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#which song the math and googling she would’ve been 13
ujuro · 3 years
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I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately and I could make a post with like 20 album recs but I just give a shoutout to sharon kwan because I never expect someone who wins the equivalent of American idol in any country to put out music I like but I really do enjoy her album masterpiece
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you;
Today's topic is a sensitive one, both for me and for you. Last weekend, during a binge watch of Netflicks' '13 Reasons Why', I found myself taking a look back at my own junior high and high school experience in a small town in rural Newfoundland, and I recalled one moment in particular so vividly that I decided to finally write about it. Many of you are my Facebook 'friends'; some of you now call yourself my 'actual' friends. I've had drinks with some of you, come to love some of you. I'm indifferent to an equal number of you. Most of you now have children of your own. I'll start by telling you this: I'm not convinced that an acetaminophen overdose is possible. Why do I think this? At fifteen, it was the only readily available bottle of pills in my household, and after two entire calendar years of relentless bullying (and a fear of sharp objects), I was sure I finally had a solution to all of my problems. It started with a group of girls and their boyfriends who didn't like me, chasing me from a birthday party while throwing rocks and bottles my way (note: I was rescued by another party-goer and her mother who were just leaving, but we'll come back to her). It ended with a different group -- the social 'upper crust' of our school. It ended with name calling and pictures on chalk boards that teachers didn't erase before I walked into the room, sometimes staying there for days; in my French class, one of you actually wrote about me on the wall, and your words were still there two years later. There is a box in my bedroom today that contains notes passed to me by girls that were once my friends, making fun of the new jeans I was so proud of or the fact that I didn't wear makeup; exchanges between myself and my best friend, who was becoming a part of some of my tormentors' circle (most of them were boys), in which I begged her to make them stop. She couldn't. They didn't. Day after day, I struggled to breath in those walls while you shouted at me in the halls and on the way home. When I started skipping math and chemistry class because the boy sitting behind me would whisper insults at me for the entire period, and because my 'name' was scrawled on the blackboard for weeks, I was given a month of detention. I'd been a straight A student before you came into my life, but after that year, I could never catch up. Which leads us to a bottle of acetaminophen and the floor of a gym changing room near the end of the year. At 15, with little information on how to overdose, I swallowed 10 that day, and I waited. Nothing. The next day, 20. Nothing. On the third day, when I swallowed 30 in the bathroom during recess, I was sure I'd be dead before the lunch bell rang, confident as I stepped outside a swinging door to where a few of you were waiting with your chocolate milk, unknowingly cheering me on. All I got was a bad stomach. That day, in an English class, I was forced into a group project that reconnected me with an old friend; a girl who was close, now, to my female torturers, but who hadn't actually hurt me herself. She was my ray of sunlight, the same sweet and chatty girl who had rescued me from a party gone wrong, despite the fact that we hadn't been close in awhile, and despite the fact that her own friends treated me like a pariah. She, and her oblivious offering of hope, are the reason I didn't swallow 40 pills. She gave me one period each day during which I had a friend, and I didn't feel surrounded by wolves. The aftermath. This is the part I want to get out there to the world; it's the part we don't often hear about anymore, because if I was fifteen today, I would've Googled what pills to take to get the job done, and I wouldn't be writing this. Things got better. We started hanging out after school. I found a new group of friends, my Chatty Cathy saving grace included, and had a reasonably good high school experience, all things considered. I was invited to parties. I went to hockey games to watch my crush, who was now amongst my closest friends, play. I spent weekends driving around and hanging out with my girlfriends. I had my first boyfriend. I started university; started traveling. It got better. I saw my favorite bands play my favorite songs. I went to England and fell in love. I got married. I brought two beautiful little boys into the world. It got a lot better. Bullying is not a new epidemic -- it's been around forever, and I wasn't alone in my sufferings at that school. You made fun of a small, harmless boy for a health problem he had no control over until he began lashing out. I watched one of you beat up a defenceless introvert after a skating outing, who sat alone on the bus ride back after you were finished. And I did nothing. I saw, like so many saw what was happening to me, and I did nothing, and that fact haunts me every single day. ...which is probably why I'm sharing all of this right now. Moms and dads, raise your boys and girls to care; to be that little ray of sunshine for the kid in their class who doesn't have anyone else. Teach them to be strong enough to stick up for the broken and the beaten. Let them know that being bullied doesn't have to be a death sentence, even though it feels like it is, and to keep their eyes open for light, because it's there. And if you're reading this, I hope you remember it all as well as I do. I hope you're relieved that this piece isn't filled with names and dates and places, because you're a good person now and that isn't how you want to be remembered. But know that it's how I remember you, because I'm still here.
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