a bold step in my journey

Tomorrow morning, I meet with a prior teacher of mine,
 who is now a local high school Principal.
On our agenda:

the issue of school bullying.

I haven't talked about it much, besides vague references here and there, and brief mention of it on my sidebar, so today, I'd like to share with you the details.
Currently, I am taking the appropriate steps to become an Olweus Bully Prevention Trainer.
My desire is to help schools reduce and overcome what school bullying has become today.

In the eighth grade, I was severely bullied.
It occurred regularly, with everything happening short of being punched in the face.
I think about the emotional abuse I endured, and have often wished I had been
physically beat up, rather than emotionally beat up. 
Unfortunately, there was no choosing in this matter.
My belongings were stolen, threats became the norm, my locker vandalized, the bathroom walls were scrawled with my name more than naught, my gym clothes covered in slurs.  
I was voted Valentine's Day princess at the school dance with a handicapped boy voted Prince, and my first crush only paid me attention over the telephone and off school grounds.
I took an F in PE because I was scared to be in the locker room,
and I was unsure of going places because I wasn't sure who I might run into.
I was taunted, belittled, and most of my friends dropped off the map, afraid to be bullied, too.
They eventually came back around after my older bullies left for high school, which left me both relieved and conflicted.

Before that year I was "normal,"
outgoing, the student body vice-president of my elementary school.
After that year, I was a shell, afraid, insecure, broken,
and later numb to everything that had ever worried me.

In the years following,
I managed to pick up the pieces and move along as one does in life.
But the brokenness never disappeared, and the scars remained in my mind and in my heart, affecting my relationships, my trust, and the love I was able to give and accept.  I was entirely different than I was before that year--expecting the hate, the abuse, the dislike, assuming my worth was somewhat disposable if they--whoever they were at the time, chose.  Unfortunately, the effects of this abuse didn't end with a school bell.
This way of thinking trapped me in and out of depression over the next ten years or so. 

It was during the time that I was pregnant with my daughter that I finally put my foot down.
I thought if I am going to bring new life into this world,
I have to bring her into what is
 right and true.
It was the mother's love that I felt for her even before she was born, that helped me see the way that my mother cared for me, and how she ached as I dealt with my brokenness. 
It was then that I realized I needed to be better for myself and for my daughter,
before I could teach her about
happiness--the fundamental of life.
But there is no happiness where there is no truth.

It is both amazing and troubling to realize how damaging words can truly be.
The school-age is an especially vulnerable age when small things are huge,
and when
what is petty to us adults has the chance of becoming magnified in young eyes.
They are years which are capable of inspiring or hindering souls.
In my case, those years placed rivets on my spirit,
and it took many more years to break free.

In the last four years or so, I can say that I have broken the surface and made significant progress in uncovering the issues of self-worth, and to a large extent, the self-hatred that I carried with me over ten years.
It has taken much faith, self-talk and the reminding of myself that I am not the things that I believed I was after that cruel year, but am and will be everything that I want to be.
I've had to remind myself that what was screamed were lies,
and of the truths that I know,
in effort to keep my experience in perspective.

Today, my perspective is that my experience
is part of a larger plan.
It is driving me into an advocacy for change
and to give help and hope.
I believe my greatest work lies in what was my greatest challenge.

When I was younger, school bullying was taboo;
teachers thought the best way was to let students work it out,
children were afraid to tell their parents with worry it would get worse.
Children are still afraid to talk.
However, we are learning this approach is not effective,
and not talking is driving some, who are hopeless, to the edge.

Tomorrow morning, I will share some of my story.
In the past, it has been only shared with those close to me.
Tomorrow, I will share in effort to help;
to help others understand, and
to help those whose lives have been
bound by rivets and lies,
and encourage them into living life in
truth and happiness.

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