Real Teens Speak Out

When my friend turned

My story starts all the way back to 3rd grade when I met a kid named A and we hit it off and became the best of friends. We remained strong friends and then 5th grade rolled around and suddenly everything changed… A had no classes with me so I decided to switch lunch periods to hang out with my best friend. I got to the cafeteria to find he was hanging out with some new people. I sat down with A and his group but I noticed he was acting different. In the group Things me and Tony found “cool” changed and when I brought them up I suddenly got laughed at and teased about. Then the rest of the group started talking louder when I tried to speak to A. And then the group started talking A into moving to different tables and ducking their heads to avoid me going over to sit by them. And at the time A and I was in after school club and this one kid from the group also went there. And he would always say before I could reach A “Sorry. We’re already partners, go find someone else.” And one day the kid was absent and I had the chance to partner up with A. And strangely A started acting like himself again and we were laughing and shooting at paper cups with our creations. I don’t know what those people did to my best friend when he was around them but the hurt slowly beat me up inside and one day I walked up to A and said “I’m sorry but I can’t be your friend no more.” And I still remember his expression of absolute awestruck when I walked away from him. Ive never spoken to him since but I already forgave him.

Scared and alone

I was in year 7 when the bullying started . A group in my year started to call me names. Donkey, big teeth and many more disgusting names that linked towards my teeth. I ignored it but it carried on for a year, I didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid to, afraid of what they were going to say to me. Soon it escalated. They started to make my friends hate me, they got underneath my skin. I came home everyday crying until my mum realised a change in my behaviour. She notice that I was more angry and stressed, she asked me what going on. I said “nothing” and she left as that. It was until near Christmas time my brother caught these group of girls teasing me and he finally made tell my mum. After telling her I felt a bit better, she told the school but they didn’t really helped. The next day, every single person ignored me. No one spoke to me and I had to ring my dad to pick me up. After a couple more months of this bullying, it started to turn to violence. Now my dad had enough and took it to the police. It finally ended.
One thing that I learnt from that experience was not to keep it to yourself because it can physically and mentally damage you. Like now, I have been told I have social anxiety and lack of self confidence and belief. Talk someone if you feel alone and you need help.

I got bully from my family for being fat

I don’t know if this happen to you guys my people would always ask me whats my weight why being so fat like a pig or like a buffalo and that world hits me for my entire life I don’t understand why they are so serious about body type even I’m fat or thin I’m still be myself why would they encourage me to be like what they want i just want to the way i am. People would ask me if I’m 100kg now or what Thats my Trauma I don’t wanna keep going through this. I know they care but I just wanna be like this I’m happy in what i am, I just don’t want to change myself to anyone even my mom didnt even understand me.

Being Ignored

This is still going on, but I really need somewhere to talk about it.
At the moment I feel extremely ignored and abandoned by almost all of my friends. They close me off from the group conversations and we rarely talk anymore. When we do talk it’s all jokes and making fun of each other, and never anything serious like we were last year. Last year, we were all super supportive of each other, confiding in each other and saying how close we could be. Now, we’re a year older, and I feel ostracized from the group while they’re still all really close.
I’ve told them everything. When I say everything, I mean /everything./ There’s so much I’ve told them; they are the people I trusted the most. It hurts to think that they stopped caring and don’t like me anymore.
I have some very serious mental health issues. I would prefer to not state them but it makes it really hard to talk to new people and trust them. When I finally trust them, I trust them for good and treat them with utmost respect. I feel like that might make them feel as though they can just walk all over me. If the person I trusted decides they don’t like me anymore, or acts distant, my entire demeanor with them shifts, and then I hate them. As one would expect it doesn’t fare well with said person, and they decide to leave me for good. It’s happened multiple times and I have abandonment issues because of it.
One friend in particular is one I trusted so much more, and one who is ignoring me the most. The new friends he has were the first to start ignoring me, so I feel as though he could have been influenced by them into not liking me.
This really hurts. I have no idea what to do anymore.
And if you feel like you’re being talked about in this paragraph, rethink every decision you have made in your life and ask yourself where you went wrong. Ask yourself why you feel the need to hurt, and why you don’t care about people who have cared so much about you.

I Didn’t Know Anything

I was 6 when the first bullying began. I was a gifted child but ignored until 5th grade where my science teacher helped me. I am in 11th grade now. One time someone that constantly bullied me told me that I was going to burn and that I deserved to be beaten in 2nd grade. I have been bullied as long as I could remember and I can’t imagine a life now . I don’t know how to live without being in constant fear.  A year ago I met someone like me. They were bullied for being agender and they knew what I went through. We were both good at science so we decided to help each other and bond over our common interests.  Every time I look at the mirror I promise myself that I will save everyone that I can save. And I will go on. I didn’t know anything but now it doesn’t matter. If I can save 1 person from this that’s okay.

Being bullied made me be kinder

It was in 6th grade when things started to go hill for me. From what I thought was a joke, eventually became full of taunting and isolation. I wasn’t always the person that wanted to fit in, and so people took advantage of that and would “jokingly” say mean things about me, but after the jokes came the isolation. Where ever I sat was to them misery. They would hide from me or move closer to their friend and at that time it didn’t really hurt me that much. But it was in seventh grade when the isolation and taunting got worse. Nobody wanted to be my friend. Nobody wanted to talk to me. I was always lonely. My thoughts of who I really am was marred by the taunts of the students. I still to this day have mental scars from the bullying and struggle with misophonia due to the severe amount of stress I had encountered as a child. I am better than who I was in the past and I’m still in school; a junior in HS. And have moments were I would get isolated and talked bad about, but now I choose to ignore and keep to myself and be there for those who have no friends.
That’s all.

My Story

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bullied. I believe it started kindergarten, kids would pull me across the playground by my pigtails and chase me around before school started and tried to pull my pants down to embarrass me. It got worse as the years went on. I remember 3rd grade…A group of kids who thought I was too quiet jumped me on the basketball court. They choked me and punched my stomach. In middle school I was told by another kid that he was going to shoot me..He knew where i lived. The police were involved but nothing serious happened. I was already going through a lot with my mental health. I was seeing and hearing things, i was depressed and scared all the time. High school is where things hit the hardest. It was freshman year, I was a bigger girl ( very overweight ). I was bullied about my weight and my looks. I think it wasnt the bullying that made me feel so bad it was what was going on inside my head that made things hard. I couldn’t function at all, I was so out of it. I needed help. I began to do self harm.  Through the years I switched to around 4-5 schools after that.. I was lost, And every-time i reached out for help it always backfired and i was just a bunch of drama to my family. Now here i am, I am feeling a lot better. But whatever happens just know that your problems DO NOT define who you are. You are more than your depression and pain. You are strong.

Fat shamed

My name is Emma. I have and still am being fat shamed on Facebook. I have done a weight loss program to help lose weight and it worked. Starting out at a 3XL and now being an XL I felt great. Up until last week when I posted a selfloving weight loss post. Comments were hurtful and I felt ashamed. They told me “who lied to you and told you that your beautiful?” They would state that I was just coming up with excuses. I have struggled to leave the house. I struggle to talk to people. I’m struggling to write this… I am a person. I have feelings.

Bullying

Hi, Im Susan. I was bullied all through school. One bully stood out. Tara Smith, she bullied me all through junior high. She would say things to me like im gonna beat you up on the last day of school, she knew some students at another high school that if Tara paid them enough money they would beat me up! she said that I was ignorant. Tara said she couldn’t wait to go to her new school so she wouldn’t have to put up with me. I asked Tara why are you doing this to me? Tara said look at me and look at you. She thought because she was bigger than me that it made ok for Tara to bully me. My parents and I told the school, nothing was done about it. Tara never laid a hand on me. Its a good thing cause if Tara did something to hurt me she would have been in big trouble.

Jessyca’s story

I was born with a craniofacial disease called Stickler Syndrome, which I inherited from my mother . Oddly, my mother does not know where she got our commonly shared disease from. This disease has caused me to be severely nearsighted, have bad hearing, a short nose, a slightly flat face, and has caused me to experience some slight symptoms of scoliosis at a young age . As a kid, I’ve had several consultations about having reconstructive surgery on my nose, I have had hearing aids, and I have incredibly thick glasses . This disease has also taken a huge toll on my self esteem, as I’ve been bullied, not only by kids, but by adults as well. I remember one time being at a family friends house and hearing a guest say “That’s one ugly child.” Kids also would refer to me as “four eyes” and “ugly”. In elementary school, I got a vision teacher who I’d meet with and I’d receive tools like a Portable CCTV, iPad ,and magnifying glasses to better the way I see in school. The vision teacher stayed with me until 8th grade because I felt like I no longer needed them anymore and they were extremely distracting because they’d constantly pull me out of class. I started to feel so bad about my appearance and the fact that I needed a “vision teacher”, I stopped caring about how I looked . I’d go to school carelessly. My hair would be messy, my lips were chapped, my breath was smelly, and my skin would be hard and ashy because I didn’t take care of myself. The only thing that looked decent were my clothes because my mom ironed them until I got a certain age and was forced to do it myself. I also stopped using my CCTV, iPad, and magnifying glasses to avoid being seen. On top of that, I became very hostile towards my classmates and teachers, and would get in trouble frequently for my attitude. I became very tomboyish because I felt like I wasn’t pretty enough to do anything girly, like paint my nails and put on dresses . At the age of 10, I endured my first surgery to fix the bridge of my nose so that my glasses would stop sliding off my face . As I quickly recovered, I noticed that I was having frequent, daily nose bleeds. The surgeon who operated on me said it was drainage, but little did I know, my surgery had been botched . They used a donor bone to reconstruct my nose, but there was a problem. There was no blood going through my nose to support that bone so it died . I spent almost three whole years with these everyday nose bleeds and my confidence continued to plummet. Adding to that, there was a disgusting odor coming out of my nose . I suddenly became very socially awkward because who wants to be friends with the girl with thick glasses and a bloody nose ? At the age of 13, I underwent my second surgery to remove the bone in my nose . Long story short, it was a successful surgery and I quickly recovered. I started to look at myself in the mirror differently. I saw a change and started to explore my looks .The nosebleeds were gone and I wasn’t bullied as much besides a few snide comments here and there . At the age of 14, I had the same reconstructive surgery as I had at age 10, except instead of a donor bone, they used some cartilage from my rib . They put bandages on my nose and stitches in my nose and on my forehead. They also glued the incision on my rib shut . This was when the transformation truly happened. My nose wasn’t flat anymore, the nosebleeds were gone completely, and all I had left was a beautiful scar on my ribcage. The funny thing is, this all happened in 2018 and I am now a 15 year old sophomore and honors student in high school. I am still judged a lot for the way I look when I walk through the halls , but there’s a difference; I don’t care about what they say. I can finally say I feel more confident in myself , not because of the surgeries I’ve had , not because of the clothes on my back , not because of the people who love and adore me, but because of the uniqueness I have discovered in myself . My doll like eyes have seen more than any teen i know . My nose has been under the knife more than anyone I know and I’m still not completely done with the process yet . My mouth has had more stitches from all the surgeries than ever . My point is, I am a walking storybook . Every unique physical attribute about me has a story behind it. I hope in the future to become a craniofacial surgeon to inspire, learn about, and help people just like me and I’ve had endless support from all of my friends and family whom I love dearly . Adding to that, I have explored my feminine side and I feel confident enough to embrace it. If I could give any craniofacial kid advice, it would be to embrace how you look . There’s such a unique story to tell behind us all that the people need to hear. You ARE NOT the disease you suffer from. People are gonna tell you hurtful things and people are going to judge you constantly, but people are only obstacles put in this world to hold us down .I may be young and my story may not be complete, but my goal in life is to help people, and There’s nothing more helpful to people than to inspire them to embrace themselves and not worry about society’s standards . Rules are meant to be broken after all.

Your friend,
Jessyca Foster