The process of being bullied is an interesting one. First, you are in denial and wonders if your five senses are playing tricks on you. Then, upon seeing all the eyes that are mocking you( somehow or rather, there’s always a crowd) you realized it’s happening.

Then you began to feel the injustice of the situation. Why me? Why now? What did I do? And you come to learn how to feel embarrassed. The situation would replay over and over again at night, tormenting you.

The frequency of being bullied has nothing to do with the probability of being able to laugh it off, retaliate back or a simple snide response. But coupled with an abusive family, it can fracture the ability to fight back completely as you are so used to submitting and just closing your eyes, waiting for the next blow to come.

Then you begin to hate. Everyone that messed you up and soon you begin to hate those that has done nothing to you. Anyone that can hold a social interaction comfortably is someone to hate. And you would wish that their parents would hit them at home, died a fatal death and tomorrow they will come with broken limbs. You would wished dark things to happen to those who have hurt you before.

But most of all, you fantasizes about how you became their hero and being worshiped by them. And the sweet moment when they say sorry that comes with the revenge of denying their existence.

Soon, you’ll realize that that’s never going to happen. They won’t die or become any worse. They won’t apologize. Then, the fantasies become abit more realistic. You start to imagine them talking to you just like before and both of you would become best friends by pretending nothing happened. That is good enough.

But that’s never going to happen. And when others doesn’t change, you change. You disappeared and isolate yourself. Toilets and abandoned stairs are your best friend. It’s not a bad place to be, your imagination runs wild and you are in your fantasy all the time. Daydreaming about a story of you in a faraway land. Somehow, there’s always this knack of being able to learn some cool skill. After all, not socializing do have its perks of having the time to explore skills and hobbies.

One day, you would be removed from that environment. In a new environment, surprises upon surprises come as people are just so nice. So nice. Fake but still so nice. You could pretend nothing happened and be someone new. Find love and suddenly it hit you.

You couldn’t tell right apart from wrong. After all, you were bullied but you cursed them everyday.

You are so eager to please and never seem to be able to hold your opinion. Well, rejection after rejection is traumatizing and who cares about having an opinion? You just want to be close to people. After feeling rejection so many times, why would you wanna do the same to others. Well, one thing for sure. They are not as easily hurt as us.

You seem to hurt your new found friends. Well, being alone all the time doesn’t really boost your Experience Points when it comes to being a good friend.

You are unconsciously selfish. Hopefully, by now you’ll realize that worrying about yourself and when you are gonna get hurt next doesn’t get you anywhere to understanding others.

There’s no way to know what’s love and what’s hate. Emotions are swirling in your mind everyday. It’s confusing enough trying to make sense of the easier ones.

You find it incredibly impossible to say no. You know how that feels. That word has been thrown at you for your entire life. But not saying no to others would mean saying no to yourself.

Everybody progress at different pace in life. But I hope that you would have healed if you were bullied in the past.

Healing from bullying is not easy. It requires courage to make mistakes and well, they do happen quicker for us. One day, you will realize that you are no saint and you’ve hurt others too. That balance itself will bring you some peace.

Making a joke out of it helps, laughing about how stupid and weak you were is even better.

The most important thing to remember is to be prepared the next time it happens. Whether you want to fight back, retort back or anything that doesn’t include fuming and glaring in a spot is good as gold. I personally don’t see any point in protecting other people’s dignity when they have trampled on mine.

Everytime you were bullied, spend some time figuring out how you could have acted if it happens again. And know that all the negative emotions it caused is just a reaction from the situation. It doesn’t have to define who you are as a person it definitely doesn’t mean that you are an innocent victim.