) and I've put it off many times, so, I'm putting it out to all of you.Bullying. New awareness · 1:09am Nov 21st, 2014
As anyone who, like me, is subscribed to ObabScribbler's youtube channel would know, the fic reading she released for anti-bullying week this year came out yesterday.
That, along with what she says in the end blurb, has made me see bullying in a new way.
I won't lie when i say i was bullied most of my life myself. in primary school, my first year of it to start off, several bullies found it fun to make me cry by telling me my name wasn't my name.
since the age of seven, when i had my brain operation, i don't feel sadness as much as i do anger more often than not. but, before then, i was a very sensitive child. for the first few weeks of my first year in primary school, i'd go home crying because of the bullies who'd picked on me just because it was fun, to a point where i stopped wanting to go to school at all.
thanks to my parents and my teacher at the time, Miss Warden, the bullying did stop and i was able to enjoy my time at school instead of fearing it.
that is not to say the bullying didn't come back, from a different source, later on.
during my last two years of primary school, practically everyone thought it was funny to call Happy Birthday to me. now, this might not sound like a bad thing, but when it happens every single day, it got on my nerves. Like i said, after my operation, i grow some backbone and, instead of crying or getting sad, i got angry and would shout and, at times, chase those people away, a few times making them fear me because of the anger in my eyes.
It didn't end there, either.
my first year of high school, and a few people on this site know this because i've spoken with them on skype, i became the target of bullies in an all boy's school, simply because of my disability and the fact that they could get under my skin. Happy Birthday had somehow followed me to high school and the bullying was relentless, bringing in even more things that just kept pushing me further and further to a point of no return.
sadly, nothing was done to fix it, no matter how many times teachers who cared about me, or my parents went to the principal, yes they had to go to the principal himself it was getting that bad, nothing was fixed. one boy who had been involved in my torture was expelled, but for entirely different reasons than pushing me so far.
In the end, my parents had to take me out of that school and sent me to another one because, to quote them: "Whenever we came to pick you up, the atmosphere in the car could have been happy and without any worry, but as soon as you stepped in, we could literally feel the waves of anger flowing off you".
Bully still persisted me at my next school, but i had much more help there and the bullying was eventally to petty for me to even care.
Even now, at my work place i am bullied in a sense and the guy doesn't even seem to realize it. He's a much older man, white hair and wrinkly skin. He, whenever he hears me talking about mlp or something i have a liking in common with one of the other works, basically tells me to shut up because he doesn't want to hear it.
Just this week, Wednesday, i was talking with a fellow brony who works there, the same friend i mentioned talking with before, about chapter four of my latest fic, because he hadn't gotten to read it yet and wasn't sure he'd get the chance anytime soon and wanted me to give him the skivvy of it.
now, i was telling him, but i barely get an eighth through, before the old guy asks what the hell we're talking about, we say very politely that he wouldn't understand (and he knows nothing of mlp so he wouldn't) and he told us to, in his words, "shut the fuck up", simply because he didn't want to hear it.
this is a type of bullying that i really hate. you see, i have to listen to things being spoken about that i don't have any clue about a large majority of the time while working, we all do, but i am not aloud to tell anyone to just shut up about it because they have every right to talk about it.
this guy, however, was basically stating, "i'm older than you, i don't understand what you're talking about with your friend-" which gives you no right to tell me off, since it's my friend i'm talking to, not you- "I don't want to hear it, so shut up and you're going to do so because i said so."
Fucking. Dick.
Last i checked, all of us have a power called ignoring, which we can use to not pay attention to something going on around us, and we all have the right to the freedom of speech, you fucking terd. I don't care how old you are compared to me, there's a difference between respecting a older person and that older person just being an ass.
I had to actually explain to my supervisor, because it's wrong to just tell people to just shut up because you don't understand what they're saying and don't want to hear it. You wouldn't walk up to someone talking in a foreign language and say, "Hey, i don't understand what you're talking about, so shut the fuck up" would you?
then again, maybe this guy would. he is a fucking ass who thinks being old has given him authority over me because i'm so much younger.
However, the point of this blog is to state that, after listening to Scribbler's reading of Too Far and her end blurb, i had a good long think about what bullying is, what bullies are and what bullying can be and realized, i had almost fallen into being a bully myself, without realizing it.
There are to guys where i work who, for the most part, don't do their jobs. they just sit there and do sweet FA unless told to and even then stop after a very short while, one of whom never shuts up, repeating himself or what others say or saying someone's name over and over, trying to get their attention, even when it's obvious they're trying to work and the other just spends his time rocking back and forth in his chair and thinks it's funny if he's told off for not doing his work or worse, trying to take things for others.
now, these two have brain injuries that are worse than my own and i have tried to remind myself of that all the time, but i have lashed out at the multiple times. some times i have been justified in lashing out because it's with good reason: the people the first one i mentioned keeps talking to people, when it's obvious they are trying to concentrate on their work and his constant talking to them is distracting them, making them fall behind in their work; but, even so, i have lashed out at other times simply because i needed to lash out due to a bad mood and they've been in the firing line because they were easiest to aim it at.
i now see this makes me just as much a bully as those who picked on me for my own disability and that douge who told me to shut up about mlp simply because he didn't want to hear it, regardless of whether i was talking to a friend or not and i hate it.
From now on, when i see those two guys, i'm going to bite my tongue and not say anything unless it's justifiable and i while check before speaking that it is before even a vowel leaves my lips.
as for the old dick, if anti-bullying week doesn't open his eyes, i doubt anything will and he'll remain the crappy ass he is.
thank you for lsitening to me babble, please go and listen to Scribbler's reading of Too Far, or read the fic itself (though i would recommend listening to the reading, Caitbug puts a lot of emotion into her role as Derpy) and, think long and hard about it yourselves.
we all need to think about this kind of stuff and realize just how bad it can go if we don't stop it right away.
again, thank you for taking the time to listen to me and i will now get back to Living Nightmare, which i will tag to this blog in case you want to read it, because, for anti-bullying week, the next chapter is going to highlight something about it, which will be given more detail than originally planned, because it might just come out during anti-bullying week.
Lashing out at others because you're in a bad mood doesn't make you a bully, it just means you're human. In my experience, bullies are typically low self-esteem people who try to make themselves feel better by physically and/or verbally abusing others. I had to deal with a couple every year until I graduated from high school, and most of them took any excuse to belittle those they judged to be easy targets. That being said, I understand and sympathize with every word you wrote, and hopefully you won't have to endure the opinions and criticism of the narrow-minded for much longer.
Bullying just doesn't happen at school, I was bullies by my step mom to the point where I actually wanted to commit suicide but I was too scared to. I stood up to her eventually and she backed off, what I'm saying is that standing up for yourself is always an option.
2607762 i agree there. and i did stand up to the old ass, telling him everything i've mentioned, that he had no right to tell me to shut up just because he didn't understand and wanted me to stop and to just ignore me, but he's too thick headed to figure that out
2607856 Yeah, some people are like that. I never understood how anyone could be so dense as to believe that their opinion is the only one that matters...
2607856 I went to the link and I really like what Scribble did. The reading was really moving and I am glad that you shared it with us.
This topic is close to me too. I had been picked on since I was in kinda-garden but back then the schools blamed the ones being bullied for allowing themselves for being a target. It was the first day and a group of older students forced me down to the ground and used my head like a scorer ball. A group of older girls came to my recurse then the Principal chewed me out for being saved by girls.
At another school I wasn't allowed to join after school cubs because my presence in any cub encourage other student to bully me.
Though I did get move to other schools it was more of the same until one day;
In one school a student that was being bullied came in to school one day walked up to his bull and stabbed him to death.
I am not talking one quick stab but quick, multiple times. When he was sure he was dead he just sat down, like he was waiting for class and when asked why he did it he replied in a calm voice. "You weren't going to make it stop so I did permanently."
What helped me was many good people that saw what was happening and tired to help, even thought their hands were tied. Many good teacher, and my grand parents.
My great grandpa gave me a piece of advice that help me out, though maybe it wasn't the best. He said, "Just keep moving forward, let nothing stop you, God gave you live and only he can take it. So just keep moving forward.
Well only word I can end with are, I understand and sympathize with every word you wrote, and hopefully you won't have to endure the opinions and criticism of the narrow-minded for much longer.
Good luck and best wishes.