I’ve always been a little different than all my friends.  I’m like very strong-minded and I always have an opinion.  I dunno, I was a lot quieter before my parents divorced, when I was about seven. I was really shy.  I’m still shy at home but at school I’m always the one that’s outgoing and talks to everybody and stuff.  But before, I used to be very mean, I used to pretty much be a bully.  When my parents were going through the divorce I was rude, and I had no friends.  Like, it’s no excuse at all, you shouldn’t have to rebel or anything but I realized, well, it’s my fault, I brought it on myself.  I just saw myself doing those things and said to myself “No that’s not right.”  Since then, I’ve worked with any troubles I’ve had in my life.  I’ve turned them around into something positive that I can like help my friends with.  Like my friend, her parents are going through a divorce, and I could help her with that. 

            I think that a lot of teachers and like parents and officials try to make it so they can understand bullying but they just can’t understand it unless they’re actually in the kid’s position.  Like, I can stick up for myself, but a lot of the kids can’t, so that’s where I come in.  A lot of the time, it just completely comes into harassment.  There’s no other word for it because it just keeps going and going no matter what you say.  I don’t know why people are like that.  Mostly it’s just that if I can’t do something about it and I can’t help it, then I have to figure out a way because I just won’t let it happen.  I just feel responsible for telling people to stop ‘cause when you’re loud and obnoxious like me, some people just listen.  I can’t even let people that aren’t my friends be bullied.  Even people that I honestly don’t want to be friends with because they’re rude to me.  I hate myself because I get involved even in that stuff and I’m like “Why am I doing this?”

There are people that hate me because I get involved with stuff.  Like I’ve lost a lot of friends over it.  My best friend Anna hated me because I got involved in bullying and she was embarrassed and stuff, but I was like “Hey, if you can’t live with it then you can go and do whatever you want.”  I will hang out with anybody as long as they’re comfortable with what I do. I know probably ninety percent of the grade seven population.  I could probably name you every single kid’s name because I’ve talked to them, whether it’s a “hi” or I know their entire life story.  I don’t let gossip get to me but it happens a lot more in junior high than it did in elementary.  Like my hair is so short right now because two months ago I shaved my head for cancer.  I signed my name up on the page at school or whatever.  People would be like “Oh, you’re not really going to shave your head, people said you weren’t” and I was like, “Well, yes I am.”  When I hear rumours about my self I just go up to them and I’m like “If you’re not going to say it to my face, then don’t say it at all, because that’s a waste of time and you’re just like pleasuring yourself because it just goes right over my head.  It doesn’t make a difference to me.”  And if you kill them with kindness it’s worse ‘cause they can’t do anything back.  That’s how I like to do things.

With seeing bullying, most recently, there was these guys in my class.  Kyle is like such a sweetheart, I love him so much, and he’s very down to earth, and Dallas, he’s cocky, he’s a good guy but he’s got some issues he really needs to figure out.  Dallas just keeps calling Kyle fat and Kyle doesn’t do anything.  It’s been going on all year.  Like even yesterday, we were watching a movie in class and Dallas just kept going on about how overweight he was and the teacher’s just sitting there watching it because teachers don’t do anything.  Some teachers are perfect about it and they’re like “Ok, if you do one more thing you’re going to the office and you’re going to have to suffer the consequences.”  And that’s like how it’s supposed to be.  They’re supposed to know what’s wrong and know the difference between wrong and right. But I couldn’t believe that Madame Carter just sat there.  Honestly, half the time, the guys are beating the crap out of each other and she doesn’t do anything.  Sometimes its hard for teachers to intervene ‘cause they don’t know when to do it, but sometimes its just so obvious.  Like, in our school people make fun of Emos, even the teachers.  In my drama class, my drama teacher made us do mime improvisation and we had to guess what the feeling was by a person’s actions and stuff.  The teacher made this girl pretend to be cutting her wrist because she was supposed to be like Emotional.  And I had to say “No, you can’t do that. Because what if there were Emotional people in our class?  Like, that’s just making fun and that’s just mean.”  And she was like “Oh no, no no, there’s nobody like that in our school.”  And I was like “Are you kidding me?  Are you blind?”

Anyway, when Dallas started saying “Kyle, you’re fat, Kyle, you’re fat” and just kept calling him fat, I was like “Why?  Why do you have to do that?  Why do you have to go there?”  And in the end the guys ended up beating on Dallas because it was just uncool.  Afterwards, Kyle talked to me.  I dunno, people just come to me for advice or talk to me about things. He was telling me “Oh, I am fat, and stupid, and stuff.”  And I’m like “Well, no Kyle, you’re very athletic and stuff, and you’re smarter.”  Kyle always gives me advice and stuff so I’m like “You’ll be ok, you know” and I just talked him out of it.

            And Dallas, he didn’t know that Kyle was self conscious about it until I talked to him.  Last night he was really upset because the guys were being so pushy.  I talked to him on MSN.  He’s good to talk to when he’s one on one and he’s nicer when he’s on MSN.  He was asking me “Why do they like beat on me and stuff?” And I was like “Well, a lot of things” and he asked me why I was mad at him and I said “Well, Dallas, you can’t do that to Kyle.”  He’s like “Well why?”  And I said “You have to think of the words that you’re saying to Kyle, because he just sits there and he’s like, oh, ok.  He thinks that it’s true.  He’s not going to tell you that it hurts him.  Guys don’t come out about that.”  And he says “Oh my gosh, I had no idea, I’m so sorry” and I was like “Ok, I think you have to tell him that.”

            Sometimes you gotta be straight up with things or they won’t get it.  Dallas was like “why is this mean?” and you have to be completely clear, you can’t beat around the bush about it, you have to say “don’t do that, it’s wrong because…”

For Kyle, he’s not just fat, but that’s all he was to other people.  That’s not all he is.  Now that people are being nice to him and stuff, he’s actually doing better in school and we found out that he’s an amazing hockey player.  You have to get to know people.  I want to know people, I want to be in people’s lives.  If people would just like take the time to get to know you and get to know your friends, they wouldn’t say those things to people.  It’s just mean.  It just blows me away. 

It’s just like when I see bullying, I get this tension in my arms that makes me want to strangle them and I get this feeling like I can’t handle this, I have to do something about it.  Like if I’m sitting on the bus when it’s happening, I sit on my hands because my hands start to sweat.  I’m not nervous or anything, it just ticks me off and I have to do something about it or else I’ll be ticked off with myself.  If I get involved and it’s not fixed, then the feeling doesn’t go away until it’s fixed.  But then when it’s fixed, it’s a relief and I can completely forget about it and move on.  Sometimes I’ve even had to resort to being forceful with it and grab someone’s arms.  I’m blessed with big bones and strong feelings and I just won’t let it happen.

             I’m always the one that’s like comforting everyone in my family because I listen.  But I realize that I’m supposed to be a kid.  I’m not supposed to be fixing all of this.  I finally realized that I have my own problems at school as you can probably tell, and my family doesn’t always realize that I need to take care of myself before I can take care of them.  And it happens at school too.  Like last year, I just had a total overdrive.  It was like May or something.  By the end of the year everyone was just asking for advice – “What should I do?” “Can you talk to this person for me?” “Can you tell him this for me?”  I was always the messenger because I could make things seem nicer or stuff like that.   And one day I freaked.  I flipped out.  I couldn’t go to school for a week.  I was like “I’m not listening to your whining anymore” and I freaked out at them and they didn’t get it because I always seemed there to listen.  And it was my own fault, I shouldn’t have freaked out at them or anything.  But now, before I help my friends with their homework, I finish my own homework. The bottom line is, you can’t help everybody unless you help yourself, and you can’t even help everybody anyways.  I have to realize that, because trying to make everybody in the situation happy is impossible.  Those couple of weeks that I stopped doing stuff for people, it hurt them, and I felt bad about that.  Then I had to fix about a million things.  So, it’s just like, don’t ever overwork yourself.  It can be very overwhelming.  With confronting people, I don’t confront people unless I was there and I saw it exactly.  Because what if the friend was lying and she made up an entirely different story?  That gets me into trouble.  You have to know all the facts before you do it and that’s probably why it’s easier to get involved in actual bullying when you’re a bystander and you have to fix it right there.  But yeah, people just expect a lot out of me and I’m lucky because a lot of the times I can follow through.  But it’s hard.  It’s a lot of pressure.  But I can live with it, it’s good for me I guess.

My dad is a retired police officer and he always tells me that for criminals, “everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”  But with bystanders, you’re guilty until proven innocent.  Like, I feel guilty unless I’ve done something about it, and then I can get an ‘innocent’ if you know what I mean.  So I always think about that, you’re guilty until proven innocent when you see bullying.  Like the song by John Mayer, ‘Waiting on the World to Change’ – one of the lyrics is ‘it’s not that we can’t, it’s just that we’re afraid that we’ll fail.’  Like everybody has it in them to do but we’re just afraid.  But you can’t fail unless you give up.  Honestly, you can’t.  Like I’m one of the only kids in my school that could have told Dallas.  Like seventeen people could have told him “That’s mean, that’s mean, that’s mean,” but it didn’t stop him.  It had to take one person to  tell him why it was mean, to tell him to stop in a comfortable way.  Anybody can make a difference, whether you’re talking about bullying or global warming.  Anybody can, anything helps.  And people think “Oh, ok, I can’t do anything.”  Well, that’s the oldest excuse in the book.  It doesn’t work anymore ‘cause there’s millions of ways.

            When you experience so much in your life, whether it’s with other people or your family, or yourself, a lot of people make that their life, that their life sucks.  Well, I’m not going to do that.  Life is short, and if you don’t make a footprint on your life, then what was the point of living in the first place?