A Loser's Thoughts on Life

Bullies

Unfortunately, I think bullies are a part of life that everyone has to deal with at some point. Have I been bullied? Yeah, I guess. Have I bullied other people? Yeah, I guess.

Basically, I thankfully have not had to experience a lot of bullying in my life. I went to a fairly small Catholic school where everyone knew everyone since kindergarten. But just because we had known each other for like 10 years, that didn't stop us from being mean to each other.

At one point, my class was convinced we should have our own reality show. I would tell you what we wanted to name it but then I would be revealing what school I went to and that would be a stupid thing to do online! So I will just let you imagine.

My experience with bullying was more me standing by witnessing this one girl who I thought was my best friend bully everyone around me and then she moved away. So that's good. But I regret the way that I handled that situation.

Should I tell the story? Maybe I'll just summarize it.

So yeah there was this girl and she basically decided that she hated this other girl in my class and that she wanted to be my only friend. So she started isolating me from the rest of my friends and just being overall really rude to them. And if you know me, then you know that if you mess with my friends then I will mess you up. But I was so oblivious during this whole situation! I hate looking back on it and I hate myself.

Anyways. In the end, I was finally able to realize what this girl was up to and I began to isolate myself from her. However, for some reason the teachers did not seem to understand what was going on and they sort of labelled me as being the bully in this whole situation and I had to do all these like I don't even know what you would call them. Sort of like counselling sessions with my teacher and the other girls in my class..? I know, my school was weird.

sabrinademelo talks more about this in her rant book ;)

And then the girl moved away. And all was well!

So that's the story! I know, the ending kind of sucked but that's the way that happened.

Looking back on the situation, I regret the way my 11 year old self handled it. The girl might have been rude and a bully, but she had some serious deep-rooted issues that I should have tried to help her deal with instead of just completely cutting her out of my life.

I think the lesson that is to be learned from this is that you always need to remember that you don't know what people are going through. I didn't know what this girl was dealing with at home, online, with her family... nothing. Maybe if I did know I would have treated her differently.

People are mean to others because of a lack of self-confidence or because they feel powerless. That doesn't make it acceptable, but it does change the way people deal with it. In my case, I think I should have told my school youth counsellor about this girl and what was going on much earlier than I ultimately did.

What have your experiences with bullying been? Were you the bully in the situation? It's okay to admit it, I know I can think of multiple occasions where I acted like a bully and I obviously regret all of those decisions.

Have a great day everybody!

xoxo Emmalynn