Published on 12, July, 2020
Caveat: this is my experience and I don't intend to speak for anyone else.
Bullying, which for me was 99% verbal, is always difficult to deal with but I don't know if the act itself is what bothers me the most.
It's the fact no one stuck up for me. I get it to an extent; if you see it going on (either online or in-person), you may not wish to get involved because then *you'll* get attacked.
But it leaves me feeling like everyone hates me, and like I deserved it. There may have been times where I did deserve it because no one close to me validated how I was feeling; I may have done something not worth defending but I could have done with someone defending me as a human being. I didn't (and don't) feel like it's worth it anymore, like I'm useless.
Just some thoughts.
I was bullied at school. I was pale, had a natural deep voice, wore gloves all the time because of skin sensitivity and my mum was mentally ill so I was a prime target for bullies to go for.
Bullying can have an overwhelming negatively impact on a person and in later life can cause things like depression, social anxiety, PTSD and more. When someone bullies they don't think about how it might affect the person they are bullying, then again they often have their own problems already, hence they are bullying.
On one day in particular the bullying went from verbal to physical. It was unexpected and just escalated. I hadn't said anything, I always stayed silent and waited for the insults to pass but on this day they physically attacked me, hitting and pulling my hair. There were several other girls nearby, only one actually moved in to help and she ended up with a bleeding nose and lip.
After that day I now knew why no one before had stepped in to help me when they fired insults. I felt so sorry for that girl and I felt even more ashamed because I felt like it was all my fault.
Online I think people are scared of being attacked and losing their popularity status if they help out. I don't do social media anymore though. Way, way too toxic an environment.
I'm sorry you've been bullied. It's really unfair and people do care about you it's just very few are willing to get involved for different reasons.
I hope you're ok x
Having been bullied myself and having been told that I deserved it and it was a punishment from God, that I attracted and invited this behaviour to myself by my own actions, I really feel very strongly about this issue - frankly, in many ways, bullying is no different from rape or sexual assault, rape of the mind - I firmly believe and maintain that bullying is a criminal matter and MUST ALWAYS have police involvement in ALL cases right from the start, where bullying needs to become a specific criminal offence, regardless of the ages of victims and perpetrators and in the case of child bullying, the parents of the bullies must face arrest and criminal prosecution and the victims need to be taken to a special suite similar to rape victims to gather criminal evidence - the most serious crime of bullying is so severe in its impact on victims that suspects must always be remanded in custody without bail ever being permitted before a jury trial and the sentence imposed on conviction by a court should be life imprisonment without parole and with zero credit for time served, no early release for good behaviour - this is an issue in which we have to take a very hardline, zero tolerance and zero patience approach to because of the devastating effect that it has on people’s lives, even with counselling and therapy, as a person who has been bullied is mentally scarred for life and also makes any pre-existing conditions far worse and far more difficult to deal with - the devastating effects of bullying on mental health are well known and with good reason and it is a cancer in our society that utterly destroys people’s lives that must be rooted out of our society - if we claim to be a supposedly civilised society governed by the moral law of God, how can we possibly take any other approach other than one that is resolute, utterly determined and uncompromising in removing the cancer of bullying from our midst