by Band Back Together | Jan 31, 2014 | Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Coping With Bullying, Coping With Depression, Depression, Fear, Guilt, How To Heal From Being Bullied, Major Depressive Disorder, Psychological Manipulation, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Teen Bullying |
When I was in about 4th grade my friend would tell me all these sexual things. One night this person was over my house and they fingered me. I didn’t know what it was. This person manipulated me into thinking it was okay. I touched this person back. And it went on and on. This person would touch me a lot. And I would do it back.
I didn’t know any better. All I knew was it felt good. This person told me to never tell my parents or anyone else.
I’m still scarred by it. It distorted my childhood. It changed me. It made me do things I didn’t want to do. I can’t help but feel guilty. I mean 4th grade? It makes me feel so gross. I’ve never even kissed anyone.
In middle school, since I felt ugly, I jumped at any chance to show off my boobs to get some sort of positive attention from boys, and of course, I did. Sometimes it went too far. It made me cry, but it was better than being called ugly.
One time a boy touched my front-side in the hallway. He said if I told anyone he would get his sister to beat me up, so I kept quiet. Another time a boy shoved me against a locker and had his hands around my neck. He threatened me, but I don’t remember why.
Riding the bus was the worst because while they were calling me ugly, they were touching me or pushing me on the floor of the bus.
One time I was the park with my best friend and a few boys who bullied me. (Why did they bully me? I don’t know.) We were playing soccer. My old friend Melinda was there. They respected her, so they left her alone. But they would circle me and smack my butt, poke me with sticks in the front area, my boobs, and my butt. I liked the attention, but I also hated it. I told them to stop, but they wouldn’t. Two of the boys walked me home (not sure why) and one of them smacked my butt. A 30 or 40 year old man saw him do it. He yelled, “Oh yeah, smack that!” It scared me so much! I was furious! I yelled, “Fuck you!”
They told me if he came back to rape me they would leave.
I’ve had multiple experiences with grown men making me very uncomfortable. I get looked up and down. I see the lust in their eyes, and it really frightens me.
I have a friend who I love very dearly. But he can be very abusive. He’s very “hands on.” He touches my butt and my boobs every so often. But when he’s mad, he literally hurts me. He pulls wresting moves on me or chokes me for a few seconds. To him it’s a joke. To me, it’s scary, and it hurts.
One time I was locked in a room with him and he pushed me down, and he was standing over me. It sounds ridiculous but I was still scared. We are best friends, I just wish he wouldn’t take things so far sometimes.
All these events make me fear men a lot. I have a lot of anxiety and guilt from these events and I’m still not over them. I honesty think I have depression from all the bullying and harassment.
by Band Back Together | Jan 29, 2014 | Bullying, Child Neglect, Coping With Bullying, Fear, Guilt, How To Heal From Being Bullied, Teen Bullying |
I love my mum. But sometimes and somehow, she just makes my day even worse by neglecting me, a teenage daughter who’s going though puberty and not being understood enough. Instead of asking me what happened if I was in a bad mood, my mum would just say, “Stop making that face.”
How the hell would you feel if that was said to you?
When I was being bullied, my mum told me to be strong and fight back. But how the hell do I fight back when it’s twelve or more people? I tried, and ended up hurting myself even more. She said that I was not strong enough. I cried secretly every night.
I got my braces a few days ago. It was painful, but I didn’t rant and scowl about the pain. I withstand the pain and try to chew, although it hurts like hell. She just scoffs and tells me to suck it up. She said my sister suffers greater pain. Did she use a pain thermometer to measure the pain?
All she cares about are my grades, so I can get a scholarship that I would make her life easier. I am so stressed. I improved so much this examination, but she just said I can do better than that. Is an 8 grade not good enough? What the hell does she want from me?
She’s been calling me spoiled to my father and my sister. She even said bad things about me in front of her friends. It was so hurtful. She doesn’t know the pain of being bullied, didn’t want to understand what exactly I experienced. She just took it lightly.
Sometimes, I want to jump off the roof, making the world a better place without me. Maybe she’ll be happier that way. I always keep my own emotions locked up, because of her. I’m far more independent then my peers and yet she said I’m a spoiled brat and can’t control my moods. Does she even know I blamed myself every night for being bullied? That I was traumatized by it? No. I don’t expect her to know what was going on my mind.
Maybe I need to stand up for myself from all this pain, without her. Maybe I’m too fragile. I know I need help, but I really thought that she would be the one to lend me a hand. Sadly, she wasn’t.
by Band Back Together | Sep 6, 2013 | Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Teen Bullying |
Why is it always us?
I’ve noticed that we’re the one’s who are targeted by bullies. The tall people like me, the short people, the people who are unique. Anyone who stands out.
Why us?
Why anyone? We are unique: tall, short, neat, unusual; people live in the world like everyone else. So why do we get bullied? We are the ones that get bullied.
But, we always get back up. I want to see change – at my school, for myself, and close friends, I’m tired and I’m taking a stand. I’m changing this.
Wish me luck!
by Band Back Together | Jul 29, 2013 | Childhood Bullying, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Rape/Sexual Assault, Teen Bullying, Teen Heartbreak, Teen Rape, Teen Sexuality |
Anyone who claims the teen years are the “best of your life” is lying.
This is his struggle:
I was born in 1998, and until fourth grade, I was the big kid everyone knew and liked; I was popular and well-respected. No one bullied me. That all changed in fifth grade when I moved to Arlington, WA and started over at a new school.
My first – and worst – mistake was mistaking a jackwagon of a “friend” (who’s not much of one now) for a girl I liked.
You see where this is going – I was called “gay” and “bisexual” until the end of seventh grade when people forgot about it.
In the summer before eighth grade, I had my first real girlfriend. Over that summer, she sexually abused me, and I was traumatized.
After I ended it with her, I was scared of girls, until I met my previous girlfriend whom I dated for seven months. She was too scared to tell me when I was doing something that made her uncomfortable, so she left me. She broke my heart when she told that I made her feel like a “slut.”
It killed me to hear that.
After that, I screwed up, continued texting her, tried to be around her. That was a colossally bad idea. Things got so much worse.
People who’d been my friends turned on me because I’d hurt her, even though I wasn’t aware I’d been hurting her. Only few people tried to comfort me, trying to help my broken heart.
One day after a long track practice, I was finally getting over her, and a few buddies were fooling around, relaxing and telling stories. We were chatting about cars, girls, and fishing and I brought up some stupid (yet true) things about my ex-girlfriend. One of those guys told her.
After a month, I texted her, asking who’d told her what I’d said. She confirmed it was one of the guys from my track team. I lost control and punched him in the mouth – not because he’d told her, but because he’d lied to me; telling me he hadn’t told her.
Her parents showed up at a fourth of July parade and stopped to pet my dog. I looked in her Mom’s eyes and shook her Dad’s hand. My ex hid her face behind her hair.
I learned that her new boyfriend is one of my most trusted (well, WAS trusted) and close friends. I have ADD, an unusual form of OCD, which means that it’s far harder for me to get over things. Something a normal person forgets about in, say a week, takes me months. Since what I’m trying to get over is heartbreak, it takes more than months to work through.
I was sentenced to eight hours of community service for juvenile assault. I’m finding ways to express myself – music, friends, and cars.
I’m now helping a friend who was sexually abused get back on her feet, and spending more time with my girlfriend. Wish me (and my friend) luck, The Band!
Thanks for reading, The Band.
Do you have any advice for me?
by Band Back Together | Jul 27, 2013 | Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Loneliness, Self Injury, Statutory Rape, Teen Bullying, Teen Rape, Teen Self Injury |
The scars from childhood sexual abuse have far-reaching consequences.
This is her brave, brave story:
I’m a senior in high school – you’d think I’d be able to control my thoughts and emotions by now.
Nope. Totally incorrect.
I hate people, well, most of them anyway. For being judgmental. For being jerks and assholes when they have no idea what I’ve gone through. No idea what I’m going through.
I feel so alone because there’s no one to help me cope with my fucked-up brain. Now don’t get me wrong: on the outside I appear to be a normal, suburban, teenaged girl. On the inside…on the inside I’m dying; just waiting for death to overtake me.
This is my story.
I have two brothers who live with me at my Mom’s house. My brothers shared a room with bunk-beds until I was twelve. When I was six, we had a babysitter named Bradley, who happened to be some sort of cousin. When he’d come to babysit, we’d all hang out on the bunk beds – my older and younger brother on the bottom bunk while Bradley and I were on the top bunk.
One time, I was laying on top of him and he reached his hands into my pants asking me “can you feel that?” over and over. He’d do this again and again to me, only stopping when it was his turn on the video game my brothers were playing. Naturally he wouldn’t have a free hand to stick down my pants.
I thought what he was doing was sex, so I for one, wasn’t going to tell anyone – I was afraid I’d get in trouble. I’ve not seen him since. I kept this secret until seventh grade, when I told my best friend and cousin, Catherine, as well as my best friend at school, Kameron.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
We saw the counselor who called my mother. My mother initially thought I was lying, but finally believe me. She took me to my Dad’s, insisting that I tell him about the sexual abuse. I called Catherine over for support.
I’d already sobbed to the counselor and my mom, so by that point I was numb. My dad continued to question me; scrutinizing every detail. At one point he asked:
“Why aren’t you crying? If this actually happened to you why aren’t you crying? Why is your cousin the only one crying?”
That ended that.
Three years later was my sophomore year in high school, and everything was going really well. I had my first actual boyfriend, an amazing guy Daniel who he was all for God. On the outside, I looked like I was okay.
However, I’d begun cutting; self-injuring – constantly slicing my wrist open for relief of external pain. I was repulsed by anyone touching me – I couldn’t handle it. Not even my brothers. I even asked Daniel if we could stop kissing and he was okay with it; figuring we’d been moving too fast. Eventually, asked me if anything ever had happened to me.
I told him no.
I told my mom that I couldn’t kiss Daniel, and she knew that I needed to talk to someone. My Aunt Nina, Catherine’s mom, died the beginning of my sophomore year and I felt too guilty to bring my problems on her.
Three months into therapy, I finally understood that there was no possible way that I could’ve wanted what happened to me as a child. Despite the cliche from Good Will Hunting: “it’s not your fault,” but those words bring closure.
We were having a big family sleepover at my house with all the teenage cousins piled together on the couch. After I fell asleep that night, I felt something on my leg. I was so confused. I realized, it was my cousin Cole’s hand trying to pry open my legs. Baffled, I tried to close them; turned over and pretended I was asleep. That didn’t happen so I gave up.
My therapist asked me why I didn’t “wake up” and confront him. I was frozen, I explained, I was fifteen and my worst nightmare was reoccurring. He did finger me and when I “woke up,” he pretended he hadn’t done a thing. In the shower, I bawled my eyes out. When people say they never feel clean after rape or sexual assault, it’s true.
My therapist encouraged me to tell my mom, however, I knew our family would never be the same again – it would be my fault. Again.
For some reason or another I stopped going to therapy. I spent my junior year empty on the inside. Daniel and I had broken up before the Cole incident so I had no one but my friend Chance to talk to. The bullying began my junior year.
First and foremost, I’m not fat. I am five foot eight and 150 pounds, give or take a pound. I do have an unusual bra size, 32 FF. I’m “mooed” at for having “utters.” Eventually, jokes went around that I was on the cover page of a porn site. I’d never willingly done anything more than kiss my boyfriend on the lips and now people were making sex jokes about me for my fucking bra size? Absurd.
Then I met Chase. Weird dude, but mysterious. On our first date he forcefully unbuttoned my jeans and stuck his hands in my pants without my permission. I got up out of the movie theater, caused a scene, then left. Haven’t talked to that fuckface since.
I feel like I’m losing my mind.
I’ve become an insomniac, I’m always crying. I’ve prayed constantly, not receiving any answers. How can I be sure of myself? How can I be confident enough to trust not just others but myself? How can I tell myself over and over that I won’t let something like that happen to me again when it’s happened over and over?
I don’t know what to do.
He took my innocence. I dreamed that God would be kind. I dreamed my life would be so very different from this hell I’m living. Life has killed the dream I dreamed.
—————–
How have those of you who’ve been through childhood sexual abuse come to terms with the abuse? Can you give this brave girl some advice?
by Band Back Together | Nov 3, 2010 | Bullying, Childhood Bullying, Coping With Bullying, Gay Is Okay, Gender Nonconformity, How To Heal From Being Bullied, Teen Bullying, Transgender |
This post originally appeared on my blog on October 17, 2010
A while back, I was Facebook-friended by someone with whom I’d gone to elementary school, a woman I hadn’t seen in 15 years. In that same week, I was friended by another schoolmate, a man I hadn’t seen in 25 years. I’ll call these two people, who are not Facebook friends with each other, Leia and Mork.
I was happy to be back in touch with Leia and Mork. Leia and I, and Mork and I, in separate sets of messages, chatted in the way that long-lost friends do, telling each other where we live, how many kids we have, what we do for work. We exchanged several messages. A few messages in, both Mork and Leia asked me what sort of writing I did. And so I told them, as simply as I could: I write, under a pen name, about my son, who likes to wear a dress.
And you know what? Both Leia and Mork never wrote back.
Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe the conversations just dropped off in the way conversations eventually do, and it just happened to be after I dropped the pink-bomb on each of them. Maybe they both got busy, sick, or their computers went on the fritz.
Or maybe they got freaked out.
Because people sometimes do.
I notice that the tomboy in Sam’s grade who plays on the boys’ soccer team is cool and socially in demand, while Sam doesn’t get invited to many birthday parties. Sometimes people look at us strangely when we disclose that Sam, the long-haired kid they’ve taken for a girl, is a boy. Sam’s school administration can talk eloquently about diversity and acceptance up and down, except when it comes to gender, when they get all panicky and quiet.
I make it my business to talk to as many people as I can about Sam (while being careful of his privacy and his safety), to make gender nonconformity something that gets talked about, not something swept under the rug. Because when we hide something, we make it shameful. So I open my mouth, maybe even more than I should, and occasionally I lose an audience member or two, like Leia and Mork.
But maybe the next time they hear about someone’s son who wears a dress, they’ll remember that the woman they kind of liked back in elementary school mentioned something about her son wearing a dress, and maybe that will make it a little bit more OK.
