Wait, you don't know who Peter Cullen or Optimus Prime are? Ah, just look here.
My dream is to someday hear Peter Cullen read the Affirmations For Bullying Victims message in his Optimus Prime voice. Optimus is a character who could drive the message home with his gentle, authoritative baritone voice. Wait, you don't know who Peter Cullen or Optimus Prime are? Ah, just look here.
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Bullying is a frustrating and ugly situation. If your child comes to you with complaints about being bullied, there are things you can say that will actually do more harm than good. I heard all of these myself from teachers and one or two from my own father.
"Just ignore it." A child is coming to you for help because they probably tried that already and it didn't work. The message this might send is that YOU don't want to take the time to help them through this. What if things get worse and your child thinks you won't help them, so they decide not to ask for help again? Never tell a child to "just ignore it" if they're being bullied. IT DOES NOT WORK. "Don't be so sensitive." Way to go, you just invalidated your child's hurt feelings! No, don't ever, EVER say this. Again, this pushes the child away and they might decide you aren't the person to come to when they're hurt or upset. It's dangerous, especially if they're suffering from depression due to the bullying. Don't say it, no matter how badly you want to. Some children are more sensitive than others. "Don't take it so personally." Suppose a bully walked up to your child and said, "(Child's name), you suck at life. You're worthless, useless and you don't deserve to exist. You're ugly and everybody hates you. I hope you kill yourself, you piece of sh*t." That sounds like a pretty personal attack to me. What if the child's locker was vandalized, or they had textbooks, their backpack or other valuables stolen by bullies? And you tell them not to take that personally? No. It IS personal, and saying this will shut your child down from asking for help. "Well, what did YOU do to cause these kids to start teasing you?" NO! NO, NO, NO! Never say this! NEVER! I mean NEVER! This is the ultimate act of victim blaming and it will hurt your child for the rest of their life. This will guarantee your child believes they deserve it and they won't ever come to you again. This is the statement my father made that led me to believe I deserved the bullying I got. I never did ANYTHING to ANYONE. I was too short, too underdeveloped and too different from my peers to fit in. This statement is what made me stop reporting the horrible things other kids did to me. I suffered awful things in silence, and I still don't know how I'm alive today. This is THE WORST thing you can say to a bullied child. DO NOT SAY THIS! What CAN you say? What SHOULD you say? I can't tell you the exact words to say to a bullied child. The first thing you should do is let them talk to you. Just listen. Don't try to fix it, don't interrupt, just listen and let them tell you everything. It may be the child just wants to be heard. The worst thing about being bullied was feeling like no one cared or wanted to hear me. Don't do that to your child. I have some experience with being a bully myself. It's a bit of a story, one I'm not proud of, but maybe it offers insight into why some kids bully others.
When I was in fifth grade, there was a boy in my class named Jesse Lee (last name withheld). He was obnoxious, loud and had all the qualities I didn't like in people at that time. I thought his hygiene was poor, I thought he had a disgusting snot nose, I hated how he bragged about being in a military family and I hated that he clung to teachers a lot. He would be in school with me from fifth grade onward. Once, he was overheard teasing me a little. He called me Cyndi Windy. I guess other kids took that as an excuse to pile on the bullying--on HIM! His nickname became Jesse Flea, and EVERYBODY started using it. Jesse HATED it! It made him cry, which made the other boys laugh more. It got so bad that his mom came to the school over the issue, and that made it even worse. Nobody liked the "mama's boy" in school, after all, right? Kids started getting really nasty towards Jesse. Here's where I was a total jerk. I look back on all of this with so much regret. I'm sure he remembers this just as painfully as I do. I saw that I wasn't the one at the bottom of the food chain. I wasn't the one being stepped on and humiliated by my peers. I finally had the power to make somebody else feel as bad as I was made to feel in fourth grade. So, being the brat that I was, I started participating in making fun of Jesse. I used to say he was just like Pigpen from Peanuts because he was always dirty-looking. There was a time in school where Jesse got physically ill and tried to hide it. I saw it happen. Being the b*tch that I was, I made sure the whole class knew, and everyone harassed him about it for the rest of the year. He went home in tears that day because of me. We rode the same short bus since we were full time RSP students. I never let him sit next to me. I didn't want his "germs." He had to sit in the back with the other kids nobody liked. I felt so good to not be the loser of the group. I had friends, and Jesse didn't. I was moving up the school totem pole. Once, Jesse said something about my dad. I don't even remember what exactly it was, but I didn't like it. I punched him in the stomach as hard as I could and slapped him in the face. I was a tiny girl, and Jesse stood way taller than me. My fist doubled him over, my slap made him cry, and kids mocked him for getting beat up by a girl. He didn't fight back and I never got in trouble. I guess he didn't want the tattletale label added to everything else. In junior high, I insulted him every chance I got. We didn't share any classes. The name calling always took place in the halls or out on the field if I saw him with his class during gym. Since I was again being bullied at the time, my insults to him were some of the same things I heard from my own bullies. I wasn't the only person to bully Jesse. He got it from other kids. My stupid logic told me if I kept bullying Jesse, then it meant I wasn't the lowest person on the totem pole. Jesse was an early developer for a boy. He was taller than most kids in elementary school. He bragged about that a lot. Then everybody caught up in junior high. He got a LOT of crap because of that. Jesse was the reason I met Charles, the boy I would date until the end of high school. I managed to turn Charles against Jesse by telling him what Jesse was like in elementary school. I made up stories about things Jesse did to me. Charles soon alienated Jesse and I had him all to myself. I was such a winner, wasn't I? (Sarcasm intended). High school meant I shared some of the smaller RSP help classes with Jesse. Puberty wasn't being kind to him--he had some pretty obvious acne and extremely greasy skin. Then again, so did I, but his was worse. I made fun of it a lot. He liked to kiss up to teachers and I made sure the other kids in the class knew it. A few didn't participate. Some turned on me, however more of them joined in giving Jesse a hard time. It had the effect I wanted--it made him shut up. Class was GREAT when I didn't have to hear his loud, obnoxious voice. Did it ever occur to me that some people have loud voices and he was one of them? Nope. I tried to get Jesse in trouble. Constantly. Once, I stole a pocket knife out of somebody's unlocked gym locker and tried to convince the principal that Jesse threw it at me. I thought my plan was airtight, and that getting him expelled would make me one of the cool kids. I was that desperate to stop getting bullied. My plan failed miserably because I was too stupid to keep my story straight. All I got for it was detention and two referrals for having a knife on campus and making false accusations. Jesse never got in trouble at all, but he did find out about what I did. He laughed at my epic fail, and that time I deserved it. I remember once hearing Jesse tell a dirty joke in class. I won't repeat it since it's vulgar. While everybody else laughed, I looked at Jesse and said, "Haha, no, YOU are the joke. You're always the joke!" The other kids agreed. Jesse stared down at his textbook like I slapped the fun out of him. The teacher of the class overheard me and made me apologize. I did, pouring in as much drama as possible to make it look genuine. Then I walked away and made a face so the other students knew I didn't mean it. Jesse knew too. He didn't say another word for the rest of that class period. That's about the time my own bullying experiences accelerated. I started getting quieter, and I began to connect how bad I felt from it with how bad Jesse must have felt because of me. I still said nasty things to him when I was angry, but this happened less and less. Senior year was probably the worst for me. It won't surprise me if it was Jesse's worst year too. Senior year was also the year my ability to sympathize turned on like a light. It happened in the space of a heartbeat. I remember that moment so clearly. It was the seniors' last week at school before the senior trips and adventures started. I sat down in my third period math class. I made sure I got to math class early so I wasn't the one stuck sitting next to Jesse. Jesse was doodling on a piece of notebook paper. He didn't acknowledge me. I took out my yearbook and looked at the sparse signatures and notes. I was taking stock of all my years in high school. Jesse looked sad in his senior portrait. As sad as he looked sitting at his desk. As sad as I looked in my sophomore portrait two years previous. Somewhere down the line it came out that Jesse called me Cyndi Windy in fifth grade because he actually had a crush on me. Jesse vehemently denied this of course. Who wanted to admit to having a crush on "that gross toothpick b*tch"? I felt like the most hated person in the whole school and undeserving of Charles, yet Charles dated me anyway. Hearing even a hint that Jesse had a crush on me...well, I was grossed out at first. I didn't want the slimy boy--the boy who probably washed daily and just had really oily skin. I didn't want the germ boy--the boy who probably had nasal allergies he couldn't control. I still don't know if the whole crush thing was true or not. I remember sitting there, watching Jesse's pencil move. He was slouched down in his chair, looking sad. I felt sad myself as I just endured a flurry of insults from a group of girls in the hall. Jesse's skin was greasy, but his clothes were clean--just kind of old. Maybe his family didn't have money and that's why his clothes were dingy. Jesse stopped doodling when he noticed me staring. He closed his notebook and got out his English textbook. "Get it over with." That's what he said to me. He must have thought I was staring to pick out another way to insult him. I shook my head and shut my yearbook. I glanced at Jesse. He was bent over his English book. The bell rang. The door of the classroom was open. Somebody walking by hurled a wadded up paper towel at Jesse and called him a fag. I picked up the paper towel, spat on it to make it more gross and threw it back at that kid. I said something to the effect that his mom was a two dollar hooker. Then I turned to Jesse and said, "Jesse, I'm sorry." Jesse kept staring down at his book. He wasn't reading. He mouthed his words when he read and he wasn't moving his mouth at all. I leaned on his desk and said it again. "Jesse, I'm sorry." He turned a page in his book and used his hand to slap it down flat. He asked me, "What do you want?" I put my hands on his desk. "Look, we're about to graduate here. This whole thing was stupid. We shouldn't walk away from school as enemies. I'm sorry about everything I said to you." "Why?" He asked me point blank. I started tearing up. "Because I know how it feels and I don't want to graduate hating each other. Can we bury the hatchet here?" People started walking into class. I wondered if I would regret making nice with Jesse when other people could see it. Jesse slammed his book shut. "Okay. Fine." We shook hands on it. I let him hug me to show him I was serious. Funny, he didn't smell bad at all. One of the merciless ways I bullied him was to comment that he smelled like the garbage. I know I made him feel like garbage. I was no better than the kids who harassed me. I used to think it was great to not be alone. I used to think it was funny to take what made me feel bad and use it to make somebody else feel worse. I was a JERK. It didn't feel that great at all to bully Jesse around. I thought it did at the time. Looking back, it makes me sick. Stepping on somebody to not feel low doesn't raise you up at all, it just drags you down. It's amazing how truly good it felt to say I was sorry. Yeah, the people who saw Jesse hug me gave me grief about it. They called us lovebirds and some made kissy-kissy noises at us. I told them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine. I think the apology was the last time I ever really talked to Jesse. I haven't seen him since graduation over ten years ago. I wonder if he still remembers me owning up to how stupid I was towards him. I wonder if he really believed my apology--and it won't surprise me if he didn't. None of my bullies ever apologized to me. I don't expect them to now. I was awful to Jesse for so many years. He got bullied himself, and I added to his pain. I was the salt in and already painful wound. I regret the bullying I did. I don't regret apologizing for it. Jesse, if you see this, I meant what I said. I really am sorry for how I acted around you. People often mistake the act of forgiving something as saying what happened was okay. That really isn't the case. Forgiveness means letting go of the hate and anguish we associate with something. In some Bible verses, Jesus cries out as He is being nailed to the Cross, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!" Forgiveness is a big step in healing. Forgiveness is letting go of something. Forgiveness is finding the strength in yourself to grow beyond what happened to you. Imagine walking around with a bag on your back. People in your life run up and stuff rocks into the bag. Over time it gets heavier and heavier. Pretty soon it's weighing you down. The weight of the bag stays there long after people stopped coming and shoving rocks into it. You go about your life with the weight crushing you, and you look at the burden with bitterness. I've got news for you: You don't HAVE to keep carrying that bag. You're probably used to having it there so much you forgot about it until it gets jostled. Carrying it takes a lot of energy you could be using for other things. So drop it and walk onward unhindered. I know, I know, easier said than done. Letting go of what bullies did to you and forgiving them is hard to do. There's that feeling of, "I hope something really horrible happens to those people for what they did to me!" that sticks around for a long time. I had that for years. Then I heard a song by Linkin Park called Iridescent and it spoke to me. I don't know how or why, but I knew it was time to drop my bag of rocks. I did it when I recorded my cover of that song. To me, it felt like reaching into the bag, taking out each rock individually and hurling them into the ocean. I cast off each burden one at a time until I had none left, and I felt amazing afterward. YOU will know you've reached forgiveness when you think of your bullies and wish them well. I hope mine grew up to be better people than they were when I knew them. When you were standing in the wake of devastation When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown And with the cataclysm raining down, insides crying, "Save me now" You were there, impossibly alone Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go, let it go And in a burst of light That blinded every angel As if the sky had blown The heavens into stars You felt the gravity of tempered grace Falling into empty space No one there to catch you in their arms Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go, let it go Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go, let it go Let it go, let it go, let it go Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure's all you've known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go, let it go -- Linkin Park, "Iridescent" When it comes to antibullying messages, the one statement I HATE the most is the one that basically says, "Bullies can only hurt you if you let them."
Do you know what that says to me? The same message says to me, "It's your fault you get hurt by those words because you choose to feel hurt." "Letting" implies a conscious choice. I don't think a person's true emotional sensitivity is a choice just as sexual orientation isn't a choice. You're either born one way or another. Some people are more sensitive than others. I happen to be a sensitive person. While I try not to take everything as personally as I used to, the things people sometimes say to me can and do hurt. The only thing I can do is control my response. This is easier online, where my face isn't seen by the other person and I can just delete a comment without reading it. It was different IRL, where the reaction was visible on my face. How about this: Some people are just better at hiding their pain than others. I am not one of those people. I never was. The bullies knew that I produced immediate results and no matter what I did I was helpless to stop myself from reacting. Believe me, I TRIED. I tried EVERYTHING to not react and it never, ever worked. Other people out there do a better job of controlling their reaction to bullies. I applaud those who can look indifferent in the moment and go home to let out their anger on a pillow or a video game. This is one instance where I think video games may be of benefit. Let kids go home and take out their anger on pixels instead of real people. (Just make sure you teach them that real life is not like a game and playing with guns or beating people up IRL is a bad idea! Self defense is one thing, going up to somebody and punching them in the face is another.) I remember how I went home after school and played Mortal Kombat II, Killer Instinct or Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo. They were violent beat-em-up fighting games. I wasn't very good at them, but it got some of that rage out. At least until I got sick of losing and got mad at the games, LOL! Then I liked to turn on an RPG and take the hate out on random monsters using spells and swords.* My point is--sometimes, people are just sensitive and can't hide that they are. That is NOT a bad thing, and implied blame should NOT be placed on a sensitive person if they get bullied. * Not so secret: My favorite video game ever is actually Tetris, but if you ask me to list my favorite RPG it's Chrono Trigger. I'm so old and I miss my Super Nintendo. :P When I wrote about my bullying experiences on the AFBV website, I made mention of what I still have trouble with, but I didn't go into detail. Today, I feel like I should. I want to lay out the effects bullying had on me. I'm working on some, and others I'm letting go until I conquer some of my other hangups. Bullying has lasting effects, and a lot of those effects changed me during my teen years.
Here they are. ~ Being alone around groups of teenagers makes me anxious. I'm almost over this one, yet it's still hard. My mind plays tricks on me and makes me see the people who tormented me in school when I see teenagers. I used to have an intense fear response. That doesn't happen so much anymore now that I don't live near my old high school. When I'm near more than two or three high school age people, I tend to get quiet and try to go unnoticed. ~ I have low self esteem, no self confidence and feel inferior to everyone around me. Oh boy, this is the big one I've been working on for years and years. I have good days and bad days with this. The thing is, if I'm having a great day, one stupid comment can bring it all down and all those positive feelings go down the tubes! If I'm all dressed up and feel beautiful, but someone tells me I would look so much prettier if I wore pink lipstick instead of red, ugh. That will ruin my confidence for the rest of the day. Remember, I spent years in school being told daily that I was ugly, flat chested, a freak, too small, and everything I wore was mocked by my peers. It is HARD for me to feel pretty even on a good day. It's also hard to express myself when I was bullied for showing any sort of emotion at all. I still go about life thinking my feelings DON'T matter, and I tell myself constantly that they DO. ~ I attack myself verbally if I make mistakes in front of others. I figure I might as well acknowledge my own error before someone else does. I don't even touch this. It's been going on since high school. If I'm getting my medicine from the cupboard and I drop the pill bottle lid, I usually exclaim, "DAMMIT!" as I pick it up and slam the bottle down on the counter top. This comes from the times in school where I would trip, bump into things or drop things, and the kids who saw it would be like, "Haha, and look she acts like nothing happened. Stupid b****!" By acknowledging my own mistakes first, I feel like anyone who witnessed me screwing up will know that I know and leave me the hell alone. I still hate it when I bump into the doorknob or something as I'm leaving my dad's room, and my dad will comment on it. Then I have to turn around and say something snotty just to deflect my own embarrassment. I know, I know, I should talk to him about it, but it seems like such a stupid thing to bother with in the first place. It's my hangup, not his. ~ I don't take public embarrassment well. This is pretty self explanatory. A lot of my bullying involved public humiliation. If I do something like fall down in front of people, my instinct is to lay there until they go away, or say I'm fine and run off to be alone even if I'm injured. I don't even like to make mistakes in front of my own family, and I've pretty much forbidden them from telling 'embarrassing' childhood stories about me to anybody. This one is also a real problem for me if I mess up in choir. I've actually cried after missing notes and said I was sorry for messing up the people next to me, which made THEM really uncomfortable. That was a real feedback loop MESS and it makes me cringe when I remember it. ~ Sometimes, I feel like everyone is judging everything I say and do. I hate the feeling, I really, really hate it. I'm always editing myself, second guessing myself and trying to make sure what I write online is as clear as possible. This one really needles me if I think I've worded something in a way NOBODY can misinterpret, and somebody comes up offended anyway with an interpretation I never even thought of. Then I feel like once I've screwed up in front of certain people, that is all they'll see when they speak to me. That is all they'll remember about me. I'm just (mistake) and nothing else. This is especially true after I screwed up in my fandom. Now, I can't even be sure who is nice and who isn't when I join new communities or forums. I've atoned for the mistakes I made, but some people refuse to let it go and I'm still That Drama Queen Who F***ed Up to them. The anxiety is so bad that I've made up false IRL identities for forums just so people don't know who I really am. They can't laugh at me if they don't know it's me. ~ Confrontations of any sort terrify me. Both online and offline, confrontations are the worst thing to deal with. I am working on this one, but it's not easy. My dad is pretty confrontational and he knows how to push my buttons. I don't think he does it on purpose, but now I will get snotty at him rather than go quiet and let whatever he says go. Sometimes he tells me how I should feel, and I've put up with that for thirty two years--now I tell him that "No, I'll feel how I want. You aren't the boss of my emotions!" Then he gets mad at me for what he perceives as 'backtalk' and we end up fighting. And it might be because I got mad because of something stupid like a gnat in my face or my computer running slow. Cripes, I get tired of being told my emotions are wrong! ~ I have trouble outright trusting anyone, and I'm very guarded around new people. There are some exceptions to this, but they are rare. A lot of the bullies I dealt with started out pretending to be my friend. They let me get comfortable and POW, they turned from face to heel and backstabbed me. They mocked the secrets I told them. The same thing happened online when people from the Places That Shall Not Be Named joined my private forum and were sharing the information I posted there publicly. The fake blogs I used as IP collecting traps were only useful in finding these moles and banning them. However, the damage was done. It's rare for someone to come into my life and make me immediately comfortable. My choir's newest director, John, is one of those exceptions. I knew it when he didn't judge me after I told him my school choir story and instead told me he wants to help me heal. ~ I struggle to accept genuine compliments unless I know the person giving them. This one is related to things that happened in school. Every achievement I made was a source of ridicule. Nothing I did well received any positive feedback from my peers. I started believing them instead of my teachers. Majority rules, right? I believed any awards or certificates I got were given out of pity and not because I actually did something outstanding. The problem stuck with me and I'm slowly working through it. ~ I'm still struggling with the mentality that everything I do has to be so perfect that nobody will have anything negative to say about it. The moment somebody comes out of the woodwork and points out the flaws in something I worked hard on, I go from loving it to thinking it's terrible. Oh boy, biggest issue to date that I'm fighting with. It's not one I've overcome yet. It's related to having all my physical and mental flaws pointed out to me in school. Others joined in the kids pointing out all that was wrong with me until I cracked and ran off alone to cry. I tried to act perfect and there was always something wrong with it--and with me. I was too short, too flat chested, my clothes were cheap, my shoes were kiddy shoes, my pencils were dorky, I wore the wrong lipstick color, etc. But this personal hangup really gets me when it comes to fanworks. I feel like I can tell a great story, but the minute somebody starts picking things apart, I feel like the fanwork is worthless. I was so proud of the fanfic that later led to my online humiliation. Now I feel like that story was a huge mistake, but so many people DO love it that I can't justify taking it down forever. There was another fanfic I wrote that I thought was different from what's out there, only to have somebody pick apart a character not wanting to abort her pregnancy because she thought it was murder. The source material never gave us any indication of where this character stood on the matter, so I ran with my own idea as I don't like the idea of abortion either. People write what they know! I have trouble liking that story too, because of that one person. I know they meant well, but it's a ME thing, not a THEM thing. I understand the point of criticism when it's constructive. The person who picked at that one issue is pro-choice and I'm pro-life. I felt the character was also pro-life after she went to great lengths to save an alien's life in the source material. What happens is I worry that once the flaw gets pointed out, that is all the rest of the readers will see and talk about, and then I'm afraid of getting a cascade of comments about that ONE THING rather than everything. I've seen it happen to other stories, it happened to the story that ended up causing me drama, and I'm always afraid of it happening again. I remind myself constantly that "you can't please everyone" and try to remember there are a lot of people who like my works as they are. Who knows? I do listen to the criticism I receive and try to utilize what I learned from it in future stories, but it's pretty scary to me. Even if I fix the one issue from story A when I write stories B and C, there will always be somebody who finds something ELSE wrong with those works. Fixing one thing breaks another. See how the cycle works? Now, the above DOES NOT mean "BOOHOO, NEVER CRITICIZE ME!" I can take criticism. I don't like it, nobody does, but I wanted to share what goes through my head at first and why those things go through my head in the first place. Once upon a time, I used to be nasty to people who gave me criticism. How dare they not understand this point or that plot twist. It got me a bad reputation and I'm slowly fixing it. Now, I thank them, look at what they're pointing at and see about avoiding that same thing in the next story. I say "the next story" because I always finish my fanworks before I post them. If they are a multichapter piece, I post a chapter a day until the story is done. I used to post as I wrote, but that meant abandoned stories if I lost inspiration. It takes off the pressure. I've been singing in my church's choir for over ten years. It took me from 1998 to 2001 before I found the will to sing again after my high school choir teacher humiliated me in front of my peers. For those three years, I believed my voice was terrible and that I wasn't meant to sing. Then I joined the Catholic church in 2001 and my mom urged me to join the choir. I was reluctant, but I did. It was like going home and putting on those old, comfortable slippers you only break out when it's winter.
The church choir didn't come without a few sudden upheavals. Members left, and a few have died due to age related illnesses(most of them are parent/grandparent aged people), we lost two to cancer and others just drifted or moved away. As for directors--so far I have seen two come and go, and I'm currently on "my" third director. I don't know how many the older members of the choir have seen. I hate it when directors go. It means starting all over again with somebody new. I have to explain that I have sensory issues and I do this, this and this to deal with them, and I'm not trying to be rude if I plug my ears with my fingers or show up wearing earplugs. I don't go up to them and be all "Hi, I have an ASD!" I wait awhile, until I can sit down with the new director and explain it a bit. I like to open it up for THEM to ask questions so it isn't such an info dump. I'll tell you a little about the directors I've worked with. Our first director, Hayden, had been there for years before he left. He was very traditional and understanding. He heard me singing with my section and called me one of his best sopranos because my voice is so light and clear. He was the one who told me voices like mine are rare and special, and that is how I learned to embrace my "weird" little voice. And then, right before Easter in 2005, Hayden quit because he was mad that he wasn't allowed choose the music for our Easter program. This was a problem that brewed in the background for a long time, and he got fed up. He left, suddenly without warning, and I was heartbroken. Our second director, Pro, came to us many months after Hayden left. He was with us from 2005 until 2012. His style was a complete opposite to Hayden's! He was a very fast-paced in-your-face type of director with a wicked sense of humor and a REALLY bad habit of making changes to music two seconds before a performance after we learned it a different way for a week! (He says Filipinos are like that, and he could make that joke because he was Filipino himself!) If you got new music, you better hope you studied it or listened to somebody perform it on youtube, because Pro didn't spend much time "woodshedding" which is the process of cleaning out all the wrong notes. Yet, somehow, our performances always came together perfectly! He exposed us to various styles and languages. He turned the choir into a group who won competitions at festivals, and he taught us how to be open to all styles of music. We've been complimented many times by how compliant we are when guest directors worked with us. Working with Pro was easier to me than most, as I memorize music easily, but I also had a lot of frustration because I felt like he didn't notice those with the weaker, quieter voices like me. He hired section leaders to speed up the process of learning music. I found him to be intimidating through no fault of his own--he was simply so busy all the time. But he was good at what he did and he could ROCK a piano. He told us he was leaving on his last night with us, and naturally I was heartbroken again. Finally, in October of 2012, we got John, our newest director. He's that type of person you can tell is nice right away, like Hayden was. All the fears I had about "the next guy" were unfounded. John is fun, talented and he gets into the music as he's directing. He gives feedback as he directs and he makes warming up before practice or a performance a lot of fun. I like that he's a little slower paced about teaching us than Pro was. He focuses a lot more on blending and diction. John is the first director to whom I told the full extent of what happened to me in high school. The other ones, I just made a vague mention of it, but I told John in an email with all the details. I wrote it after going through a difficult rehearsal where all my negative vocal quirks were coming up. One of them is being so afraid to stick out too much that if others sing wrong notes around me, my voice will follow the wrong notes against my will just so I don't stick out. It's frustrating. I started out writing to tell him I KNEW the song and in explaining why I was messing up, the whole experience from high school ended up coming out. I told him I have crippling stage fright and my musical dream is to sing Silent Night as a solo at Midnight Mass. John wrote back and thanked me for expressing my fears to him and told how sorry he was that something so cruel happened to me, and that, most importantly, he wants to help me heal. The Sunday morning after that email, he gave me a big hug and said he is glad to know me and he'll walk with me through the healing process. I don't normally trust people immediately, but John won me over with that. I don't feel intimidated by him and I don't feel like I'm in his way. I feel like he's an ally who wants me to succeed. At my choir's recent Christmas party, I had a little too much to drink(I love wine and I'm a lightweight, lol) and ended up telling them what happened and what John said to me, and they were all over me, hugging me and telling me they will NEVER laugh at me like that. It's given me the courage to ad-lib those high notes I know I can hit at the end of songs that allow for those kinds of shenanigans. I shocked the hell out of John with the note I hit at the end of "Sing Out, Earth and Skies" and I told him I felt brave that day. He gave me a big hug and told me he hopes to see more of that from me. I hit the high notes again at the end of "Go Tell It On A Mountain" and John made a little joke by saying, "don't hurt yourself!" (I missed it was a joke the first time, till he told me. Now it's funny!) Thanks to the support I have from my singing environment, I feel more desire to take musical risks. I remind myself that nobody will laugh at me if I fail. That is the hardest issue to get over--the fear of being mocked and laughed at if I make a mistake or hit a bum note. It happens to all singers! But most importantly, I feel I'll take steps towards my dream of singing a Silent Night solo at Midnight Mass on Christmas eve. It may be this year or in another year, but now it feels like it's a goal within my reach. And it's all thanks to having my choir at my back and my director in front of me as a support team. It's bound to happen. That facebook photo, or that artwork you drew, that one video you made, or even something you wrote in a comment or instant message becomes the subject of online ridicule.
This is not a post related to those who get cyberbullied by people who know them. I'm talking about the cyberbullying that comes out of the blue. I don't want to name the places these people come from, as it will attract them, but there are websites and message boards where those who love to ridicule everything on the internet gather to share what they found. I know, I got smashed by them. In my case, it WAS my own fault. I disobeyed a site's terms of service and threw a fit when my offensive(according to their rules) fanwork was removed. Rather than accept that, I raged. It was the main site where fans and readers of said fanwork came to read and comment on it. I feared this meant they wouldn't know where else to find the fanfic. I posted it again, thinking there was an error. The website suspended me immediately. Logic dictates I should have accepted what happened and found another place to link my friends. But was I logical at the time? Nope! I wasn't getting my way, so I made a huge stink all over the internet. Why did my work get pulled, but others with similar content could stay? I claimed I didn't understand the rules because of my mental disability. I blamed the art site for not making the rules clear enough. I blamed the person who reported the original fanwork and got it pulled down. Back buttons exist for a reason, right? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Well, guess what? The people from the Places That Shall Not Be Named(PTSNBN) got wind of it. Just like sharks smell blood in the water. I started getting spam and hate comments. Somebody linked me to one of the PTSNBN and there was a whole bunch of stuff about me that I never wanted people to know. All of a sudden I found myself the subject of online mockery. They took screencaps of my Livejournal, screencaps of my art site journal, grabbed my least flattering photos, mocked old videos of me singing(pre-2011) and aired my dirty laundry and drama for the internet to see. They mass-reported my other fanworks until they were removed from the art site, and they got the fanwork that started it all removed off the secondary site I was linking to during my suspension. Boy, was I ticked, and I let them know! Guess what? It just fueled them on and the attacks continued. My responses to them were extremely immature. They thought a twenty-eight year old reacting like an eight year old was the height of hilarity. These people humiliated me in nearly every possible way a person can be humiliated on the internet. I say nearly because there were things I avoided, but still--all the scars I'd closed up since high school were ripped open, and I was a mess. It sucked, but it could have been worse. There are those out there who had far more than their pride damaged by these people, but I digress--I went through four years of fear and anguish over this. What happened to me was not the worst cyberbullying has to offer. It just felt like it to me. In attempt to combat it, I made fake blogs full of cussing and drama just so they had something to chew on while I went about my life. I convinced these people that I cut and dyed my hair and that I wore glasses because I felt physically unsafe out in public. Gotta love photoshop; it let me post photos of my "new" hair for awhile, and I had fake glasses frames I could wear for the "bad" photos, which were intentionally unflattering and dorky. These were posted on a fake Myspace page that I made just for the cyberbullies to make fun of, and boy did they run with the pictures. I was able to pretend they were attacking somebody else who just looked similar to me. It helped, but it didn't make it go away. The truth is, I never changed my hair at all, and my eyesight is fine. I don't feel clever for the ruse. I'm probably not the first person to do it, but it let me feel safer after one cyberbully sent me a death threat. I now realize it was probably some teenager thinking they were funny, but at the time it was as real to me as the Mick guy who threatened me with rape and death in high school. The fake blogs and fake Myspace were bait to capture the IP addresses of the cyberbullies, but I couldn't do anything with them. Many of them were using proxies anyway, so all my efforts were about as effective as finding a needle on a planet full of haystacks. The fake blogs were wastes of my time and energy, the fake Myspace got tiresome to keep up, and all they did was make me look bad. I abandoned them all after deleting the worst of their content. Then I bumped into somebody on the art site who was making the same mistake I did, and I realized why I was targeted. I realized how annoying and ignorant my behavior was. My perception of this person was the same perception people from the PTSNBN had about me. I realized that the internet doesn't care about disabilities, skin color or your background. People won't listen to what they perceive as excuses, and trust me--EVERYTHING can be construed as an excuse on the internet. I stopped most of the cyberbullying that same day when I owned up to my mistake. I acknowledged that I was wrong, made many apologies and tried to help the person about to be targeted by telling her my story. As expected, she didn't listen, and she narrowly avoided the same disaster I went through. That said, think about the content you post on the internet. Think about it right this minute. Now, let me show you what NOT to do: First and foremost...DO NOT SHARE NUDE PICTURES OR PORN VIDEOS OF YOURSELF ANYWHERE! EVER! NOT EVEN VIA EMAIL! Why? These things will be found. Emails get hacked. The person you sent those pictures or videos to might not be who they say they are. If things with your girlfriend or boyfriend go sour, they might just be petty enough to share your naked photos or videos around. Private photo and video galleries can and do get raided. Once the nude images and porn videos go public you can NEVER get them off the net. They will be there forever, and might ruin your future in terms of gainful employment. DO NOT POST YOUR FULL NAME, YOUR PHONE NUMBER OR YOUR ADDRESS! This is a given, but I want to cover it anyway. Don't. People from the PTSNBN consist of people who know how to search for and find people's phone numbers, addresses and full names on the internet. Facebook is REALLY bad about that. I don't even use my real surname on Facebook. Call me paranoid if you want, but I prefer to keep that information offline. I "leaked" a fake last name when the the PTSNBN people were actively harassing me. I did it to stop them from searching for it, and I still fear they might find that info. I search myself regularly and so far, so good. I know I can control what content I put out, but there's no telling what other people might unknowingly put out about you. Google your own full name and see what comes up. You'll be surprised. As for your phone number and home address--come on...do you really want to get flooded with boxes, pizzas, product samples and junk mail? Do you want to get obnoxious prank calls and texts all hours of the day and night? Do you want people from Craigslist showing up at your door or calling you at two o'clock in the morning? Just keep that info off the internet. Not even secure social sites are infallible, and a persistent cyberbully will find the information. Cyberbullies posting your personal info aren't breaking the law unless it was never listed anywhere on the internet, so I'm sorry to say you can't pull legalese on them if they found your home address on your Myspace page. Just keep it off the net for your safety. KEEP SEPARATE EMAIL ADDRESSES. One email address for private use and another for registering on forums or websites. If that isn't an option, find a free forwarding service. I enjoyed the use of the forwarding service known as w3.to*, and I had several shortened email addresses that I used to sign up for websites, blogs, etc. If I'm just commenting on a blog I'll never comment on again, I use yopmail or mailinator. The email I used to sign up for weebly was one of the w3.to forwards. That doesn't mean I don't use 'real' inboxes. The messages I receive from the "send me a message" page and blog comments go to a hotmail account intended JUST for things related to the Affirmations For Bullying Victims. My personal email, to which my w3.to emails used to funnel to, is on another free webmail service. The people from the PTSNBN never got a hold of my personal email address, and I believe that alone saved me from a LOT of grief. I think I let them find a fake one that I never used, but I could be wrong. It's been forever. If the cyberbullies get your real email, they'll try to hack it or sign it up for a bunch of spam, and going to unsubscribe from all of that is a huge headache. And if they hack your email and are able to reset all your passwords and get your personal information all from one email account, you are REALLY in for a mess. This is why the email forwarders were really useful to me. Somebody would've needed to know my real email address to even attempt to log in on the forwarder website, and even then all they would've seen was where all the emails went to. I even doubled the forwarder. Most of the email forwards landed on a "primary" forwarder address, which funneled to my real email address. If somebody tried to change any of that info, the site emailed me to confirm it or deny it. It makes finding my email more trouble than it's worth, doesn't it? It's one way to keep cyberbullies from messing with your inbox and online accounts. ETA: *W3.to just decided to discontinue their forwarding service, so I had to scramble and dump so many services into undisclosed locations. Websites like mail.com allow several aliases and domain names(ie [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc.) which means I don't have any single email address attached to my name. Coupled with the hotmail alias service, I probably have over fifteen email addresses that I give out for public use. And btw none of the emails above are real, so don't try them. ;) KEEP STRONG PASSWORDS! Emails, blogs, social sites and other online accounts get hacked all the time because of weak passwords. If your password's "secret question" is too easy to guess, then your password is next to useless. You know those fun memes on the internet that ask you to list a lot of personal information to get your porn star name or your movie stage name? Those are one of the ways people guess your secret question. I don't do those memes, or if I do, I use answers that don't disclose too much. The ones that ask for my first pet, I'll say my late cat, Pepper, but I had another pet before him. I don't tell what it was or what its name was. I don't disclose my mom's maiden name or my dad's middle name. I don't think I've ever even disclosed my own middle name. As for passwords, come ON, don't just use "password" or "1234" because those will get guessed. And for God's sake, if you're on a fandom related site, don't use a password related to that fandom. On a Godzilla website? Don't make Rodan your password. On a Transformers website? Don't use Bumblebee. On a Doctor Who website? Don't use TARDIS. Don't use birth date numbers or zip codes. Don't use ANYTHING if you've posted it in public. Street names, last names, address numbers, phone numbers, I could go on. Those are too obvious. People will guess it! As for me? I like to spell Latin words backwards in l33t speak, or I'll use alphanumeric versions of character names for fandoms unrelated to whichever fandom site I'm currently on. Let's say I'm on a Star Trek website. My password might be "DrTArD15 - - 0P7imUS + PR1mE^Ru1ez! ! !" Got it? (And that is not an actual password for anything I use. I never disclose my real passwords! That's yet another mistake people make!) DO NOT SHARE YOUR PASSWORD. If a website appears to email you asking you to log in, open another tab and type in the site manually. Don't click links in suspicious emails. That's how you get phished! You might manually go to the site and find you never logged out. You just saved yourself from a bad case of hacking. Congratulations! Now, don't give your password to anybody who asks you in an IM or chat, not even if they claim to be working for the site in question. Real webmasters who run the sites you log into won't ask for your password! Don't be gullible! Please! DON'T BE RUDE IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE. Suppose you say something offensive on a message board. You didn't intend it to be, but it comes off that way. The worst thing you can do is be rude about it. Don't be. Don't attack the people for taking what you said differently than you intended. The world wide web doesn't broadcast tone of voice unless you make a video. It can be hard to tell whether a comment is meant to be sarcastic or not. I try to punctuate my sarcasm so it's obvious. "Oh, joy! (sarcasm intended)" seems to work out pretty good. The best thing you can do is apologize and try to reword your statement. You've done the best you can, and then it's out of your hands. Don't engage the people who keep hounding you because of a little error. I promise you, if you do, it will probably snowball and your favorite forum will become a place you hate. It happened to me before. It's not worth it. DISABILITIES SHOULD NEVER BE USED AS A CRUTCH. I, personally, have no issue if somebody tells me they have autism, dyslexia or are dealing with other mental or physical difficulties. I used to chat with somebody who was blind, and so I knew not to give him links to funny pictures. I knew somebody else with cerebral palsy who had to type one key at a time, so I took into account that her responses were much slower than somebody typing with all ten fingers. If I find myself chatting with somebody else on the autism spectrum, I try to keep what I say as literal as possible or explain my points more clearly if I'm misunderstood the first time. Sometimes I have to reread things that I initially think are insults, and when I do I discover it's not an insult at all. The person might be joking. Reading between the lines is hard for me, but now I try to do it rather than jump to conclusions like I used to. If I'm still stumped, I'll just ASK them, "Hey, are you joking with me?" Usually, I get a straight yes or no, and I go from there. I had to learn to not take everything on the internet seriously. Don't get me wrong, there are things I read that still hurt me to the core, but I don't respond to them like I did in the past. It's not worth the anguish. The mistake I made was broadcasting my issues like they gave me special privileges. It started out innocent--I thought I was educating people about it, and I still try to. But my error was hiding behind it when I became a cyberbully target. I learned right away that using the statement "I can't help it when I get mad!" does not fly on the internet. IRL, we say things in anger that we wouldn't normally say. They come out of our mouths before the brain-to-mouth filter can stop it. I get that. On the internet you take far more steps to communicate than you do via speech. You have to go to the site, click a button, type your words and click another button to post. Think about it. You have plenty of time during each step to stop. With your computer, you have the option to not post something scathing you've just written down. You have the option to not post that rude video calling out a cyberbully for saying your artwork is stupid. You can decide not to post that hate art you drew of your MMORPG character killing that guy you hate's character. People who act out online and blame their disorders get targeted the most. It's cruel and it shouldn't happen, however it can and does happen all the time. I know, it sucks! Feel free to talk about autism on an autism forum, or have fun talking about your tics in a Tourette's chatroom. Feel free to disclose your disabilities anywhere you want if you're trying to be open to discussion. Just be careful your disability or disorder doesn't become a crutch, because people on the internet are brutal. This is ESPECIALLY true for those who claim they aren't officially diagnosed and just read about it and thought it fit them. NO. Don't do that. It will make you a target. Too many people fake disorders online nowadays that it's hard to believe who has one and who doesn't. Personally, I like to give the benefit of the doubt, but I am not the rest of the world wide web. IF YOU DISCOVER YOU ARE ALREADY TARGETED: Run damage control immediately. ~ Lock down your blogs, make your social media accounts viewable to you only and remove your email address and instant message service usernames from the public eye. It might be impossible to get it all in time, but you will make the people from the PTSNBN work harder to dig up your info. They will laugh at you for pulling a "DELETE F***ING EVERYTHING" move, but so what? If you get rid of the information before they get it, they can't screencap it. (Warning: There is something called the internet wayback machine that can turn up old cached pages from years ago. They use it often during their harassment! This is why we always have to be careful of what we post online!) ~ If you have a username you use everywhere, beware! They'll google it and find your online accounts. You'll have to run through ALL of your accounts to gain control of your personal information. I also suggest that if your passwords for those are weak, you change and strengthen them immediately. The same goes for your email address password. ~ Remove photos and videos of yourself from the internet the best you can. The cyberbullies might find them, but again it'll take them longer and some might give up. It's worth the shot. Videos can be downloaded and reuploaded somewhere else. Don't assume your videos are safe. If you're on youtube and absolutely don't want to remove them, make them private--not unlisted, PRIVATE! Unlisted videos are still available worldwide, private videos are not. Be careful who you allow to view them. If it's somewhere other than youtube, find out if you can password protect the videos. Otherwise, I'm sorry, you should take them down for now. ~ DO NOT try to engage the trolls and cyberbullies. They want to get content out of you to post and use against you for further humiliation. Go punch a pillow, or write your angry answer in Notepad and close it without saving, but do NOT respond to the nasty messages or spam. They want that. Don't post angry videos, don't try to explain yourself, don't try to justify yourself and don't try to defend yourself. I know you'll want to. I did all of that and it backfired on me. Don't give them that power. I know that words on the screen still hurt, but the people who sent them can't see the hurt unless you respond. Don't give them a response and THEY won't have new material, and THEY won't know their words had the intended effect. Remember, they can't see you behind your computer screen. It's okay to cry and pound your fist into your desk. After you're done, block the offender, but don't delete the message. If the website gives you the option to hide it so you can't see it, do that. Take a screencap if possible. If things get so bad they become a legal issue, those messages may help your case against the cyberbully. ~ Lay low and let the garbage blow over. I know how much it sucks to have to back out of your favorite places on the internet. Believe me, it's miserable. If it's at all possible, take on a new username and rejoin the site after a few days or weeks(or even months or years!). That may not work if your art or writing style is distinctive, but if you're just a forum lurker and don't post much you might get away with it. The trick is you can't tell ANYONE who you really are, or you'll be back to square one. Being cyberbullied is an awful experience. I can't say whether random cyberbullying is worse than the schoolmates who follow somebody to Facebook and send them nasty messages or not. I graduated from high school in 1998, quite a few years before sites like Facebook existed, so I never had school bullies follow me there. The only cyberbullying I know is the random sort that comes out of left field. Both forms of cyberbulling can drive a person to suicide if it's persistent and cruel enough. If you're having so much trouble online that you're thinking of hurting or killing yourself, talk to someone ASAP. Talk to parents or a counselor. Get HELP. Your life is worth it. If you feel physically threatened or see people lurking around after your personal info got posted in public, call the police. Regardless of how cyberbullying strikes, you have the power in your hands. They have no power over you. They think they do, and they want you to think they do, however you have the choice of responding to them or not. No response means no content, and no content means they have nothing on you. They'll resort to digging up content about you from the past if they're truly nasty, but I'm pretty sure the less persistent ones will just give up and find somebody more volatile to satisfy their needs. I won't lie. It will take a LONG time for them to give up. If you screwed up somewhere, admit it and apologize and try to let it go. Prove you grew up past that by not engaging cyberbullies and trolls. Eventually, the most respectable of those people will recognize you improved and leave you alone. If it came out of left field and you don't know why, try to hang on. Try not to give them more content. I won't lie, they'll probably keep talking about you forever--same as the ones who nail people who screw up-- but if they have nothing new on you, they can only speculate while you go about your real life. Most importantly, I must repeat this, if you do feel physically unsafe, call the police. If you think you're going to hurt yourself, get help immediately. YOU matter, and the world would miss you. I made this into a separate post for the sake of clarity.
I'm aware that people out there take offense to the word "victim." Some say it implies helplessness. I, personally, don't think so. If a person fought off a rapist, they were still a victim of attempted rape. If someone was shot and survived, they are still a victim of assault by a deadly weapon. If someone was bullied, but managed to survive and overcome it, they're still a victim of bullying. So are the people who end their lives due to bullying--they are also victims. Bullies themselves may be the victims of circumstances outside their control. An abusive home life or an insecurity. Many bullies are being bullied themselves. They are victims too. And bullying may never stop until we all learn to understand each other. I try to be positive, but with the way the world is today...I can't see that happening any time soon. What a shame. Loss is loss. It does not matter if it is the death of a pet or another human being. Everyone grieves differently.
Bullying someone who is grieving is, in my opinion, one of the cruelest forms of bullying. A person dealing with grief is more vulnerable and may be wracked with guilt. This is especially true if the death was sudden and unexpected, such as a heart attack, suicide or a violent crime. I was close to my grandma. While her death was expected due to terminal brain cancer, I still wasn't expecting her to die so soon after her diagnosis. She woke up after being unconscious for days and called my name, and then she went back to sleep again. My mom rushed me to her side after school that same day. I said my goodbyes, and my grandma passed away two days later. I still remember the taunts I got at school the Monday after her passing. My heart was raw, and their comments were salt in an open, hurting wound. "You're cancer. You gave your grandma cancer. You killed her." Those words were said to my face by a bully. I already had issues with guilt after my grandma's passing. The symptoms crept up so slowly that it was terminal by the time my grandma fell down in the bathroom and started having trouble with speech. She was eighty-one years old; even if we found it early, she wouldn't have wanted to go through chemotherapy and radiation. She used to tell me she had a good life, and she didn't want to delay her trip to Heaven if God decided it was her time to go. But after her death, I blamed myself for not seeing she was sick sooner. Then, I had bullies confirming my own internal guilt. My bullies externalized what was already brewing inside me. It was the worst emotional pain of my teenage life. Even now, at age thirty-two, I still remember the voice and the snotty tone used by the girl who said, "You're cancer. You gave your grandma cancer. You killed her." Another bully asked me, "Hey, Cyndi! Your ugly face can make anybody scream until they die. Is that how your grandma died?" Someone else said, "Ew. If I was her grandma, I would die too! Who wants to be in HER family?" The sad thing is that I don't remember anything nice anyone might have said to me that Monday after my grandma died. My only memories are of the things bullies said. I'm sure my teachers were kind to me, but I don't remember any of their words, yet the cruel things I was told remain burned in my memory. No one should have to remember a loss like that. I STILL struggle with feeling pangs of guilt when I think of my grandma taking her last breath. Bullying someone who is grieving is undeniably cruel. You don't know who might be grieving out there right now. You might say something mean that will hurt a person for the rest of their life. Don't be a bully. |
Welcome to the AFBV blog!My name is Cyndi, and I am a bullying survivor.
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