Today, I stepped back to let a guest writer take over my blog. Leah J. Hans was gracious enough to write a beautiful essay regarding bullying. Thanks so much for letting me share this!
Everybody Vs. Me, A Nobody by Leah J. Hans
T/w: suicide, self-harm, cutting, bullying
People say that bullying is something that everyone goes through at least once in their lives. Those same people dismiss it for the same reason. If everyone goes through it, then what makes YOU special? What makes YOU different? Why should YOU get special treatment for what you went through? YOU have to grin and bear it. Because EVERYONE went through it.
It’s those same people who act so upset when they find out that you committed suicide. Notice that I said “act”. Because they’ll do the same thing for the next person. Just because everyone experiences bullying does not make it okay. Not by any means. People can flaunt their “zero-tolerance” policies all they want, but if “everyone” is still being bullied, doesn’t that just show you how little those “policies” are doing?
Imagine being in so much pain that the only way out of now is to be out forever. Imagine having people announce your biggest insecurities about yourself, amplifying them to astronomical proportions. And that must be how people see those insecurities. They must be pretty damn big, if everyone agrees that you should be insecure about them. And they just keep getting bigger, don’t they? And you keep getting more of them, don’t you? Until one day, you’re just a walking pile of insecurities. Barely walking. You would crawl if you could. Or maybe you would rather just stay in bed. Yeah. When you’re in bed, the only person who can hurt you is yourself.
And that’s what you start to do. It started out emotional, because that’s how this all began, isn’t it? But maybe then it becomes physical. Slice your arm to the bone. Those thin red lines look better on skin than any marker does on paper. So you become the paper. And you mark your skin. Because now you have some control over something. It may be control over pain, but it’s better than just them hurting you. And they will never see you cry. They will never see you bleed. They will never understand. Until the news breaks that you died.
They say that everyone experiences bullying. How many more people who make up the “everyone” have to die before we start to realize that it’s not okay?
Carrigan Richards 
Beautifully written. I hope it will hit home for those who do nothing to help those in need before it is too late.
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I hope so too.
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