The Victim.

‘Bullying”

How seriously do we take this word ?

What exactly does it mean ?

What can be classified as bullying ?

I can’t answer these questions because I believe what is wrong to someone can be right to the other. But I most definitely have a story. One which many people saw unfold in front of their eyes but chose to ignore, a story which I cannot forget!

Once there was this girl, 12 or 13 and she wasn’t shy. She would speak up her mind. But something happened that made her think it was her mistake. Keeping quite was all she had to do to make the pain go away and if nothing a little less. Yes, she was a victim of bullying by a bunch of boys who found some sort of thrill in calling her weird names. Names she never knew the meaning of, but when she did, she felt disgusted by herself. So much that she couldn’t look at her own reflection in the mirror without shedding tears !

She stopped talking , started reading books , wrote poems and tore them away and the friends she had?

They were the ones who told her to quietly bare the teasing and name calling. When she had had enough and tried complaining ,what happened is that her so called friends turned their backs on her. Those bullies complained about her instead! Ironic isn’t it?

That girl started doing self harm,  making small cuts on her wrists thinking it would help , some days she would starve herself just so that she could be accepted.

She would cry to herself in sleep, wake up with swollen eyes and lie to her parents with a smile on her face that stopped reaching her eyes. And those bullies ? They always came up with a new technique of tormenting and she had to keep up with them.

She ended up becoming so weak that a slightest thing could make her weep. But apart from the negatives, the bulling introduced her to the lovely world of books and she learned books could actually be one’s best friend, she discovered she could write and beyond it all she always tried finding out reasons as to why did those people bully her.

Yeah she was sad and weak and she realized how weak and sad they might have been to find pleasure by making someone hate themselves she was bullied but still, 3 years after all of that,  they treat her like a criminal and forget that she was the victim.

Is that what happens? But she is stronger than she was and has made a couple of friends and yes, she is still a little insecure and scared but she knows she’ll never ever be bullied again and won’t let anyone near her be a subject to bullying.

She hopes that those bullies find friends.

Real ones, like she did.

-Ananya Nair