It's a message.
To reach out to young people, specifically in the GLBT sector, who may be suffering bullying in schools and online. Now people are rather homophobic, and they believe that trying to keep their children from homosexual people will keep them from from ever becoming gay... but that is completely false.
Recent research has shown that homosexual men use their brains much in the same way a woman would, which explains their attraction to other men. Now I'm not saying this is faultless, and obviously it needs to continue to be looked into, but honestly if someone is going to be some one from the GLBT community then it's going to happen whether you like it or not.
And it should happen whether you like it or not.
Now I was bullied when I was a child. People don't really seem to care if it's a normal child being bullied. I would have to be lesbian for it to make the news. But I'm not. So no one really cared.
Of course that's the pitfall of being a white, straight woman.
Anyways, this is supposed to be about other people.
In primary school as well as secondary school I was bullied quite a bit. In middle school one of my classmates used AOL instant messaging (the hip thing at the time) to create a persona and told everyone in the school that I was, in essence, easy. That I wanted to fool around with the boys in my seventh grade class and basically gave me a bad name by insulting people pretending to be me.
No matter how HARD I tried, no one ever listened to me. No one in my class. Not even when I gave them evidence that I hadn't done any of the things nor had I ever wanted to hurt anyone or called anyone names.
And there were times where it seemed completely hopeless.
Because that followed me through high school.
Of course I wasn't completely innocent I suppose. I was a compulsive liar until I was a Freshman. But lying is quite common in grade school. I'm sure none of those students are innocent.
In high school I had almost no friends. For my Freshman and Sophomore years I honestly didn't. I had a boyfriend for a while. My first kiss. I hung out with him and his friends for a while. Then we broke up and suddenly none of them wanted to talk to me anymore. So I faded into the background. I had one friend left from middle school, Victoria, who is still one of my best friends.
Junior year turned around for me.
I met one of my best friends. Jen. She and I had been friends as Freshman. Well she tolerated me and I... tried hard to befriend her.
When we met Junior year we became fast friends. And she's still one of my best friends.
High school is hard.
Middle school is harder.
But it gets better.
IT GETS BETTER!
I promise.
Those first years are the most influential. You either sink or swim. If you sink, there is always someone there who can grab your hand and pull you up. You just have to be looking for them! If that person isn't a parent it could be a friend, it could be a teacher, it could be a counselor! If you don't look for help you can't get it.
But if you look for it, it's always there.
I promise.
It gets better.
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