Courtney’s Tale
I’ve lived in one city for most of my life. I had been dealing with bullies all my life.
On one side of the city I had friends that would stand by me when I was getting picked on. The bullying was never physical until I moved. I was 13 years old, a 7th grader in middle school when the violence started. Things I had never been exposed to surrounded me. Gangs, drugs, and violence. It was the 3rd day of the school year at my new school and I was in my physical education class. I sat in the bleachers by myself in the gym and saw two seemingly nice girls just a few feet away from me. I had never had a problem making friends, I wasn’t shy so I walked over to them and asked if I could sit with them. They hung out with me for the entire class period. Those two girls were the start of the bullying.
At first it was just verbal, calling me names, talking behind my back, starting rumors. Then after a few weeks more people got involved. The people that were picking on me were all in the same gang. I thought I could handle it because I had heard all the same stuff before and every adult had told me that if you ignored it it would stop. So I tried to ignore it, and for a while it worked.
One day after lunch I was walking to my class with all my class supplies in my arms. A girl came over to me and threw my stuff out of my hands, it scattered the hallway. I tried to pick everything up before I was late to class and a few people in the hallways just kicked my stuff away from me. Other students didn’t help, they ignored it. I ended up being late for class and got reprimanded by the teacher even when I tried to explain why I was late.
The bullying got worse after that. I was terrified of being at school, I was getting shoved into lockers, beat up in the bathrooms, tripped while climbing the stairs. My mom had always told me that if there was ever a problem at school all I had to do was tell a teacher, counselor, or principal and it would stop. I went to 4 different people, two of my teachers, a counselor, and the vice principal. Not a single one of them helped me. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, like I was a waste of space so I started thinking suicide was the only option I had left. I thought about telling my mom but since no one had helped me before I didn’t think she would be able to help me.
When I came home from school my mom asked me, like she usually did, if I had had a good day typically my answer would have been “it was okay” but that day I started crying uncontrollably and told her everything. She was furious, the next day she went to the school and took care of the problem. We had that week received a new vice principal and he was very against bullying and violence. He had me tell him everything that had happened to me and called the two girls who started it all into his office. I didn’t have any problems with them after that.