An article on "bullycide"

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Yea, attempting to control my thoughts directly is an extreme exercise in futility. My thoughts are usually so rapid, vague, and muddled that I'm better off trying to deal with negative emotions by finding something else to focus on. In most cases having to take action is more helpful than sitting around thinking.

In no way have I become anything like the people I was angry at, but I do believe it was a possibility. There was just so much. I was severely abused at home and then went to school and got abused and later even actually raped. None of it was provoked. I didn't even speak. This is really hard for people to understand, but, because I had been abused for so long at home, there was a point where I somehow decided that I deserved it or that I was some kind of pariah because I was conceived in sin and that I didn't belong here. ( keep in mind I was 9 years old) I was a shell of a human being. I was so used to submissive people pleasing that there was really little self left. I could not truthfully answer any question about a preference. I was so confused, that my answers would have been an attempt at fitting in. I lost myself. Only when I decided to fight back in my mind did anything improve and that was to enact the rage over everything that happened to me, cry righteous angry tears, rock myself like the parent I didn't have should have and then rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

I know all about being suicidal. My suicidal thoughts started at age 9. I don't have them anymore, they were situational. I don't have the cure for everyone, I only wish I did because I know the abyss all too well, but if I can give someone a new perspective and help them emerge victorious it would bring me great joy because we are brilliant, we are worth something, we have purpose, we can find happiness, we can be loved.

I also know all about the other side of suicide: The people who are left behind to deal with losing someone that way. 5 years ago my beautiful young mother took a Taxi home with groceries. When the taxi driver was about to leave, instead of backing out, he pulled forward and pinned my mother against the garage door crushing her pelvis. It took her a very long time to recover and she was unable to walk etc. She took up smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day to try to deal with her depression. She fast developed COPD, at which point she immediately ceased smoking and never had another cigarette, but, the damage had been done. This October, she took her own life because she was very afraid that someday she'd suffocate to death and she was very depressed that she could no longer live the vibrant life she had before her accident. Her death was not the "going to sleep" she had planned. I wont give the details but she suffered. I am left with the aftermath and it is much worse than dealing with a natural death. She was brilliant and the love of my life...my goddess. I can't help but think something could have made it better...Something could have stopped her...I should have been there with her.

Okay, last time here. I've said it over and over again, but I am not trying to talk any specific person out of suicide. I advocate using more objective thinking (not that anyone can ever be perfectly objective) to take action against it proactively, rather than waiting until a person has decided to die and then reacting. If anyone takes issue with that, fine, argue against it. But please stop telling me how none of what I'm saying will help someone already in a depressed or suicidal mindset. It's not, and never was, meant to.

Ace of Spades, I did not say the situation was perceived, only the lack of ability to cope with it. Most of the time this is true, most of the time the person can get better even if they can't see that yet. If you or someone else sees that as reinforcing the idea that their problems are all in their head, then you are reading into it things I never said. If you are going to declare me an insensitive insulting ass, then please base it on things I actually said.

It may not be the suicidal person's intent to make their problems into their family's problems, but they do it whether they intend to or not. And I think most people would agree that the suicide of someone they love hits harder than pretty much any bullying could. So what exactly is wrong with getting kids to realize this, that their actions against themselves are hurtful to those that love them, before they get to that point in the first place.

Marshall, I did not say that anger was pleasant, just that it could be useful. Also, I do not believe a person must be deluded or out of their mind to make a foolish decision. And, I'm sorry, but no one will ever convince me that throwing their life away unneccessarily is anything but the dumbest damn thing a person could do.

PersephoneX, are hugs ok? Well you give 'em so I guess so. That's f*****g rough. I'm glad that you can still see your life as worthwhile after all that.

Ok, I didn't really want to share this before because it's still kinda humiliating, but here's some of the s**t that happened to me. Maybe even if people disagree with me, they'll better see where I'm coming from.

I think I can leave out the years of taunting, of being shunned by classmates, the constant fighting. Hell, I got in a fight the day of my high school graduation. But this is the worst of it, and I'll let it stand for all the rest.

When I was eight, two older boys (12 or 13) caught me alone in the school bathroom. They started off with the name calling, some stupid f*****g song the other kids had made up about me being a ret*d. I was used to it, so I tried to just walk out. One of them blocked the door. I tried to squeeze past, and he pushed me back into the room. I hit him, and he shoved me harder this time, so that I fell to the floor. Then his friend kicked me in the side. I started shouting, and they both kept kicking me. In the stomach, and in the ribs, and in the balls. I started crying, and they started calling me fa***t too.

The one that called me fa***t first told his friend to stop kicking. He let me up to my knees. Then he dropped his pants and made me perform oral sex on him. When I tried to stop, to pull away, his friend would kick me again. Eventually, I gave in and did it. They laughed while I did, and when I was done the other hit me a few more times and then put his belt around my neck. He choked me with it and his friend got scared. He ran off. The one with the belt, I guess he didn't think it was fun without an audience, so he took it off me and left. Seconds, maybe minutes, later a teacher found me in the bathroom, shirt torn, bruised, crying and gasping for air. He made me go back to class. I had to see those two around the school every day for the rest of the year. They must have even told other students what they'd done, because after that everyone added fa***t to the list of names they'd been calling me before. But nothing ever happened to them. No one ever told.

That's awful that that happened to you.

That's why schools need to do so much more about bullying. They just let kids get away with things that would get you arrested if they happened off of school property.

I've blocked a lot of it out and don't even remember a lot of my school years (or maybe it was just so long ago I forgot) but one of the worst things I remember happening to me is a couple of boys following me when I was walking home from school and throwing rocks at me. Nothing was ever done about it although my mother knew about it that time because it was raining and they made holes in my umbrella.

Another time a boy was painfully bending my fingers back and hitting and struggling had no effect so I spit in his face to get him to stop. I got suspended off the school bus for that.

((( Hugs ))) This made me really cry. I am so so sorry that this happened to you. Actually, I really hug people. I am ok with anything I can see coming, it's unexpected touches from out of view that I sometimes have a problem with. A doctor told me I had Post Traumatic Stress disorder, which is probably true. I'd like to point out that those people are the ones who are supposed to be normal. In a certain perspective, you can see that if being normal includes the formentioned behaviors, it's certainly nothing to aspire to. I'm religiously confused, but, one point of interest to me is that the meek shall inherit the earth. We have been the meek and we have the intelligence to take over the world in the computer age. We are not Xenophobes and we are ready to include all people into our society, that says a lot about us vs them.

The fa***t would have been the one who willfully participated in a homosexual act, not the young child it was forced upon. I am angry for you. If a person starts out a perpetrator at age 13, there's not a lot of hope that he will ever change and if he did, I imagine the incident haunted him for his entire life. I think your story is pen worthy and that you should write about your experiences to try to focus attention on just how far bullying can go. How did you cope? Did you ever tell your parents?

When I was 14, these people offered me a ride home from a party. I was with another girl, so I felt safe. I shouldn't have. They threw her out of the car and they raped me at knife point. Then, they were talking about what to do with me. There were 4 of them. One wanted to let me go, the other 3 didn't. They had police records already. As the car rounded a bend, I pushed the door open and jumped. I rolled down an embankment and ran into some woods, where I kept running deeper and hid. I could see them for hours driving around, getting out of the car with flashlights, yelling and swearing. I just sat for hours, listening to the sound of my heartbeat pound in my ears until the sun came up and they finally went away. I walked 5 miles home with my legs trembling and collapsed in my room. I never reported it because, like everything else, I thought it was my own fault.

Persephone, mds, you both are far braver than I. Thank you for sharing. I wish I could bring myself to do the same.

Anyhow, I've been suicidal on and off since I was 9 or so. Yep, two decades of often wanting to die, and I'm still here. Part of why I'm still around is not wanting to hurt those I care about, but there's also a fear there that what comes next could be worse. Like, what if the Catholics are right and I end up going to Hell or something? I'm not religious, but the fear that I could spend an eternity reliving my worst day terrifies me.

My wife is aware of my struggles. She's been there too and knows I would never go to those extremes without letting her know first.

Why do you call your experiences bullying? Those were serious crimes done by criminals and not by bullies.
And what they did to mds was not homosexual but paedophile! Who knows how much children are abused by them today only because he was to cowardly to call the police back then! Such teenagers have to go to prison and psychatry!
I was talking about verbal and physical discrimination when I said bullying and it's clear that I didn't understand why you were so extremely obsessed by it.
Calling that bullying does degrade your fate and does belittle those criminals.
I don't know how it is in the U.S., which to me appear to be even worse than the PRC to be true since the PRC does at least adhere to their inhuman behavior, and not try to look like the ideal of liberty while indeed being a country full of conservative and insane fascists, but in Austria there are laws for juvenile crime which consider younger people not as equal to adults but also indictable if they are older than 14, if they are younger the parents would be punished and would of course manage to stop their child from committing crimes. Rape would certainly keep teenagers in prison for more than 5 years. I actually don't understand why you talk about what your school should have done while those things are not really your schools interest anymore but interest of the police.
But considering the U.S. I think it's futile to talk about rational ways, Persephone I do totally understand your way of homeschooling now, what I don't understand is why you kept on living in the U.S.. If it's only the language you might certainly know that the U.K. is also an option, I would suggest it to you, I don't know much about Canada but it seems to be awesome too. India and Australia might not be desirable.
But with every mistake that shows up in the world the idea of going into politics becomes more desireable to me. I'm pretty certain that this would be my future.
Persephone, mds, I love you both, probably for one of you it's only compassion but it feels like love too.
If you need somebody to talk to I'm here, it's probably not as freeing to talk to unknowns who won't remember you anyway than to talk to a single person privately. Also for everyone else here, if you feel sad and lonely and think that you can't make it any longer you can write me a pm or ask me for my msn address and I'll have a sympathetic ear for you. I don't know why I'm offering this now, probably I just can't find another way to get rid of my burning compassion.

((( Hugs ))) I am here if you're ever ready.

Do you feel better surrounded by nature? Is your depression biochemical or situational? If you don't feel comfortable answering, it's ok to say that too.

Awes, This is completely beautiful. ((( Hugs ))) You are a brilliant being.


Autistic Love Song: It skips once. I wanted to play this for my mother when we were having misunderstandings.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzMy13_9jRA[/youtube]

On the nature thing:

Afraid not. As a matter of fact, I started a thread on these forums a couple hours back on how I hate camping and nature wants me dead.

On the situational/biochemical axis:

A mix of both, I think. It was originally almost entirely situational, I believe, but it went on for so long it became pathological. Although my family has a history of mental illness, so who knows?

On the rest: thanks. Suffice it to say, I don't think my situation approaches what you and mds have experienced.

I Love nature but I don't care for camping much. I am sensitive to temperatures, and I like to be really clean and find being dirty a discomfort ( etc.). I more meant sitting by an ocean or waterfall, listening to the sounds of nature, the feel of the sun. ( I should find your post and read it, obviously)

Once a situational depression becomes biochemical, there is often a trauma involved. I wont push on the other things. I'm a good friend though, if you need one.

I don't think there's a hard distinction between the two. I think all depression is essentially biochemical. Certain people are more susceptible than others. A traumatic or stressful life situation serves as a trigger for episodes of "major depression", but the underlying condition leading to heightened susceptibility is biochemical.

I think anyone can become despondent from time to time during times of extreme stress or hardship but despondency alone is not necessarily depression. It might just be a natural reaction to living under extremely difficult circumstances. Depression is an unnatural despondency and low mood that tends to linger and cause difficulty functioning even when external stress is at a normal level.

Just my 2 cents.

Well I don't want to be a jerk but sometimes I wish people wouldn't say that......if I am such a strong person why can't I get past anything? I'm just good at somehow coming off as doing better than I am.

Firstly, I'm grateful for people's kind responses.

Awes, I call it bullying because, at least, that's where it started. With simple name-calling. The rest of the kids in the school treated me as sub-human, and that's what made it seem acceptable to these two to do what they did.

The reason I posted that at all was because it seems like every single person who disagreed with me in this thread was assuming that the reason for it was because of a lack of experience with either bullying or depression. Multiple people have used the word clueless. One's called me naive. A few have said things like "I don't know if you've bee there." And everyone has insisted on pointing out to me repeatedly that bullying goes beyond simple name calling, as if this isn't something I already know better than most. No matter how many times I said outright "trust me, I know" people continued to imply it, and it was getting frustrating and, frankly, insulting.

Marshall and Sagroth, I agree that there isn't a hard distinction between situational and biochemical depression. I think in many, maybe most, cases one leads to the other. That one can become so depressed due to some event that one's brain chemistry is altered to the point that one cannot escape the depression even once one has gotten past the event or situation that caused it.

PersephoneX, that you could go through what you did and still be as concerned with kindness toward others as you are shows great strength.