Real Teens Speak Out

My experience

I was bullied for the majority of my life when I was a kid. I just wanted to share this to tell others that are struggling that you can make it. When I was 11 my parents told me we were moving from my native country to New York. Naturally, I was excited. I had been to New York and loved it. Before I left I told the school, who helped break the news to my “friends”…we’ll call them classmates. I made every effort possible to make sure I could keep in touch with everyone. But that year was probably the worst of all my school years. All my friends turned on me, basically. I guess it’s because they figured I was leaving and that they would never see me again, and that’s what “validated” their actions, in their minds at least. When we played sports, they told me I was useless. After a few times I stopped playing sports in school altogether, and it ruined one of my favorite things. People started calling me names. One day we were sitting outside during a break and I already was scared of social interaction. When I tried speaking to offer an idea, all the people I thought were my friends threw rocks at me. Later they claimed they never did such a thing, and that I even “rolled with it” despite how distressed I was, crying in the middle of class. Another time was when we had an end of school celebration thing, I don’t really know what to define it as, and one of my best friends screamed at me and swore at me for messing something up, and called me a failure and that I couldn’t do anything right. That was one of my last few weeks in the country, and ever since that last incident until I left I didn’t speak to any of them. Moving still broke my heart, because I had to leave my best friend since my childhood and my whole family, but I was still excited. When I first moved everything seemed fine. That’s until the bullying started again. This time it wasn’t just verbal abuse, it was physical and later sexual too. That led to me entering high school (which was, for the record, my last two years before moving back to my native country) with the mindset of intentionally not making any friends, and avoiding people at all costs. That ended up being one of the best years for me socially, until I moved back and it all went bad again. But as I write this I’m a healthy 21 year old guy with a great social group of people that genuinely care for me, with big aspirations and dreams. People will try and hurt you. That’s just something some evil people do, with no real justification. Keep fighting. Fight back, show them how strong you are, show them that you’re better than them. Keep believing in yourself, and strive for what you deserve. You’ll rise up taller than them. I promise you. <3

hope

I, too, was prey for the bullies that lurked the middle school halls. Mostly verbal abuse, but even some physical. The verbal abuse consisted mostly of bashing my physical appearance and speaking about my parent’s financial situations (we didn’t have the most money, but we happily made do). It’s something about the physical bullying that will always be engraved in my brain. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was switching out books in my locker, which was on the bottom, when my top locker partner comes up behind me and starts violently kicking me and telling me to hurry. I just sat there and allowed him to kick me. I tried to laugh it off and open my lock as fast as possible to please him. Kids surrounding us were laughing. I didn’t mention it until a few weeks later. Luckily, I had a very caring 6th grade teacher who I will always remember. During those times, it was so easy to go along with the bullying crowd. I mean anything to get them off your back right? That is not what you should do. Remember kindness is always what you should strive for. The bullies will look back on those years of bullying and regret every second of it and feel shame and guilt for the awful things they’ve done, but you will remember that you kept composure, and most importantly, that you were kind. Please stay strong in this cruel world.

words do really hurt

I got bullied a lot in high school. it started in year 9. where this boy kept picking on me calling me names. Every time he walked past me he used to kick my chair when I was sitting on it and if I was standing up he would try and trip me over. he really was not a nice guy. the boy that bullied me had gotten worse. so I told my mom and dad and they both told the school. and he had to move to a different classes because of what he was doing to me. People if u are reading this story please understand that bullying is not nice.

As life goes on…

My name is Balázs, and I’ve been bullied ever since I went to elementary. I’ve been also to hospital because of it, and I always have to check a room for possible escape routes before I enter it. Here’s how it went every day for several years until very recently. I try to go to school without getting beaten to a half counscious state every day, since the bullies are the “popular” types of kids. The others are on the bully’s side, so me and a few other kids, just have to stay in the shadows as long as we can. I’ve been close to suicide two times, one after being teased and called names for weeks, and the other time my books were stolen. Teachers never believed me when I complained, even though I had really visible marks. I had enough and told my parents, who contacted the school, and then the police. In the end I seriously had to punch back the bully, because he tried to break my nose. I recovered, but ever since then I had a serious trust issue. I’m the quiet good student type of kid, and I just want some help! Am I really worthless?

Years of torture

Ever since I started 5th grade at a new school in a new state things went downhill for me. I was a positive 11 year old ready for a fresh start and new friends. It started with shoving and cutting me in line. Then it was the whispering and ignoring me. Then middle school came. There were more kids in the grade. Little did i know i would be constantly be whispered about behind my back and have many rumors about me. Depression and anxiety didn’t start until 7th grade and it got progressively worse in 8th grade. It got to the point of rumors about my parents being dead and laughing about me while i’m sitting next to them. I had only 2 good friends and everyone else seemed to hate me. I soon started to cry overnight and i was getting tired of being constantly hated on. The summer before high school started I decided to use a website for people to post comments about me without their identity being known. Little did i know, i would get messages for me to choke and die and how horrible my singing was making me cry in a bathtub for hours. I thought 9th grade would be better because most of the bullies had left. It was better for a while because i had a new boyfriend. He basically protected me. Then we broke up. I was so depressed at the time. My ex had begun to spread rumors and more bullies name into play in the other grades as well as my grade. After having a school trip and being bullied there, i decided i had enough. I left the school a month early and finished online. It was the best decision of my life. Today I am at a new school ad feeling better than ever.

I go to a pretty small school, only around 600 students from preschool to 12th grade and we are a very open community, in all the 8 years I’ve attended I’ve never seen “bullying” happen so I was really surprised when my friends and I noticed that a 9th grade boy was being bullied, or at the very least being excluded by his classmates from any socializing. From what I’ve seen isn’t physical abuse, but kinda verbal. they don’t talk to him if he sits on the same table as him, they don’t play with him during recess and we saw a couple of other kids from 9th grade telling him to go away when he asked if he could play a game with them in the library. I know this might sound mediocre or that we should mind my own business but we can’t help but worry that it would continue on for longer or start to escalate. The student’s new which already makes it hard to find friends but this has been going on since late August when our school year began and I wish there was something we could do. Do you have any suggestions?
(Btw I’m a junior/11th grader and I feel like I might make the situation even worse if I try to talk to him)

My Childhood Lessons

When I was in 1st grade my classmates would make fun of me because of my voice. They would also exclude me from anything that had the rule,”Have Fun!”. I tried to make friends, they laughed at me and would punch or kick me until I walked away. After the fist attempt I stopped going near them, but they would come over to me instead and beat me, leaving me with bruises. This event would happen every recess, they would hunt me down until I could not run anymore. I was sore every day, I would go home and get on my bike and go to my secret spot to cry. I was scared to death, I stopped talking at school and my grades dropped. I was terrified to tell anyone because I did not think anyone would be able to help me, so I put up with this treatment until, 7th grade when I moved to a different school. I learned a lot from the time I was bullied, they had new kids act as my friends and then make them betray me. So I learned that you can not trust anyone. I lost most of my emotions except sadness and hate. I forgot how to smile, so I faked a smile every day so my parents could not tell that something was wrong.And most of all I forgot how to laugh and have fun. Thank You for listening, I have a hard time with these memories and they are hard to dig out from the depths of my mind.

my version

ok well I would start by saying that as a child I never agree with my own self, I always thought that I was very thin, that I was not enough to live. over the months and years I was realizing that I suffer from bullying itself, sometimes our mothers tell us but what happens, do not you have any bigger problems than what I could have, what we lack? I lack self-love, my family thought it was just anybody and that’s how I felt.If you want to be loved, love yourself.Whenever you look in the mirror and every feature of you, of your body, you think it is totally wrong, or when you see your name on a paper you say and if my name does not exist, more oxygen for people who actually do well in this world.
in that moment, at that moment you want the earth to swallow you.and so I feel and I would be willing to say that I would not change this dark side within me that nobody has made disappear, the voices force me to scrape.

I don’t think kids realise how much their words and actions can affect some people, they just don’t consider how they make people feel. Because of that, we’re just kids. All my life it has always seemed like I have had a target on my back. I’ve been the talk of the school, of things I’m involved in, I have been backstabbed by people who I thought I could trust, my friends, my BEST friends. I used to be my own self, not afraid of what people thought. Now I’m afraid of pathetic things like will people care if I take a banana to school. I’ve lost myself amongst this society and the people who have hurt me. It started when I was only 10 years old. My best friend wrote me a hate letter, telling me she couldn’t be seen with me, then posted hurtful things about me all over social media. When I was 11 I was apart of a sports team, everybody including the coach picked on me because I wasn’t very good, but I kept trying cause that’s just who I was. I remember girls laughing and whispering every time I made mistakes. I tried to block them out and keep trying cause I loved it, but I eventually stopped because I remember so vividly the coach stopping the whole game and in front of everyone including the supporters, and turned around to me saying “Do you even know how to play football?!” I turned around and ran off the field. Even now that effects me in every thing I do. It made me feel worthless like I truly wasn’t good enough and was never going to get any better. Then came high school. My bestfriend, the person I told everything, who stuck with me through all of this, just stopped hanging out with me, and I will never know why because she just denies everything. I don’t even know who she is anymore. I was asked out a lot through my whole life, but every time I got close to someone they just hurt me. I remember a boy, my first kiss, we were so close and I was just waiting for him to ask me out. We had plans together everything seemed perfect. Then someone else told me, not even him, that he had talked about me to everyone and was going out with someone else this whole time.
God if I listed every thing else I could write a novel. And the sad thing is I’m never going to be able to tell anyone cause I can’t trust anyone anymore. This is not how I want to be, or who I want to be. I don’t even know who that is anymore..

BRokEN

I’m in 8th grade and there is a boy in my class this year that has been saying horrible things about me and calling me terrible names. He had a relative in my old school so now he’s spreading things that happened in my old school that never even happened. These are things like all my old friends think I’m ugly and gross, even when I’d hung out with them not even a week before this. I’ve been in this school for about two years now and this has been going on for about that much time. I’m not one of those people that has social media, or one of those that spends their time doodling in notebooks (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but I have one close friend and spend my lunches in the school parking lot skateboarding. Anyways, there was one specific day. Friday.
I was in gym when I was hit with a football. I couldn’t feel my right ear for a while but didn’t tell anyone (it was also very red and hurt like hell). This is the fourth time -now a group of boys- has done something to hurt me physically, like throwing dodgeballs and pencils at me- but the pencils stopped after I’d snapped them. There was one girl that was in on it too, but after the football she helped and told me that the ‘leader’ of the group was trying to hit me. I’m being serious right now when I say that he’s going to be paying for my medical bill when I go to the hospital with a broken jaw. A few minutes after the football, one of the other boys hit me in the ass with a dodge ball. They all laughed at me.
They don’t know how that makes a person feel. I felt so humiliated and exposed. This is not okay. And I still had one more class before the weekend. So after I left the girls change room, I ignored everyone. I stared blankly at the ground the whole way to my next class. I didn’t listen to anyone, except for one boy that stopped me before I went into class. He asked me if I was okay and I said I’d be fine, because I try to be even though I wasn’t. During class the group of boys I sat with kept quietly talking then one of them would look at me once in a while. But they’re nice boys so I’m okay with it. Two of the boys I sat with saw me cry on my way home. By the time I got home I was fully crying and had to explain why to my sister who is only under ten.
These boys don’t know what they’re doing to me. I’m afraid of going to math because I can hear the comments from across the room. Afraid of going to gym because of how much it hurt physically and emotionally. I flinch even a day later when someone tosses me a Halloween candy. They don’t know what I feel, especially when this is still continuing and it’s Tuesday. I smile to blink back tears while they play a ‘funny game’. I cry while they laugh about it later. And I write right now while they’re probably sitting in their rooms texting each other about ‘how hilarious that was’. Again, this is not okay. The school’s say they’re “anti-bullying” and all that, but if that was true then there wouldn’t be many stories on this website, would there?