BULLIED

Submission 897

Bullying is a very hard thing to go through. Unfortunately, I went through it from the age of 7-17. It stopped last year.

It all started when I was online, and I was playing a virtual game with avatars and you could chat with other people. I was dancing in a little nightclub and I remember an avatar coming up to me and saying hello.

"Hello." I said back. Seeing as I was only a 7 year old, I knew only very little about cyber-bullying.

A few months went by and I had become friends with this person. Let's just call him 'Bully1' as there were many more. So, I had been speaking to Bully1 for quite some time now and he had been asking me some personal details: "Where Do You Live? How Old Are You? What's Your Real Name? Can I Have Your Number? Let's Meet Up!"

I asked my mom about this, and she hadn't known I had been speaking to this guy. So, we rang the police. It turns out that the little boy I had been speaking to was actually a 40 year old divorced man.

A year later, I was eight. I was in school and I walked in with my new trainers on that flashed. People looked at them and laughed. I thought they were amazing. One person (Bully2) walked over to me and pushed me on the floor, saying things like "you're poor! You're dumb!"

Obviously, as an eight year old, I was offended by this. I didn't tell anyone, though, because my parents wouldn't do anything about it.

A few years went by and on my 11th birthday, it all stopped. At least I thought it had. For my party, I didn't have friends over, I didn't have birthday cake. My family wasn't even around. I just sat alone, by the fireplace.

The next day, people looked at me and shouted at me. My friend came up to me and beat me up. She was saying that I knew what I had done. But I didn't. I didn't do anything to her.

It continued.

Then when I was thirteen, I was on my phone, a Facebook notification popped up. It was from a random person I don't know. We'll call them Bully3. I didn't even know which gender it was. The only thing I recognised was the profile picture. It was a picture of boobs labelled MyName's Boobs.

I was horrified. I didn't flash anyone. All my friends were following it and posting comments about me. So were all the people who have bullied me before. They were posting nudes and saying they were mine. I was terrified.

This kept going on. I kept keeping it to myself. I told no one.

March 17th, 2014. The day it all stopped. The day I had hope. The Facebook page was taken down, all "my nudes" were gone. Everyone stopped. I felt like I had a huge weight had dropped off my shoulders.

I had hope.

And if you're a victim, you have hope too.

ADVICE: Don't do what I did. Don't keep it to yourself. Tell someone who you trust.