I’ve debated this for hours now. Do I add in my words, when others have done it so well? Do my words, does my story really even matter? Last night, when I saw a tweet (Yes, I check Twitter at concerts. I’m an addict. FACT!) that my comment in one person’s post had sparked another person to post, I started thinking about this. Part of me wants to let it go. Part of me wants to scream it from the roof-tops.

I guess I will need to attempt middle ground.

The first week of seventh grade, I managed to get on the wrong side of a group of girls. The mean girls. It’s been so long that I can’t exactly remember how it started. I maybe looked at them wrong. Or had on the same shirt as one of them. Maybe I said something the leader of the group didn’t like. Maybe it was because I knew the most popular boy in school (dude, he was my next door neighbor) and he wouldn’t give her the time of day. Maybe I just looked like an easy mark. I had glasses and zits and hadn’t developed yet, where so many of them had. Your guess would be as good as mine.

They made me their target though. From that day on, I was their favorite target. Think of anything that ever happened to you by a bully and know that it happened to me that year. I had my lunch stolen. I had drinks “accidentally” spilled all over my shirt on picture day. I had rumors spread about me. How I was easy. How I’d do anything. I had my phone number written in every boys bathroom. I had my bike destroyed. How they did that, I have no idea. But it was literally bent in half. They were relentless in their threats and horrible words and taunts. My house was egged 6 times. I was shoved, slapped, pinched and pushed into lockers. I was tormented.

For seven months straight, I was tormented daily. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. I nearly failed school that year. I like to tell people, that it was to see if I could. That’s my party line. I was an A student every other year. I took AP classes. School came easy to me. But that year, I nearly failed everything. I made up a story as too why I nearly failed, because it was easier that telling the truth.

Because no one would listen to the truth. No one asked. Teachers would see her doing things and wouldn’t stop her. My mom was never home. She was getting her masters degree. She worked full time and went to school full time. I was the one making dinners and doing laundry and cleaning the house. I took care of my brothers. Me. Just me. She didn’t need that stress added. Besides by then, I’d already learned to keep things from her. To protect her.

I went to teachers. I went to the principal. I went to the school counselor. I heard it all. Oh just ignore her and she’ll stop. If you don’t acknowledge it, they will get bored. Stand up to them. You know, I tried that. It only got worse. This is your fight, not mine. We have to have actual proof that it’s her.

I got hateful notes in my locker every day; on the days that they allowed me to use my own locker. It was in their hallway, so you know, it was up to them if I could use it or not. I failed PE, because they wouldn’t let me in the locker room to change. They’d take my homework out of my hands and rip it to shreds. They tore my backpack off one day and then threw all of my books in the aqueducts. I guess the ocean needed my books more than I did. I didn’t use a bathroom at school for seven months, for fear of being shoved in a toilet. If I absolutely had too, I’d go in the middle of class and run down the hall to the kindergarten teachers bathrooms. Because it had a lock on the door.

I wish I was joking. I wish I was making this all up. I wish I could tell you that they grew up. That an adult stepped in and helped me. That the main chick moved away. That I changed schools. Anything.

The reality though, is harder. One day my brother saw them following me home. One day my ten year old brother, saw them. He became my permanent bodyguard for the next two months of school. Which he could do, because our school was a small, K-12 program.

Private school kids are even worse than public school kids.

He walked me to school. He walked me home. He stood outside bathrooms. He walked me to my locker each day, shoving them all out of the way.

He finally resorted to beating the shit outta one of the girls. When that didn’t stop it, he beat the shit outta the main leader chick. My brother, you see, had always been bigger than anyone else. People always mistook him for about three years older. He is the size of a linebacker now. All tall and broad shoulders. Mostly though? He was scrappy. He always stood up for people who were picked on. He always stood up to bully’s. He still does it now. When he said, stop or I’ll beat the shit out of you, he meant it. After the second time, they believed him.

It’s not what you want to happen. It’s not what I wanted. It had to end though. My baby brother? He ended it for me. The boy is relentless. He didn’t give up. Eventually they moved onto picking on someone else. Someone without a ten year old bodyguard.

I was bullied. Horribly bullied. I am thankful that this was before the days of Facebook and Twitter and mass texting. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been then.

It needs to continue to be talked about. Over and over and over again, until it stops. Some of us were bullied. Some of us were bullies. At this point in our lives, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it stops. What matters is that we recognize it and stop it before it gets so bad that our kids take their own lives.

In most ways, it does get better. I’ve hear the ads. They are all over TV. It does get better. I was only bullied for seven months though. Then it ended for me. What though, happens to the kids that it never ends for? That is what scares me.

We just have to keep talking about it.

What matters is that we stand up and tell our stories. That we use our voice. In hopes that it helps one kid or one adult stop bullying.