I am writing this blog entry after the events that happened in my country which led to the death of a boy, and bullying might be the cause of the killing.
Sometimes when bullied a victim will feel so cornered that it will lead to a physical fight and it ended with the one kid stabbing the other one to death. Settling bullying with violence is not the way but I pity all the parties involved in this tragedy: the dead boy, the one who stabbed him and their families. Saying that is served him right is not the way and it makes you a bit of a bully too.
I was mercilessly bullied in high school for four years. They didn't like the good grades I got, they didn't like the way that I looked or acted and told me day in and day out I should just kill myself. I would be beaten with books in class, but the thing that hurt me the most is when the teacher was looking at me while I was being beaten and wouldn't say a word. These people also terrorised some teachers of mine, just because they looked like pushovers.
I hated going to sleep because that means the next day will be another school day. Sometimes I cursed at myself for waking up the next day, if only I died it would have been better.
Then in my last year I snapped. During gym class one of my bullies kept tackling me with a hockey stick and slammed my head into the wall when the teacher wasn't looking. The others just laughed. That moment in the changing room something broke inside me. Those four years of suffering came out in a massive wave of anger and hate. Next class up was History and I just walked in the room and threw down my bag and started punching the guy on his face. My teacher pulled me off him and sent us both to the principal's office.
I was sitting in the hallway, fuming mad, and he was sitting next to me bawling his eyes out. The principle found out what has been going on and the bully cried that he did not knew what kind of effect it had on me...No shit Sherlock.
It ended there, my high school terror, after four years. My trust in people was broken, even if I didn't get bullied after that in school I still expected it to happen. Making friends was hard, trusting people was tough.
But there the tragedy did not end because five years ago a co-worker of mine was being bullied by others and I stood up for her because I couldn't take it. I was angry that people did not change even when grown up. In the end they started to target me and I because I did not fix the wounds I had from the past, I collapsed. It ended up with me being on sick-pay for a year with burn-out and depression.
I just lied on my bed and wished I did not wake up again the next day because that meant I had to go to the office again. I stopped eating and taking care of myself. I just wanted to vanish. I left my job with more broken trust and hurt and fell into addiction to be able to feel anything. I did not do substance-abuse but my fear was that one day if I could no longer hide away the pain I would drink or drug myself to death.
Then I went into therapy, intensive therapy. Just talking to a psychologist did not work. I needed my feelings out without exploding in massive anger and rage. The drama therapy I received helped me a lot, it helped my to cope with my anger and distrust, it helped me voice the pain I have felt for over twenty. And I finally started to see that I was okay, okay to be on this earth as a person. That it is not wrong to fight for things that you feel that is wrong. Trust grew in me again, I started reaching out to my family and friends again who I pushed away so often in the past.
And then it happened again.
Someone being targeted by people at the work floor, they did not do it in the person's face but behind their backs and I was sick and tired of it. I thought, I hated it when it happened to me, I don't want it to happen with another person.
But this time I was prepared, I had training on how to handle my emotions and I called those people out on how black they were in their hearts and souls on doing this to someone. And I was stronger in the fight. I won, the bullies hated me for it, but I did not care. Because I won my personal battle in this.
The problem is that bullying does not end in school, it can continue when you are an adult. Having bully-protocols at school does not work either because they become active after it happened. Parents and schools need to be pro-active towards bullying and point out to the kids what kind of effect bullying has on people, because the scarring is a long-term problem. We need to act to prevent tragedies like the school stabbing of last week from ever happening again. I know it is a long shot but the attitude of us as caretakers has to change.
