I honestly don't even know if anyone is going to read this. Or even care what I have to say. But maybe someone going through the same thing will appreciate seeing that life can get better...that beautiful things do exist even in the darkest of places.

This is probably the first time I have ever posted anything about my past and the bullying I went through. It feels a little weird, but also relieving. I honestly thought that bullying problems were going to lessen as the years grew with so many laws and programs coming out; but it seems that we always find new and more hurtful ways to harm and humiliate one another. It's sickening.

My mother and father and brother are amazing people, but the neighbourhood I grew up was not so loving. It was hard to fit in right from the start. I was always the one that didn't want to choose sides or make people excluded, so I became the outcast. It's funny, I look back now and wonder how I could have been so silly, always forgiving people to just be humiliated again. From what I remember, it was mainly verbal and mental abuse to start. The names, the points at my brother with autism, the dares in order to be allowed to join the group...the bullying was there but manageable. Then the fists came; not too often, but enough. Being chased by kids on bikes and being jumped randomly,  I didn't really comprehend what I did wrong.
When you are called enough names and hit enough times, you start to think there HAS to be something wrong with you. That you are not important, not normal. Finally, we moved for the bullying got too bad for my family to handle.

Then a miracle happened; I found out what friends means. It doesn't mean going along with the dares, thinking you are useless, or pretending to be one for a minute then leaving you the next. My friends just liked me for me. For once I was asked what kind of music I liked without being mocked, what shows I liked without sounding stupid, what I wanted to do during a hot summer day rather than be told what I HAVE to do. For what seemed the first time in my first decade of life, I was important and normal to people that weren't my blood relatives. Well, I am weird sometimes, but it was now OKAY to be weird...okay to be an individual with my very own and natural personality.

Yet, it is still hard to be me. Even with great friends today and a boyfriend who tells me I am beautiful everyday, the mockery and humiliation still haunts me like it was yesterday. Even in my final years of university, I can still have nightmares from those awful moments of my life which I can never get back. And now I see bullying way worse than I ever had to go through; with the internet expanding and our population growing, people are finding new ways to torture one another. 

I want people to know that it does hurt. It sucks and it is something that sticks with the person you bully for a long, long time. You take away moments of their lives which they can never get back, can't erase, can't just turn back time and make it different. The consequences of bullying goes beyond those few seconds of verbal abuse or physical assault; it works in the development of what kind of person that individual will be one day.

However, I want people who are bullied to know that you are loved. You are cared for. You are important. I know it is so cliche but I just wished someone told me those words, whether friend or stranger, when I was struggling with bullying as a kid. Websites and organizations like this are a great start. But please, people who see a victim being bullied, find a way to help them WITHOUT getting yourself hurt too. We all can make a change. This site has shown me that.

Sincerely and best regards,

A struggling yet optimistic dreamer.