Bullies.

Many hugs... I really can't say much more. I was the one that was too weird to associate with in any way- cause my weirdness might rub off or something. And bullies still P*ss me off and seeing it puts me into a right, frothing, furious, state that scares most humans around me. Seriously, I want to go all Red-Cap on them.

wow. i just don't know what to say accept of course that i agree wholeheartedly. that is so sad.

Amen.

I wasn't poor. But I was bullied. I remember very clearly the near drowning I received in high school and the numerous beatings throughout grade school and high school. I don't know that the namecalling and humiliation weren't worse. All because I was easily picked on, sensitive, and excelled at school.

I got better though.

The most embarrassing thing to me was going to a drive-up window when I was back in town after college. Had a very nice job, dressed well. Doing work that was reasonable and entertaining. I saw the person in the window and recognized her. It was one of the people that had tormented me in grade school because I was smart. I've been told by some people that they would have felt vindicated or like they'd got one up on the person. I was just embarrassed. Never figured out why I couldn't feel some sort of gloat over her...it just felt sad and sick. *shrug*

This is so sad - I really have no words. I can't say I was bullied much as a kid, but enough to remember the helplessness it engenders. It's too bad that these days we glorify bullies and give them "news" shows.

As a librarian, I want to give you a big hug. (Unofficially, I would like to hunt those people down and grind them into the dirt.) Maybe we can stop more people from going through this.

I was the youngest in my family, so I learned at an early age to scream and defend myself. And to take no prisoners. I had problems with folks picking on me because I read so much, but, they only did it once, or suffered the wrath of me. I could give a rabid wolverine tips.

::tight hugs:: I endured something very similar to what you did, sweetie. The fact that a girl was driven to suicide over it has been haunting me for weeks, not the least because my own experience with bullying was the one time in my life I ever considered anything that extreme. We need to fix this.

I got picked on some, but my two older sisters and I were like the three Furies. Middle sis would just beat the crap out of the bullies...in high school a football player stuck her with a straight pin as she was walking down the hall and she knocked him out cold. I would outsmart them and publicly humiliate them. Older sis is a lot like Julia Sugarbaker. She can conquer you with sheer eloquence and force of personality.

It mattered a lot for me that I had older role models so I knew it was possible, and even got coaching. "When you hit someone, put all your weight behind it"...Middle Sister's words of wisdom. It also mattered that my parents' response when told I was fighting in school was, "What did they do to provoke her?" But, frankly, I got into a good bit of trouble in middle school for my street fightin' ways, and came in for some extra harassment. It's not always true that if you fight back valiantly they will respect you; sometimes they just punish you for it more. Not every situation can be conquered, as you say, and not everyone has someone handy to stand up for them in the moment; that's why it's important for all of us to do it.

Sometimes, you can't fight back, you can't stand up for yourself like the adults tell you to, and the bullies. Just. Win.

Yes they do and it hurts.

But your best revenge is living well and you are.

*hug*

Yes, this.

My mother taught, and still does, at the grade-school I attended, and frequently invites me to come over: see the new library, see how the convent and parish hall have been renovated, let her show off her classroom, talk to the teachers who remember me. I don't know how to tell her that just being on the schoolgrounds makes me physically ill, though I know how much it disappoints her that I don't come.

My older cousin, four years ahead of me, "made up for" being overweight and the daughter of a single mother by being outgoing and a class clown. My younger brother broke all the grade-curves, but was accepted because he was happy to help his classmates after school. My younger sister was athletic and not afraid to shout down anyone who crossed her. Me? I was shy and lived in my books. Boys were not my thing; learning was. I couldn't stand that I was expected to pretend to be stupid, so I threw myself into my classes; the week I won both the school Spelling and Geography Bee, several boys tried to molest me because I was a girl and dared to try and "play smart." I loathed P.E. so much that I was always the first in and out the locker room, changing at apparently abnormal speeds, prompting several girls to start trying to steal my gym bag so that I would have no uniform to change back into, which they wanted to hand over to the popular boys as an offering. I wasn't a cheerleader or an athlete. I wouldn't let people cheat off my tests or homework. We were a small, tight-knit community; my mother was a well-known teacher, my aunt the PTO president, my maternal grandfather a popular deacon at the attached church, and my father the Scout leader. So everyone knew me, but no one wanted to be around me unless they wanted help on their homework or projects; they avoided me, but they had to play nice in front of teachers (which made me think I'd be safe; in fifth grade, I was publicly accused of being a lesbian because I preferred to hide in Sister Christine's classroom during recess, rather than be outside). The other teachers' kids, too, were no consolation: they wanted so badly to fit in, themselves, that they were happy to join in (one even tried to suffocate me by putting a plastic jump-rope around my neck, and very nearly succeeded). My family wasn't poor, but we were a lot less stable in our middle-class-ness, which made my hand-me-down uniforms (the norm at our school, where your entire family attended) and smaller lunches easy to mock. The one boy a year ahead who had a crush on me (I was 12, he was 13) was tormented even by one of the teachers. One girl, who transferred in when we were in sixth grade, was nice to me -- which started such a backlash against her that she transferred back out at the end of the year. I was elected Secretary of the school's student council, but had no power or illusions because I'd been told I was voted in only because kids were "scared of your mom. We thought it'd be funny to see how far you can fall." Everyone knew what was going on, but no one said anything. Most of the teachers just looked the other way.

My mother never knew, and as far as I can tell, I'll never enlighten her. What makes the feeling worse is that a lot of those kids stayed in the area, and when they see my mom, they always ask to be remembered to me..."We always had such fun in school together!"

I wish I could hug you.

AngelVixen :-)

But...if you don't tell her how will she help the kids that are being bullied now in her school? This isn't meant to be accusatory...undoubtedly I don't know the whole story. But if it is still happening there...what then?

Lola

Vicky read the article about Phoebe. we haven't talked about it. It's one of the few forbidden subjects around here. Vicky loved the move to Richmond Hill because it got her out of a situation that we thought had been fixed. Turns out it hadn't. She thinks there should be very severe penalties for bullies. The zero tolererance that the school boards talk about up here is for the birds. It doesn't even begin to work. I can't even be cranky.

Amen, sister. What people don't seem to understand is how this stuff stays with you and colors your adult experiences. Enough of it can cripple your personality--more than enough, obviously, can cut short your life.

Here via a friend's link on Twitter. Thank you for sharing this, and to you and all the others working to bring it further into the open that this crap has GOT to stop.

And I admit a part of me curled up and shuddered, imagining how much harder my childhood would have been if I'd lost the library privileges I had, since books were my earliest escape.

And my scars?

At 31 I still freak out after most social situations where I've talked to people that are more 'normal' seeming than me, because I'm terrified that I said things that will be used against me, or that any niceness and politeness shown is a fraudulent kind that will result in a big practical joke wherein I'm told as punchline how awful I am- like all the giggling phone calls I got in my youth where so-and-so HONESTLY wanted me to meet them somewhere because they secretly liked me and were sorry.

And public lavatories can freak me out with the graffiti because I fear I'll find things written about me. Even in places I'm just passing through, where no one actually knows me.

25 years later, I can still quote some of the graffiti from the 400 wing bathroom in my HS verbatim.

It's so easy to say "you are not alone," because we certainly aren't alone in our experiences...but those words come with a bitter, bitter irony, because in the moment in which it happens, we are, each of us, UTTERLY alone.

I know I didn't have it as bad as many. I went to more genteel schools, I guess, as I was never physically injured or seriously abused, and I did, thanks mainly to band, chorus, and theater in high school, have people I got along with. (Only one truly close friend, but he's still my friend today.) And as an adult, I function pretty well, thanks.

But emotionally, I know the drill. I know the sneering, the name calling, the shoves in the hallway that no teacher sees. I know the rage, the feeling of helplessness, the certainty of never belonging. I know the casual cruelty of which children are capable. (The "prom" episode of Buffy still makes me tear up Every Damn Time, and the why of that is summarized by Giles' comment: "I had no idea that children en masse could be gracious." Would that I had ever experienced such grace.)

I loathe and despise bullying, and those words seem somehow insufficient. Even in fiction, bullying characters are a huge turnoff for me, and have dimmed my enjoyment of things my friends have liked. (A goodly part of my lukewarm reaction to Glee can be attributed to Sue Sylvester. I find just watching her to be actively unpleasant.)

I hope those responsible for Phoebe's suicide are punished, and severely. And I hope with all my heart that this serves as a wake up call, that schools and parents, even more than children, learn that they have a responsibility to make it clear that bullying is a serious matter.

But I find it hard to be optimistic. After all, we didn't, as a society, learn enough from Columbine to save Phoebe's life.

I'm not a YA author. But if there's ever anything I personally can do to help prevent even one of these tragedies, I want to know about it.

"my lukewarm reaction to Glee can be attributed to Sue Sylvester. I find just watching her to be actively unpleasant."
This. I really love parts of the show, but she and the Cheerios set my teeth on edge every time and make it very hard to watch.

I was one of the kids the other kids locked into lockers.

They put gridlore in the trophy cabinet.

Something that really, truly puzzles me to this day was that I was teased for reading. As in: "Ha, ha, look at Joanna with all her fiction books! Look at her sitting alone at lunch reading! What a bookworm!"

The bullying I received in middle school (junior high) was purely emotional. Girls made fun of my limp, the way cerebral palsy affected my left arm and leg. Girls made fun of the way I'd stand awkwardly and hug myself. It got to the point where I'd run off crying and was unable to explain why the gym teachers let me go to the weight room during sports, why I was allowed to walk the mile instead of run.
One part that sticks out in my mind was me standing on a hill, hugging myself, watching the kids on the field. This one girl, Melissa, a known bully, came and stood next to me and imitated me, giving me a very ugly look, with this cruel sneer on her face. She even mimicked the way I stood, with my limp. Her cronies followed her. I don't know why I remember that so clearly, but I do.

I still don't understand why the girls did those things. I honestly don't.

I understood all too well why they did it. They did it because they thought that by making me small, they could steal my strength, and make themselves bigger. I'll never really know if it worked or not, but I've always understood why they did it.

I'm sorry you had to go through all of this and I know how it feels as I've been there, too.
At least the bullying I got was never physical, but the psychology behind it threw me way back. At some point I had the chance to pick myself up again and come out stronger than before.
But the feelings from back then, at school, yeah, they never go away fully.
It's one thing I don't get these days, how some people I know want to meet the ones from *back then* and I'm like... I so don't care about those people because half of them thought they were so much better than others and blahblahblah. I couldn't care less what their lives are like now.
Beside being a dreamy geeky artsy girl I was also one of those weird foreigners from east europe (back then that was as exotic as a pink snake) so that was enough for them to bully me.

Down with bullying, I say!!!

As a teacher for troubled teens, I see both ends of the bullying cycle. I DO NOT tolerate it, and shut it down in the classroom when I hear or see it. I write the incident reports for the clinicians, IN DETAIL, for full consequences back at the residential units, and keep track of students who have parole officers, and those officers get emailed with details of any incidents. (This action has royally ticked off some of the clinicians, but too damn bad. Consequences are on the child's head if they deliberately choose to do horrid things.)

When someone says something in my room that is even a bit of a put-down, I label: "That was unacceptable, and mean to boot. She is better than that, and so are you." If I am called a name, such as "bitch" in response, I say "Name calling at me when I point out when you are being cruel reinforces your lack of control. Get it together and stop putting your inadequacies on others."

I have the luxury of having backup of a team of youth leaders, clinicians, my principal and the residential awards systems to be able to effectively stand up to vicious words and actions. In most schools, my words would roll off their backs, be ignored by upper level management and parents, and do little.

Since I am generally a positive, perky praiser, when I call someone out on something, a lot of the class really listens. Even if the bully doesn't absorb the lesson, many of the bully's peers DO. I also award the "caught being good" points (good for trading at the canteen store for treats)for peers who stand by their friends against bullying. What starts as doing it for something ends up being something they do because they become brave enough to do it.

I hope we do get stories out that give young adults hope. This issue needs all the help it can get, and so do the victims, often our most sensitive and brightest people.

*applause hands*

*HUGS* I really do understand how you feel. I moved three times from the time when I was 8 to the time I was 12 and was bullied by everyone including my older brother. Even the people I considered my friends bullied me into doing stuff I wasn't comfortable with. So I have no experience with social situations because I won't allow myself to be used by people. It is hard to trust people. I've learned it just opens you up for humiliation later.

I am lucky I didn't take Phoebe's step. But I only had to mostly deal with it in one place. She also had to deal with the internet.

Fantasy author Lynn Flewelling wrote a post about bullying a little while back, with some very interesting follow-up from her readers. The more of these I see, the more backlash from other communities and willingness of the bullied community to try and do something, is heartening no matter how many times we've had to try and do something.

I was the weird kid with two passports, the English kid who was also an American (and living in America, do not ask how many 'rubber' jokes I got in high school). I went to junior high in the ghetto, at an advanced school, then turned around and went to the second-richest school district in the city for high school. I was too ghetto for the rich kids, too white for the ghetto kids... And let's not even talk about how I was a devil, a demon, for being a druid.

The bullying started in kindergarten, because I could read chapter books, and the (exceptionally unsuspecting and naive) teacher would leave the room to go do something, and have me read to my peers. Having a fascination with languages (and competing at the national level in a dead language, Latin, in high school), didn't help, and the jock factor of also being a student athlete didn't help - if anything, I was more ostracized for 'attempting to fit in' by being an athlete.

You all rock so hard. Seriously.

I'm so with you, Seanan. I'm so with you it hurts.


There's a reason why 80% of my writing deals with adolescence. Some shit you just never. Get. Over.

I spent damn near every day of my childhood getting raped of my self-esteem, to the point when Jennings Michael Burch, author of "They Cage the Animals At Night" came to speak at my school, and talked about not passing the pain onto others and letting it end with you, my ninth grade English teacher begged me not to speak to her afterward, because she's been watching me throughout the whole speech and my face, the face of this fifteen-year-old boy who had finally been spoken for, brought her to the verge of tears.

My mother once asked me why I didn't just make things easier on myself, as if I could. Why I wasn't just more "mainstream", a word she foolishly believed to be any less offensive and dehumanizing than "normal." She asked why I always had to make my quirkiness or my intelligence or my sexuality an issue, and I told her simply, "I don't make any of those things an issue; that's just what they are."

Sometimes the bitterest loss to the bullies is being blamed by the people who are supposed to protect you for the crimes committed against you, for the things you're robbed of.

Someone has to speak for these kids against the bullies, and the assholes who say it's not so bad, that kids need to learn to stand up for themselves, ergo let the bullies run free and let Social Darwinism sort them out, and in place of the parents and teachers and older siblings whose pat answer to this daily torture is to just be someone other than who you are... to make things easier for them.

Someone has to speak for these kids, and if their parents won't, I will.

Sometimes the bitterest loss to the bullies is being blamed by the people who are supposed to protect you for the crimes committed against you, for the things you're robbed of.

This line almost made me cry, because yes.

AngelVixen :-)

::hugs to Seanan and everyone on this thread who has been bullied::

The minute I started wearing glasses - in 2nd grade - I was the target of bullies. I was pushed, tripped, emotionally abused and.... There was an incident where I was so desperate for attention/approval that I did something for the primary group of bullies in 3rd grade that has left scars to this day. This went on for years.

My parents certainly didn't know what to do, and I doubt the teachers at my elementary school noticed.

One man did. The principal during my 6th grade - Dr. Danielson - gave me a place to hide when things got bad: his office. I don't remember much about that year, but I do know he probably gave me a fighting chance in the years following that. He also found out I was interested in gaming, and gave me a first edition Deities and Demigods as a graduating present (when it was still in print).

Therapy in eighth and ninth grade helped, and after that I somehow managed to project enough... something that I was generally left alone. In 10th grade, one of the girls who had teased me apologized, but that was a unique event.

I have never gone to any of my high school reunions - I have no interest at all in seeing any of these people again, including the ones who wrote in my senior yearbook, "You're smart and sweet and don't ever change." Damning me with their faint praise was more than enough incentive against that. Even now, with the 20 year coming up, I have no interest in seeing people I have nearly nothing in common with.

Bullying casts such a long shadow across our adulthood, coloring so many of our lives and interactions. I got very, very lucky, and every story I hear about the Phoebes just reminds me of that.

I love you, so much for posting this, and for being you.

When you go to get a library card someday, I will be right behind you, with a baseball bat, just in case. My bullies taught me to fight for my life, and my life includes the lives of my friends.

You deserve to have as many library books as a small handtruck can carry, every day of the week.

I'm in. *hefts Big Stick*

With your permission, I'd like to reproduce your post in its entirety in both my LJ and my Facebook. I will tweet the link to Megan's site as well. Please me know if this is all all right with you.

I was bullied. I was the weird kid and I was proud of it, because thankfully I had a family who encouraged my weirdness and always, always taught me how to stand my ground. It was still a painful, brutal adolescence that I survived thanks to a core group of kids like me -- there was some truth to misery loving company, for sure -- and my family's faith in me (even when I was at my worst). Sometimes I had to defend myself. Sometimes I answered emotional pain with physical. Quite frankly, I don't regret those occasions. Respect would have been nice but in its absence, I accepted fear. Being the scary weird kid gets you teased a little less. A little.

Not all of my friends survived the bullying unscathed. We had no deaths but there were a few attempts, a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking. Even some jail time. The repurcussions of bullying sometimes take years to surface. The scars never really fade. But sometimes, scar tissue heals harder than the skin that was there before and it becomes a kind of armor. Sometimes that's the best you get.