I'm 22. Way back when I was in elementary school I was bullied. Growing up I was a sensitive girl. If my friends were busy I thought it meant they just didn't want to play with me. From first to fourth grade i was constantly bullied. I had things spit at me at lunch and I was called names. Even though I had many friends this kept constantly happening. When fifth grade rolled around I moved. Fresh start? Nope. I was picked on again. I then took it upon myself to take a stand. I became the bully. Now I knew bullying was wrong but I wanted to fit in so badly that I somehow became friends with the mean girls in middle school. from sixth to eighth grade I was pretty terrible. I am so ashamed to say it to this day. Yet even though I was well liked and was on top, i STILL got bullied. I was still made fun of every day. I even had a kid tell me he was going to kill me. Come high school i did probably the worst thing i could have done in my school. I joined our color guard with the marching band. Hey, I loved the sport. I loved the movement and dancing. I loved the music, and most of all I loved winning and having people at other schools look up to us. Yet in class once again I was constantly made fun of. It didn't matter that in our school of nearly 6000 (yes that is six THOUSAND) kids we were state champs, regional champs, and national finalist years in a row. All kids saw were that we were in marching band so that meant we were weird or dumb or nerdy or whatever. By this time I had grown out of my phase of trying to fit in. My self esteem was pretty flat. I had cut myself multiple times trying to actually feel something again. But nothing. For four years i fit in with a great group of people after school but during I was an outcast. I had developed anxiety but never told anybody. To this day, FIVE years after i had graduated high school and left those terrible people behind I still have anxiety. I still try to fit in. I still have little self esteem. I still think people are talking behind my back. I am constantly thinking people see the worst in me. BUT I am moving forward. I am about to graduate college with a bachelors in Social Work. I want to help kids who don't think there is anywhere else to turn. I want to tell them that yes it seems hopeless right now and maybe in a few years will too, but school eventually ends and there is a bigger and brighter world out there that needs their voice. I thank God every day that I made it through. I may be fighting my inner demons that the bullies put there still, but i made it. I am still that sensitive girl but I am stronger now and I want kids to have that for themselves. Without my experience of being bullied, I would have never known that Social Work was my true calling. So Yes, bullying does impact your WHOLE life.

I am a thirteen year old boy who was bullied from the beginning of my first grade year. I put up with it for years. Then I decided to stand up, the bullying didnt stop until seventh grade. but i gave myself enough courage to stand up and say no. Sadly I didnt have enough selflessness to stand for people that were bullied. i wish i had. please dont make the same mistake, stand for others.

Well i'm a girl from belgium.

i'm also going to school in belgium.

and i'm lesbian.

everybody hates me and i don't like it at school.

Nobody listen to me.

i hate it all

i dont love myself..

Hello, my name is Trinity Maria. I have been a victim of bullying. I got told to kill myself when I was just 11-13.(I am 13 now) Well I have been depressed since I was 11. I started cutting, hating myself, tried to commit suicide. I had no friends. Now I have four friends...the problem is they aren't at the same school I am at. People still hate on me and tell me things. I am a lesbian. My parents cant accept that. They say they don't go for it. People bully me for being too weird, too loud, too...me. I don't know what to do. I haven't told anyone but no matter what I will ALWAYS count cutting as my best friend...to be there for me when I need someone. when I feel alone. I feel cutting is the only way out.

I've always been that girl that tries to 'fit in' with everyone. All I ever wanted when I was in elementary was to be popular. At the time I was kind of, ya know, average. Then, when I went into my first year of Middle School,6th grade, I decided why fit in, when you could stand out? So, instead of trying to be something I'm not, I decided to just be myself. Little did I know that, being myself, would led to other bullying me. I started dressing different than everyone else, dying my hair unnatural colors, listening to different music than everyone else. And hey, I was happy with myself. They way I dressed made me happy. But, soon people started calling me, mean names. They told me, that I was 'emo'. They told me that, I was unwanted, and that I should go kill myself, or to cut deeper. At that time, I wasn't even harming myself in any way. The thought never even crossed my mind. They told me I was a slut, even though I've never even dated anyone in my life. They called me lesbian, they said that I'm a faggot. Yeah, I actually am lesbian, but no one really knew. I never told anyone I was. I would make no attempt to stop them from teasing me. I tried to ignore them the best I could. The bullying mostly happened on the bus and sometimes in the hallways. In the hallways people would scream at me, 'monster'. I would just ignore it. On the bus when people would bully me, I would just turn up my music and try to ignore them. But, everyday I'd still go home crying. Someone even described to me, how I was going to kill myself. I eventually told my parents and they actually ended up, calling the kids parents, since they lived in my neighborhood. It did mostly stop, for the rest of 6th grade. When I went into 7th grade, for the beginning of the year I got very few mean comments. Until, my best friend started harming herself. Everyone found out because she couldn't hide it in gym. So, everyone started bullying both, me and my best friend. That was when I also started self-harming. I did this to myself for 2 reasons. 1. I felt somewhat responsible for my friend harming herself. And 2. I didn't know how else to deal with the bullying. Harming myself, was kind of like my escape. Later on in 7th grade, I got a girlfriend. And we were very open about it. So mostly the entire school knew. It even got all the way to the high school. Both my girlfriend and I got bullied for liking girls. I am now going into 8th grade. Hopefully it'll be better than 6th and 7th. In 7th grade, I pretended like the bullying never hurt me. But to be honest, in same ways it does. It hurts a lot. But, I don't let the bullys know that. Whenever the make a rude comment towards me and/or my friends, we make a joke out of it. We laugh about it. I most defiantly, don't get bullied as much as I did in 6th grade, which is awesome. But, sadly, to this day I still struggle with self harm and self hate, do to a lot of personal issues. But, hopefully, one day I'll be able to stop harming myself and get the help I need. 

Bullies kill people.

There is no nice way to say that. Bullies kill people and those that don’t help someone crying out aid and abet. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but with the advent of the internet bullying is getting more and more attention.  It’s no longer something that is bound to the schoolyard either. People are being bullied at work. You would think that surviving middle school and high school would be enough, but speaking as someone who was always on the outs with the popular crowd and then bullied at work, I can assure you, it reaches beyond the school walls and no stranger to those over 20. 

 I was lucky. I stood up. Still, I almost ended up in a pine box.

 When I was in grade school I wasn’t part of the in crowd. I was, and still am, a bit ‘weird’ as they call it. Creative types are always a little strange and get singled out very fast. It started with comments about my weight and escalated to excluding me from birthday parties and social circles.  What it really came down to was the fact that my parents like me and most of my classmates didn’t have that. So in order to feel better about themselves the girls ‘teased’ me until I developed an eating disorder and the boys tried beating me as often as possible when they weren’t sexually harassing me.

 I learned how to throw a cutting remark at anyone who tried to “take me down a peg,” and being the biggest and strongest in the class from grades 4 through 8 helped. Whenever I saw anyone threaten my little brother I made sure to take him down. I never swung first, but I always hit last. And they stayed down. My brother learned quickly how to defend himself, especially after dad got sick and died. I was 14 and he was 12. He didn’t feel like there was anything to lose. I can’t blame him, I felt the way same on a lot of days. I won’t lie, there were many days and nights I was miserable. Being shunned is very hard, no matter what age you are. I knew it would be over soon and I’d never see them again. These weren’t exactly upstanding citizens, mind you. A good number of my classmates were either future drug dealers or degenerate in other ways, and surprise, this was in a catholic school.

What got me through those years was really mom. She supported me and every time someone acted nasty toward me, she would remind me that I was loved and I was heard and that she wouldn't let anyone hurt me. When I was home I was safe. I would graduate 8th grade and never see these people again because I had more important places to be. Boy was she right! Then came high school, but at least now I was prepared.

In high school the behavior was the same, but the boys didn't try to beat me up anymore. In a school of only 200 students they were easy to pick out of a line up and I made a reputation of being loud, calling people out and not letting them get away with anything, even if that meant getting in trouble with the teachers. Again, my father was dead so nothing mattered. They vandalized my locker, wrote slut on it. They ripped down my art work and then complained when I went to the headmaster. “We've been nothing but nice to you,” they said.

You always hear adults say things like ‘Stand up for yourself,’ or ‘Why didn't you say anything?’ Here’s why in a bullet list:

• It’s YOUR job to stand up for children. That’s why you’re called an adult.
• Kids talking + Adults dismissing/blaming/being confrontational = kids not talking
• When someone is dismissed or ignore long enough, soon they will shut down and stop talking.
• When bullies are not held accountable in meaningful ways, people will stop trying to seek help.
• When someone’s hand is smacked away when they reach out for help, they stop asking.

See a pattern here?

And it doesn't end with school. These bullies grow up and they become managers, bosses, people in charge and the cycle continues. I had a short time at a place of business (which will remain nameless because my former boss is the vindictive type) where my manger almost killed me. The verbal and emotional abuse was daily. It broke my spirit, robbed me of my confidence and almost led to me ending my life at 30. It’s been 3 years and I’m still haunted some days. I was supposedly protected by a union that did nothing. I took the matter all the way to the top of the chain of command and they blamed me, even though there was a stack of reports on this person on how abusive she was and still is.

I understand the “It Gets Better” Campaign but I think the message is very flawed. That is a passive outlook to a problem that is killing children and adults alike. No, it doesn't get better, not in my experience where I was bullied as a child and then as an adult at work. It only gets better if you MAKE it better and to do that you have to be loud and get as many people with similar experiences together to fight it.

I kept an audio recorder on me at all times to record my conversations and it was the best defense I had. As far as I know, it is legal (at least in New York) to record your own conversations. Being able to be used in court is a different matter, but the internet is a big place. Things manage to find their way onto it all the time; funny how that happens. I was able to get away from her and keep her from doing any more damage to my self-esteem, my self-worth and my overall well-being. We live in the 21st century where no abuse need be kept secret. Bullies are like cockroaches. They scatter when the lights go on. It's not blackmail, it's leverage.  

My son has been bullied for a few years now.   Same kids...mostly at lunch.

The principal says he is going to deal with it but never really does.

I need HELP!!!

Hello.
My name is Aleksander, and I have been bullied.

It started at school, but not on my own, sometimes my class visited another school not so far away, and there it was worse.
Everytime I was there, people called me "Dumbo", because of my big ears (I later got them fixed by surgery), it was hard, but luckily we weren't that often at that school.

Then I started middle shcool, and it got worse.
I lost many of my friends, but also gained some new ones, who also was bullied. 
I saw one of them being picked on, and I saw him go by himself, almost crying, or maybe he was, I can't really remember, but I understood that it was hard for him.
Then we started talking, and he was really nice. I didn't mind being friends with people who was bullied or not popular, because I didn't want to be popular, people who are, is often not the best kind of people, and many of them are bullies themselves.

Often at school, people would make wierd faces to me, reffering to my teeth, because they were like rabbit teeth.
Even after school, on my way home, people said mean stuff to me, like "It looks like you've been hit by a truck", all because of my teeth, but I got them fixed, too.

I still got bullied at school, but one day, I stood up.
We had just had gymnastics, and in the locker room, everybody complained about how much I sucked at Volleyball. They were mad at me for not being good at it, and messing up the team play, so we losed, but I didn't care for Volleyball.
One of the bullies said "You suck. You can't do anything", and that was when I stood up for myself.
I said "Well, I can do something no one here can do", everybody laughed, and the bully said "What is that?". I didn't say anything, but I stood up, jumped up and kicked the ceiling (Like Martial Arts, which I had been practising)
Nobody said a word. I bet they were so shocked that they didn't know what to say, but I opened the door, and left, with a smile of pride on my face.

After that, people were nicer to me, and the bullies were silenced.

Now I'm 21 years old, and I'm done with school and bullying.
Sometimes I miss school, set aside from the bullying, I had fun days and friends, even though not so many, but I miss them.
I wish I stayed in contact with them after school, but I didn't, and I regret it, and I don't know how to get contact with them again. Well, I know how to, but the hard part is doing it, 'cause I'm kind of shy, and I don't know if they would still care about me.

Bullying is sad.
Everybody should enjoy their days at school, not necessarily all of them, but some of them, at least. Sadly, there are people who have it bad and hard all the time, and nobody deserves that.

I would also like to dedicate some poems I have written, to all the people who are being bullied. I hope these can help you stay strong, keep going and keep on fighting.
Here they are:

-Rise And Fall-

Rise and fall,
Stand up tall.
Don't back down,
Turn around.
Don't you cry,
You won't die,
'Cause through it all,
We'll stand tall,
Together.

-One Beautiful Day-

Drown your tears in laugther and joy.
Drown your fears,
You're nobody's toy.
Don't care what they say,
You'll be okey.

You just have to try,
I will not lie,
Hard it might be,
But you'll make it,
You'll see.
One Beautiful Day
You will be free.

-Our Destiny-

Our Destiny,
To change reality,
To make a new and better place,
A world we can embrace.

Our Destiny,
No longer fantasy.
We'll make a new and better place,
Everything else we can erase.

Our Destiny is to fight.
We'll change the world tonight.

-Stay Strong-

I know that life's hard,
When you've been fighting every day.
I know that life's hard.
I just want you to feel okay.

I know that life's hard,
When you've been fighting every night.
I know that life's hard.
I just want you to feel allright.

I know that life's hard
When you been fighting for so long.
I know that life's hard,
Just forever stay strong.

Growing up, I was always different from the other kids. I wasn't athletic. I wasn't someone with the coolest things. I was me, and apparently that was a bad thing to be. I had a passion for music. I love singing, and for being a male more interested in singing than football or basketball, I was called a homo or a fag or just straight up gay. I'm not gay. I had one friend, and he transferred to a better school after kindergarten, so I was left alone, and that's how it stayed. I had no one.

From first grade through to third, I suffered from verbal bullying. The gay teasing continued, and even got to the point where people told me that I was beginning to look gay. It got to the point where I would go into the boys bathroom and the boys in there would run out or tell me I wasn't welcome and that it wasn't a fag's bathroom. I've never used a school bathroom since.

In third grade, I began to gain more weight. Food was my way of coping with the stress of of the bullying, and I would compulsively overeat. This is where the bullying for being fat came in. This bullying was far worse than any of the bullying I'd suffered through with the gay stuff. This is where the serious troubles began.

People wanted nothing to do with me because I was fat. The other kids saw me as different, as they were all thin and active. They told me I was a waste of space, I was too fat for there to be any room for people to care about me, I was worthless, useless, I was fat-fuck, I wasn't worth living, and they told me I deserved to die for being who I was. Food was my escape. Through all the harsh verbal bullying, it finally hit me that food was actually my problem, or at least that's what I thought. At the age of nine, I stopped eating. Whatever I did eat, I purged immediately to get it out of me (I had seen a girl do this in a movie, and she got skinnier throughout the movie). I lost 32 pounds in a month. I was nine years old, about 4 feet tall, and I was weighed about 40 lbs.

The eating disorder "helped" me through my problems enough to where the bullying eventually stopped. I thought it stopped because I was skinny. To me, the key to happiness was being thin. And it was great that the kids stopped bullying me, but I had a new bully to deal with: myself. All those years of being told I was worthless and fat got to me, and I started believing it. I believed that the bullies were right; I was worthless and fat, and I needed to fix myself. The emotional side affects of the eating disorder only fueled to my self-destruction and self-bullying. And eventually I needed more than what the eating disorder was giving me. I had so many emotions inside. I felt that I needed to something physical; I needed to do something on the outside to match what I was feeling on the inside.

I began a road of self-harm. I started hit myself so hard until I bruised. It hurt, but it felt good. I was able to manage my emotions: my anger, my confusion, my sadness, my confidence, my hope. I would bruise my stomach or my thighs or my shoulders and sometimes my arm. Teachers began noticing, and I was confronted asking if there was anything going on at home that would explain the bruises that I always had. I told them that I had a brother, and we enjoy wrestling and playing rough, and that's why I always had bruises. I was angry that people were noticing, so I had to resort to a new method. I had seen someone on TV cut their wrist with a blade for the same reasons that I was bruising myself; to control emotions. At the age of 11, I cut myself for the first time. I hurt A LOT, but I got such a sensation of control and pleasure from it. I continued to cut myself from then on. I wore sleeves and thick bracelets to cover the cuts and scars. I didn't have a care in the world to what might happen to me when I cut.

The cutting and the eating disorder became addictions. I finally got a real friend in sixth grade. Her name is Emerald. I never told Emerald about what I was doing. In fact, I never told anyone. I was very sneaky with this stuff. By now, I was 11 years old, and I weighed around 55 lbs.

Around 13 years old, I really started realizing how badly the eating disorder was affecting me. I was weak all the time, I was having trouble sleeping (I would stay awake for a couple days at a time), I was losing some hair, and my voice was becoming scratchy and raspy. Eventually I began coughing up blood, and it hurt to swallow and speak. I figured it was strep throat or something and ignored it. I soon found out that it wasn't going away.

I began to think that maybe all I needed to do was talk to someone about all this. I posted a long description of my past, my feelings, my emotions, and my problems on yahoo answers, hoping that someone would know how to help. Within two days I got a response from a boy named Connor, who was 15 at the time, and he was also going through bullying and an eating disorder. He gave me his email address and we began talking about all of it, bonding through our similar problems. Emails became texts/calls, which became chats on Facebook, which became video-chats on Skype. Connor and I considered each other true friends because we were both lonely because we couldn't talk to other friends/family about our problems, but we could understand each other so well. One day Connor wasn't online at our usual time. I let it go thinking something had come up, and I'd here from him soon. But Connor never called or texted or emailed. I decided to message him on Facebook, but when I went to his profile, all I saw were a bunch of posts saying things like "It's so sad to see such a young beautiful soul go" and "I'll miss having you around." It turned out that Connor had hung himself.

I began to feel isolated all over again, even worse this time. My eating disorder and self-harm hit an all time high around this point. I was 13. I still kept everything from my two best friends Emerald and Lejla, and everyone else too. I was alone and I was practically killing myself slowly. I couldn't stop; I'd come too far. I'd lost control of the addictions. I wasn't me.

For a period of time, I even resorted to smoking pot with guys at school to try to boost my mood and make me happy to be me. It only temporarily helped, so I gave up.

That October, a girl that I idolized and loved, Demi Lovato, suffered a nervous breakdown, left her tour, and checked into a residential treatment center just 50 minutes from my home for an eating disorder, cutting, and drug/alcohol abuse, and low self esteem. I couldn't believe it. I'd read rumors and articles about her possibly cutting, but I didn't believe them because she was so perfect and beautiful, I couldn't see why she would cut. But I learned that it was all a lie. The Demi Lovato I knew and loved wasn't perfect. She was bullied for being fat, she was struggling with an eating disorder, she was cutting herself to control her emotions, she was abusing drugs, she hated herself. She had problems, and she hid them. Just like I was doing. This deeply saddened me, but I was proud of her for getting help, and she inspired me to try to stop. I tried all I could, but it wasn't easy at all. I was still kind of bad. When she got out of treatment she shared her story to help others who are struggling, she spread hope, she stood up against bullying, and she inspired me to change my ways.

The next year in September, I was 15, I came out about my addictions and struggles to my mom. I got help, and I am stronger and healthier today! Bullies can't hurt me anymore, they can no longer make me turn on myself. I am now 16, and I am fighting against bullying. I am here with The BULLY Project to share my story and inspire others to change their ways, end their struggles, and join me in standing up to those who make life difficult. I was a victim of bullying and bully driven self-destruction, but I made a choice to change, and I vowed to never let a bully stand in my way ever again, and to help the other victims out there come to the same realization. I have Connor and Demi to think of on my way to end bullying, but I also myself and my story. TOGETHER IT CAN BE STOPPED!

Stay Strong <3

- Steven Monge

Hi there! How's it going? Hope it's going good! It's going good for me at the moment! But back in middle school... Oh boy it wasn't good at all.... Getting called names, getting my books dropped, getting hit and, so on with no friends at all to help me! Those 3 years of middle school were just horrible! I was depressed a lot of the time and on the verge of suicide but I kept going hoping that it would get better and it did! In high school I started to stand up to my bullies and thanks to that I only had to deal with bullies in high school for maybe the first few weeks! After I started talking back to my bullies they slowly but surely stopped bullying me! I started making friends too for the first time in 3 years! How did I start making friends? Easy! I started talking to kids at lunch sitting all by them self! Because I know how they feel! Sitting all alone seeing everyone else laughing with there friends wishing you just had one... That's how I felt all through out middle school and didn't want any one else to feel the same. So I want you to stand up to your bullies! Show them you're not scared! Even stand up for other kids! Also if you see a kid that's usually all alone why not go talk to them!?! They could end up being a very good friend!