Bullying: Victims or Weakness?

DISCLAIMER: This is a personal opinion of this writer's. This is not stating this is how it is or should be of any way. If you don't like what is being said by this personal view, then remember everyone is entitled to their opinion.

So a while ago, I wrote a hub that stated that something needed to be done regarding bullying. That the fact children as young as elementary school were taking their own lives because other children were being allowed to say and do horrible things and no one seemed to be stopping it. The bullying "epidemic" was getting out of control and needed to be stopped. But over time I began to notice a new "epidemic", teen suicides from bullying. The rate has increased dramatically, and everyone says that these teenagers who are killing themselves "Cried out for help" on facebook or twitter. They are throwing themselves in front of trains, and strangling themselves, taking drugs, doing whatever it takes to "Kill the pain". Yeah well I'm starting to have a bit less sympathy for the "victims".

If I didn't say it before, I was bullied in most of my school years. In elementary school it was because I was the overweight little girl with a pixie cut that had side burns. In middle school it was because I was the overweight girl who hated wearing jeans so I'd wear really bad looking color matching sweatsuits that were very tight. In high school, I was the dancer who was awkward in personality, and would get bullied by most who just didn't like me. I'd get pushed, shoved, yanked on my backpack causing me to fall down stairs. I'd have rumors passed around about me, I'd have people look and point at me as I walked around. Half of it was my doing and I willingly admit it. I wanted so badly to fit in with everyone I did whatever I could and most of the time I made a fool of myself. Tack that to being teacher's pet most of the time, and being over sheltered by an over protective Grandparent who wouldn't allow me to watch or do certain school related things due to violence, and you may as well have put the target on my back and forehead.

I never ONCE considered suicide. Never. I told my Grandmother, who went and told the school counselor. They had some teachers go in the hallway one day and they monitored me walking down the hall. There was no "announcement" or public thing, and sure enough if someone bullied me it was proven I was telling the truth, and that person along with anyone who joined in got in trouble. It ended by senior year, and I graduated high school and I'm now 28 years old. These kids seem to have forgotten that going on facebook and twitter is NOT going to tell the schools what is happening. All it's going to do is make those who are bullying them see publicly that they are doing just what they want...push the kid's buttons. Doing so in the end just makes it worse.

One girl killed herself because naked photographs were being passed around at school of her and she felt so humiliated. Um...why did you let the pictures be taken in the first place? You couldn't have just used your own good judgment and decided that doing that was not a good idea? You didn't hear about that back in the 1990's or 2000's did you? We had camera phones then, we had texting, we had cameras, we had the means to do it. Did we? We weren't that dumb. So why blame these kids for passing around the photographs when you chose to let them be taken? I know I probably sound really heartless right now considering this girl is dead and she took her own life, but let's put the honesty here, she handed the bullies the ammunition.

It's one thing if an elementary school kid commits suicide. These young children don't understand what they have to live for, they don't understand how to comprehend what's going on, and where are the parents during all this? When I got bullied in elementary school I went home and told my Grandma and she explained that bullies are nothing more than unhappy kids who want others to be unhappy too. I told her they said it was my haircut, and she never got me that haircut again to ensure that the bullying stopped. It did, because I quit reacting to it after she told me what she did. Where are the parents for these children? Shouldn't they be saying the same? Or are they just too busy now with their farmville and netflix to realize what's going on?

Bullying is almost as bad as a virus, it spreads and harms so many in so many ways. But victimizing yourself when you have caused your own ammunition against you is just as bad. Bad parenting is VERY bad. The parents of these bullies should step up and smack down their kids for their behavior, and the parents of the victims should step up and teach their children how to handle these situations instead of leaving them alone all the time. What's an "emo" child? A child with too much freedom and not enough parenting who has no decent path paved by their parents to understand what to do when things get tough. TOUGHEN UP KIDS, believe me, it just gets worse as you get older.