even thought there have been laws passed that try to prevent and stop it from happening.
I think the worst part about bullying is the fact that the bullies often times do not know how much they are damaging a person. Till this very day I still feel worthless and ugly because of what people told me in 10th grade. Bullying will give someone self esteem issues for the rest of their life. Everyone likes to go by the old adage "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" but this is simply not true. Words do hurt. Sometimes they even hurt more than psychical damages. I feel like I should somehow become a part of the anti bullying movement but I am not exactly sure how I can help. I am not a famous person and most of the time people do not even care about what I have to say.
I just want to leave a message out to any teens that are going through this right now before I end this post. I want you to realize that half the time bullies are extremely jealous of you. It's either because you are smarter than them, prettier than them. or they just feel threatened by you because of their own insecurities. No one should ever make you feel like you are less of a person because your nose is not the perfect size, or because your body is not "perfect" or because you are from a different ethnic background than they are. If you ever feel like killing yourself please just do not do it. Take a movement to realize what taking your life will do to not only you, but your family and your friends. Things do get better, sometimes it takes a while but they do! If you kill yourself you will never get to find that out. you will hurt your family and you will hurt your friends because they will always carry around the guilt of your suicide. School only lasts for so long and then its over with and people move on into the real world. I have actually had high school bullies come up to me in college and apologize for treating me the way they did. You would be surprised how many people actually feel remorse for being bullies. Often times kids only bully other kids because their friends all gang up on one person and they do not want to feel like they are being left out and they want to keep their friends so badly that they will do anything to ensure that they themselves do not become the outcast in school.
Hopefully one day a genuine solution will be found for all of this. I know we can never stop kids from bullying each other but we can prevent suicides if we just pay attention to the warning signs and intervene before it is too late.
This is a picture of the 15 year old girl who took her life. Today on facebook I am making her picture my profile picture in memorial of her life and of this tragic event.
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