For the first time in my life, the words I know I need to write are not coming to me. I was angry for a while and the words came to me quite easily then, but they were filled with venom and hate. It made me no better than the subjects that I wanted to talk about.
Whatever you’re doing, please put it down. Don’t answer that text, mute that commercial and turn down the radio. There are so many issues in this world that it’s hard for us to put one over the other in importance. It seems that because there are so many problems that a lot of us give up trying to start fixing any of them, and we just assume someone else will.
I can honestly admit that I am one of those people. I believe in fighting every cause, but get so overwhelmed with which one to pick. I just kind of sit there and voice my opinions hoping someone else will take action.
Something happened at work last Monday that really made me question the existence of humanity. It was hard to believe because I had just been at Jimmy Johns earlier that day and witnessed an amazing act of kindness. However, hours later, everything I thought I knew about kindness had been ripped away.
It was five minutes to close and I received a phone call from a mother in a horrific panic. Her daughter was in trouble and she needed my help, she needed anybody’s help. Jane’s* roommates were viciously attacking her and she was having a panic attack. The slurs, the derogatory comments, and the hateful speech that tore down her weight, her intelligence, her confidence (and so much more) had been going on for at least a week. It finally reached a point that Monday evening where Jane could no longer take it. She needed to get out of there.
As I listened to her mother half screaming/half pleading through the phone and threatening to call the police, Jane stood in my office with tears streaming down her face, her arms clutching her sides as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart. It took everything in my power to not cry. I was standing in an office with a victim of unbelievable bullying. I didn’t realize this was still a thing, but the evidence was right in front of me. It was online, it was in her head, and it was written all across the shape of her body. Jane had been verbally abused to the point of becoming a shell of a human.
My coworker and I removed her from the situation immediately. We gave her a place to stay; a safe place to breathe. When we gathered her items from her room we noticed that Jane was like every other young woman. She had interests, she had hobbies, and she had things that made her happy, but all of these things had been knit-picked to the point of destruction.
I hope that I’ve caught your attention because the issue at hand is a difficult one. In the state of Florida, legal action of bullying takes place in grades K-12. Not many people realize that it exists out of school. A lot of social media sites recommend that you delete or block the user that is harassing/ bullying you, but for many that doesn’t appear to be enough. There are ways to legally punish those if proven it was harassment, but in cases like these it often turns into a nasty “he said she said” kind of thing. With the advancement of technology, sometimes it’s hard to discern the true source.
What we need to understand is that bullying is not just a preteen/teen directed action. It is absolutely still prevalent after you graduate high school. Social media has made it so much easier to target people. Even apps like Snapchat make it easy to bully because the image simply disappears. Poof.
And now I turn my attention to you. You know who you are. You know that I am talking about you. This is not something that can be ignored anymore and you need to recognize that the words you say have the potential to be the last words your victim hears. We need to understand that this is not okay. Behavior like this does not correlate with the fact that we are adults. Adults that make decisions as large as electing our officials. When you harass someone endlessly for the cold, inhuman pleasure of sport it makes me question your ability to make intelligent decisions.
You are not cool because you called someone a “whore.” You are not brave because you told someone to “starve themselves.” You are not better than the person you told to “go die” for being anything less than your idea of perfect. You are a bully. You are someone who has the ability to ruin a person’s life because of the way that you interact with them.
I have no respect for bullies. I have no tolerance for those that prey on the idea of “weak” in this society. Your idea of cool does not dictate anyone’s life. I emphasize the fact that we are at an age to be over this kind of behavior because it’s true. I know that bullying happens in school, I know that it’s not okay at any age, but it really disturbs me to believe that any person that can understand college level courses can’t understand that treating ANYBODY in this way is not okay.
What will it take to change this mentality? Death? Because that has happened and we still seem to think that it’s okay to do this. Reality check, we all know the old rhyme, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is WRONG. Words have an even greater affect than broken bones. They stick inside of you, whispering, “you’re not good enough.”
Change this. Change your vocabulary. Change your thinking. Change your mind before you tell that young woman or man in your class that they are a “sl*t” or a “d*ck” or “smelly” or “stupid” or “unimportant” or “unworthy” or “unlovable.” It doesn’t take much. Think before you speak. You could save someone’s life.
*Name has changed to protect identity.