(Video featured above is of a TV anchor’s response to cyber bullies regarding her weight)
Yes, I was bullied as a child and still on occasion am bullied as an adult.
Growing up in Radford, Virginia, a small town in the southwest part of the state by the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was surrounded by mainly caucasians and African-Americans. To be outside of that binary, well, was to be bullied. It didn’t help that I was also a chubby kid, so other kids made fun of me for being both Chinese AND fat.
There was a bully who kept picking on me from about fourth grade to eighth grade: he and his friends would laugh at me, call me names, and make jokes like “Hey, hey…he wants to go out with you!”
One time, while doing homework at the public library, I caught him staring over my shoulder. When I looked up, he said to me, “What the hell are you looking at?” At that moment, I realized that all the years of his bullying me was more of a front to hide that he admired and respected me. There I was, being a diligent student and doing my homework; perhaps he knew that I had a future of leaving our hometown, while he didn’t feel like he had much of a future.
Even though I have endured bullying and have been angry over these injustices, I can also see how these experiences made me stronger: I didn’t let them take me down in their cruel words. I went on and did my own thing and made sure I was taking care of myself and keeping myself strong.
And like my post on forgiveness pointed out, I have moved on from these experiences and taken what I’ve learned from them going forward.