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