stay strong, kid.

[enamoured]

A Westport Junior High student named Alye Pollack, who says she’s been bullied every day since the sixth grade, has taken to YouTube to express her misery by remaining poignantly silent.

That video made me cry.

All of the stories I've heard in the past year or so about kids getting bullied and the horrible consequences of it... I don't even know how to begin to process it. The bullying that I went through seems so pathetic in comparison. It just makes me hate the kids who do this to other kids and even though everything that happened to me was years ago, it makes me never want to forgive the people who made me feel like I was less than. I still boggle over the fact that one of the girls who routinely made fun of me in late elementary school/much of middle school friended me on Facebook, and the thing is that on one level I feel like I should be over it, you know? We were eleven, twelve, thirteen when that shit happened. But does anyone who's ever been bullied ever really forget what happened to them?

Either way, I sent Alye an e-mail and hope that she reads it.

Comments

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

But does anyone who's ever been bullied ever really forget what happened to them?

No, and I haven't forgiven that crowd either. I just don't talk to them, and try not to think about them.

[alice-ash.livejournal.com]

thanks for posting about this... i've sent her an email, too. i told her about how a girl i knew used to stand in front of her house after school and throw rocks at me, but when we got to high school, she became my best friend and still is :)

i've also been friended by people who used to be mean to me on facebook. i have a few theories on why they do this.
1) i think most people don't like to remember their own cruelty, so their own memory of events may be much different.
2) morbid curiosity ("i'm going to read the weird girl's status updates because she's so weird and i want to see how weird she is!")
3) burying the hatchet. ("hey, we're grownups now, all that was so long ago, i extend an olive branch via friend-request")
usually i accept their requests. i think i've turned into a cool person that they should be glad to know, so i give them the chance :)

[bratalie.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I was never really bullied. I was picked on a couple of times here and there, but I didn't have it so bad. It's the worst seeing people who are continually ridiculed and made fun of. I always feel so bad. :/

[silver-mage.livejournal.com]

I didn't forget what it was like to be the "weird girl." Nor did I forget the people who made me a walking laughingstock for the better part of my freshman and soph years in HS.

I deleted my personal Facebook account for this exact reason. I don't give a damn about those people. It took me time, patience, and surrounding myself with positive influences to really get over it, and wouldn't you know that the people whom I couldn't stand were the first ones to find me on FB? Seeing them again just revived all those memories that I thought I buried for good.

Gods, I wish I could hug the girl. And good on her for speaking out.