While my elementary school days
were wonderful and filled with good friends and fond memories, middle school
was the polar opposite and a total nightmare for me, 1998 in particular being
the worst year of my life. I was severely bullied at the age of fourteen, both
physically and psychologically, and it wasn’t long before I lost all hope and
attempted to take my life (the afterlife seemed a far better alternative to the
pain I was constantly enduring on earth). I was fortunate enough to have one
kind and very observant teacher named Mrs. Dean who intervened, and it’s thanks
to her that I’m still here today.
The road to recovery was a slow
and rough one, though. My parents were afraid to leave me unmonitored, I
required lots of therapy and medication, and finished grade 8 through
one-on-one tutoring because I was too terrified to be in a classroom setting
again or around other teenagers (I received my middle school diploma in the
mail). Bullying had left me the human equivalent of an abused dog trembling
with its tail between its legs. I couldn’t pass groups of teens anywhere
without suffering extreme anxiety that they’d gang up to attack me, and began
high school at Danforth Tech sitting behind a cubicle.
It’s very difficult to trust your
fellow teens again after suffering such horrid cruelty at their hands, but my
high school years were surprisingly good ones, and over the ninth grade I
managed to emerge from my shell, regain faith in humanity, and make some very
good friends there (I still remained guarded and skipped extra-curricular
activities and my prom).
It’s true that the scars left
behind from bullying are permanent, and I’ll never again be the same person I
was before middle school. Bullying changes you forever, but what doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger, and my experiences in middle school shaped me into the
man I am today. I’m no longer a victim but a survivor, scarred but not broken.
I think it’s very important for my
fellow bullying survivors to speak up and raise awareness to what we went
through. It wasn’t easy for me to reveal such painful moments from my life just
now and I honestly never thought I’d do so, but it’s important that we all band
together to put an end to bullying once and for all, and who better to lead the
charge than those who’ve personally gone through it and know what it feels
like?
Many of you are parents to young
children, and I want to see them grow up in a world where they’ll never have to
experience what I went through. We need to educate all students on the
seriousness of bullying (the crumpled paper experiment is a fine example) and
form harsher punishments for bullies such as criminal charges that will make it
crystal clear to them that such behaviour won’t be tolerated.
I don’t say all of these things
for sympathy, to be an “armchair activist”, or to gain a bunch of likes, I say
them because bullying and suicide awareness and prevention are the two causes
that are closest to my heart and I don’t want to see anybody else suffer the
same fate as poor Amanda Todd and countless other kids around the world. I want
these children and teenagers to know that they’re not alone and are loved, and
that suicide isn’t their only option even if it feels like it in their darkest
hour (I thought the same way at the time). There is support and hope out there,
and we need to make that clear to them. Sorry for the length of this post, and
thank you for reading.
