My thoughts - Bullying

I’m a Dutch girl who’s typing on her iPod, so sorry if I’m making some mistakes, but I really want to share this with you, beautiful people. I am always too shy to show my thoughts, but since almost nobody knows who I am, I decided to give it a try.
Yesterday, I found out that the 16 year-old son of a teacher at my school killed himself Wednesday afternoon. Today I found out that a 14 (!!) year-old girl in the small town where I live tried to kill herself, thank God she’s still alive. The reason given for both (tried) suicides? Bullying.

Bullying is one of my great fears. I’ve seen first-hand the scars that bullying can leave behind. My older brother was bullied throughout his life, but especially in high school. I’ve seen how the cruelty has shaped him and it isn’t fair that any child should have to go through that.

I don’t know why bullying seems so much worse now, though. I suspect it’s because it’s ceaseless. It isn’t just happening at school anymore. It’s via text messages, Facebook — there’s no respite from the attacks. And it can happen covertly so oftentimes it can go unnoticed by family and teachers.
I’ve been bullied too, still. But I learned to accept it and just ‘don’t give a fish about it.’ (Dani Cimorelli’s quote). For those people I’m weird, just because I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke, I don’t cuss, I don’t go out, I really don’t want a boyfriend and I am extremely shy. I am just a 15 year-old girl, I think it is nothing but normal to don’t drink alcohol. These are my decisions and of course, I understand other people make other decisions than me, I respect them. Why can’t they respect me? I won’t ever get the answer. But I am proud of my decisions, and that’s how it should be.

Don’t ever let you down people, you all deserve to be yourself. It’s a good thing to be innocent, stay innocent. There’s someone in the world who will love you and take care of you someday, and it will all be worth it. Stay on your own path, cause that’s the right path. The people who think you have to change don’t accept themselves. Just pray for them that they learn to accept themselves and in the meantime try to accept yourself too. Cause we are all beautiful.

I’m reminded once again of how critically important it is to teach my future children compassion and kindness. To teach them not to make snap judgments about people and to embrace the differences in others.I don’t want my children to get bullied, but I also don’t want them to be a bully. Hate is a learned action, and I certainly don’t want to be the teacher of hate..
It is definitely not that people can’t hurt me anymore, they really can. I need advice too. I know how I want to be, but for some reason I just can’t. I just want to share all the advice the Cimorelli’s ever gave me, especially Lisa. Almost everything I just wrote down is advice they gave me and other people. I wouldn’t be who I am right now without them. Lisa Cimorelli is my inspiration and she will always be. I know I’ll still think about her when I’m 30. She did so much for me, she really cares about other people. We all should care. Thank you for taking time to read this, I really appreciate it.

God bless you, God knows we’re worth it.