Nov. 15 to the 21 marks the seventh annual Bullying Awareness Week that's taking place all across Canada, with a theme of "Stand Up to Bullying!"
This is a subject near and dear to my heart, as I experienced sometimes extreme bullying in middle school and Grade 9 at Joseph H. Kerr School in Snow Lake.
My family moved to Snow Lake from Balmertown, Ontario when I was an 11-year-old Grade 6 student. I had moved around plenty already in my young life, living in places like Kirkland Lake, Timmins and South Porcupine, Ontario and Gardener, Montana, just to name a few. But nowhere did I experience bullying like I experienced it in the sleepy town of Snow Lake.
This is not an attack on the town or my past peers. I look back on my time in the community fondly and feel lucky to have grown up there. But I am writing this to give parents and teachers - and everyone - a glimpse into what life is like for a victim of bullying.
When I first came to Snow Lake I was accepted as the "new girl" and found many students interested in learning more about me. As the months went by and I turned 12-years-old, I had formed a group of friends that I thought cared about me and would stick by me. Then it all fell apart.
Based on one lie made up by a mutual friend - I cannot even guess what her motivation was in doing this - all of my friends turned against me. I will never forget the months I spent standing by myself at recess or even hiding in the bathroom so I didn't have to face the loneliness of the playground where my former friends ignored me. The biggest shock of all, now that I look back on it, is my Grade 6 teacher actually reprimanding me for hiding in the bathroom during recess rather than dealing with the bullying itself.
After that the bullying got worse. I was picked on for many different things. And the shocking truth of it was that, in such a small town, many of the bullying students' parents were very aware of what was going on, along with many teachers, and most of them turned a blind eye or laughed the situation off, in a sort of "kids will be kids" kind of way. My parents, however, always stuck by me and made me feel worthwhile even when I was told every day that I wasn't, and my high school English teacher treated me with understanding and respect that had come to seem very foreign in the halls of the school.
Eventually I made a group of new friends that were a wonderful bunch of people. We had great times together and I am still in contact with many of them now. Some of them were bullied also and knew what I had been through.
One of the moments that has stayed with me through the years happened when I was at the beach with this new group of friends. I'd always struggled in mathematics, and even though I excelled at subjects like English and history, a couple of "popular" girls labeled me as dumb. One of the girls came up to me at the beach and told me I was "the stupidest girl in the whole class."
I was 13 years old when it happened. What does it mean that I still remember that harassment, word for word, today, at 22? Does it mean I haven't moved on, and that I still struggle with those troublesome years? No. It means that I will never forget what it felt like to be bullied, and in turn, strive to treat everyone I meet with the respect and dignity they deserve.
