Bullying is like a really big thing for me.  I don’t let anybody do it, like not my friends, not people around me, nobody.  I hate it when people bully.  It just drives me crazy.  In the past, I’ve been all three.  I’ve been a bully, I’ve been a victim and I’ve been like the bystander.  But now I stick up for people.  It like hurts me inside when I hear that people have been bullied and I could have done something about it but I wasn’t there.  I stand up every chance I get because nobody deserves to be treated that way, no matter who they are.

            I got bullied pretty bad when I was in grade five.  I have a large forehead and I know it, and I’m proud of it – its Smith genes – but I used to get made fun of for it a lot.  They were making fun of me one day and I stood up for myself.  I thought to myself “I’m not just going to let them sit here and make fun of me anymore.” And they beat me up.  They like stomped me until I couldn’t move.  I actually have medical problems from it still.  Like not just that I kind of suffer from depression from it, but I also have this rib problem and it still sometimes hurts for me to breathe because of it.  Ever since then I have been totally against bullying and I always stand up for people when they’re bullied because I know what it feels like and no one deserves to feel that way.  It happened so long ago and its hard to believe that its still affecting me now, but it still is.  It will probably affect me for like ten, fifteen, twenty years.  Like, it will always be there.  No one deserves to feel like that.

There’s so much drama in this school.  It’s our entire school, everybody knows everything that happens.  There are no secrets here. Every day there’s a fight of some sort.  If it’s not physical, it’s verbal.  It’s crazy.  Yesterday there were three fights, today already, there’s been one, maybe two.  I can think of one just the other day.  There’s this girl in grade seven and the grade eights pick on her all the time.  I don’t know why, because she’s really pretty and she’s really nice, she’s just like all around a really great person.  They are just always like really rude to her and make fun of her constantly.  On Friday, there was a pair of dirty underwear on the floor in the bathroom and they picked them up, and they walked up to her locker and they threw them at her and they were like “you forgot your underwear in the bathroom.”  And they weren’t even hers.  I could not believe it when I heard it.  I wasn’t there when it happened, but when I heard about it, I was like freaking out because it was so rude.

So like, the next day I went up to the girls in grade eight that did it and I was like “why would you do that? Like, honestly.”  It was me and my friend Mandy.  We’re always together and we always do things like that together.  And I just gave them an earful.  I wasn’t being rude, but I was like “How could you do something like that?  Why would you throw underwear at someone?  Would you like it if someone threw underwear at you?  You have to think about it that way. Like what you’re doing to her, if someone did that to you, would you like that?  Honestly, if I threw underwear at you, would you just sit there and take it like she does?” 

I was like “That’s really rude and immature, you need to grow up.  You need to get past that, because that’s crap.” 

I was just so mad I could not believe they did that.  I was just like shocked.  And then I found out today that one of the girls that did that also like took her lunch during lunch hour, ate half of it, then spit in it and gave it back and didn’t tell her that there was spit in it.  So she ate it. 

It was so rude.  And I was like “You ate her lunch, spit in it and gave it back?!” and she was like “No, I didn’t.”  And I was like “You don’t need to lie to me. I know you did it.”

And I said “I can’t believe you’d do that, after all the times that I’ve stood up for people and talked about it and like even told you when it happened to me.  And you’re going to do that to other people?  I don’t understand.”

Like, I don’t understand.  Why?  It’s weird. It makes me kind of angry.  I was so angry, like my first thought was “I’m going to beat them up.”  But then I decided I wasn’t going to stoop that low.  And like just the whole memory of what happened to me came back into my head, and I really felt for her because I know what its like.  Just the pain that I felt when I heard it, I just wanted to drop.  I was like shocked and in pain.  It was just like this big cloud of emotions, I was probably feeling like eight different things at one time.  So then I stood up for her because, you know, every time I see someone getting bullied or I hear about it, I just think about what happened to me and I have to like re-live that event again and again and I just don’t want to re-live it anymore, so I try and stop it. 

It’s not really helping anymore because people don’t listen.  But I keep doing it because there’s no point in giving up.  Quitting is for losers.  The girls that had done it got in-school suspensions for it, but like, I thought that maybe hearing their friend, or a peer they look up to, who was shocked at what they did, would make them realize that what they did was wrong.  But I guess it didn’t because they’re still bullying other people.  I thought they would understand, but I don’t think they did because I don’t think they’ve ever been bullied like I have, so they don’t understand.  They can’t see both sides of it.  Either that, or I’m just really understanding.  Maybe I just see it differently from them because I’m different, but I think everybody should see it.  It’s like right there in front of you.  You know you wouldn’t like it if someone was doing it to you, so don’t do it. When I talked to them, they were kind of shocked.  They were like “You think this is rude?  I thought you thought it was funny.”  I was like, “Funny? Its not funny to throw dirty underwear at someone.”  Hopefully it had some effect because I don’t want that to happen anymore. 

I have yet to find out if they think it’s wrong.  It seems like they just need someone to pick on, to feed off of.  How am I supposed to look at them the same again after I hear the stuff they say to her?  Like, what are they saying about me?  So I don’t know.  I just, I still stop it even though they’re my friends, because it’s not right no matter who you are.   So, I’ll stop it for the time being, but it will just happen again, and then I’ll stop it again.  I have like the hope that it will stop happening.  Because when it happens, I re-live my memories and no one needs to re-live memories or even have it happen to them.  Ever.  Its not meant to happen.  We weren’t born on the earth bullying people, we shouldn’t be doing it now.  It just drives me crazy.  I just want to like cry like every time because I feel their pain and then I feel my own pain and then I just feel like “oh, this needs to stop.”

            I did presentations to a couple of the classrooms in our school about bullying and why you shouldn’t do it and like my experiences with it.  They were all really shocked that I like came out and told them that.  And then, I know it stopped for a while.  But then it started again, so I was kind of mad.  I was like, “I just went up there and wrote this big long speech and told you guys my personal stories, and here you are doing it again.”  Like, that’s not cool.

I just find myself trying to defend someone at some point during the day.  I kind of don’t want to say anything sometimes, so I won’t get involved in the drama.  But it’s really hard for me to not say anything so I always end up getting involved any way.  Always.   I go home exhausted.  So everyday I have me-time – it’s like time where I just stay away from the phone and the computer, anywhere where drama can get to me.  And I just do things that I love to do for as long as it takes until I feel better.  If I didn’t have my me-time I’d just go crazy. 

            Thinking about it is hard because it brings up my own painful memories.  But it kind of makes me feel like a good person because I did something to help someone.  Even if it didn’t help them right away, it’ll help them in the future.  Like as soon as they realize what I did for them, then they can take out the good in the situation.

            I have this really strong belief that everything happens for a reason, and that in everything that happens, there’s a good and a bad.  You can either take the bad, or you can take the good away from it.  So from my own experience when I was bullied, I took the good away.  Like, in a way, I found out that those people were not my friends.  I found out who my true friends were that day.  And I realized that for all the time I had been a bully, exactly what I had been doing to other people.  It was like this big epiphany for me.  I was like, “woah.”  It happened when I was in the hospital getting my bloody nose fixed.  I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “You know what? This is a good thing.  Sure the pain’s going to hurt for a while, but you know what?  This is good.”  And my dad is looking at me, and he’s like “What are you talking about?”  I wasn’t going to explain it because I’d be sitting there forever, so I’m like, “It’s just a good thing, dad, this is a good thing.”  He’s like, “Yeah, you have a concussion.  We need to get you checked quick.”  Ever since then I’ve seen the world a whole different way and I take the good out of every experience I have, bad or good. 

            I guess want I want people to know is that it’s ok to stand up for other people.  I know people are scared that their friends are going to turn on them, or that they’re going to be bullied, so I want people to know that it is ok to stand up.  I know a lot of people in my school look up to me so when they see me doing something good I’m hoping that they’re going to be thinking “Oh, Erin does this, so I can do it too.”  If they’re going to follow me, I want them to follow me in a good way.

            I had someone call me heroic once.  I was talking to my friend about this stuff and she said “That was really heroic of you.”  I was like “Heroic?  That doesn’t make sense.”  Then she was like “Yeah, you were like a hero because you saved that person from being bullied more.”  I don’t know, it’s not heroic if it’s something that anybody can do.  Because it is something anybody can do.  Anybody can stop bullying from happening.  Anybody can stick up for someone, even if they don’t know them.  Like, I remember one time when I was on the bus, and there was this guy who was mentally handicapped.  He was sitting in the back of the bus, rocking back and forth in his seat and singing, and people in the back of the bus were just completely making fun of him.  Then, this lady who was standing by the door said “You think you ‘re funny making fun of someone who can’t defend themselves?”  And then I said “And who can barely understand what you’re saying?”  And she said “Yeah, real funny.”  Then they stopped.  If you can do that with a whole bunch of strangers, I don’t know, that’s just so courageous.  That just like made my day and I remember thinking “Woah.”  That’s the kind of person I want to be.

            I want people to know that it can happen to them.  Bullying is not just something for bystanders to watch.  It could happen to them at any time.  Like, I didn’t think it was going to happen to me, and then there I was, bleeding on the ground, you know?  Even now, a lot of the things that have happened, I still think “woah, did I just do that?  Did I really just stand up to that person?”  Even if I was deathly afraid of them, it is all just worth it to help somebody feel like they are wanted, to help them feel a little better about themselves to that they can keep going.