Miss Amanda Todd

If you haven't already heard, on October 10, 2012 Amanda Todd - a victim of horrific bullying - took her own life. She wasn't yet 16.

This hit me really hard. In grade 10, a girl in my grade hanged herself because of the same reason. Nobody had any warning. One day she was just gone. While we weren't friends, I was in a bunch of classes with her and we were both in the school play the year before. The last time I spoke to her was on anti-bullying day.

But people had warning for Amanda. She put a video on youtube detailing all that she had gone through a month before this all happened. And either nobody noticed, or nobody was able to step in and take it seriously and help this poor, broken girl. This has been happening all to often.

One of the worst things that I'm finding are all the heartless comments on articles and copies of her original video. People are blaming her. Since when is it appropriate to blame the victim? Ever? It's like the view that wearing a short skirt means you're "asking" to be raped - it doesn't work like that. Speaking from experience, NOBODY asks to be bullied. I don't care if you don't approve of her behaviour or think that she didn't learn when she should've, she was still beaten and tormented and abandoned by everyone. Nothing warrants that. Nothing.

There's also the view that she's a horrible, selfish person for committing suicide because it doesn't accomplish anything. It doesn't get the bullies to stop. And it does hurt those left behind. But don't you dare imply that it's selfish. Is it selfish to want someone to make it stop? Is it selfish to want to not hurt? I don't care how much you've been through and that you're still here - she couldn't take it. And that's what matters. She had put up with so much that she just wanted the hurting to end. She was in so much pain that she couldn't hang on any more. That is nobody's fault but the bullies' and those who didn't stop them. Her family is hurting, her friends are hurting and all of us who have ever been affected by bullying should be hurting too because someone out there felt so alone that they had to take themselves away from those who loved them, even if they didn't show it enough. And now they'll never have that chance.

This needs to stop. I know writing this isn't going to help, but sometimes it helps to write it out. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that everyone has been a bully at some point or another, even if you try not to be. Sometimes that little comment you make hurts someone more deeply than you can possibly imagine, even if it's perfectly benign to you. We need to stop that, and stop the outright stuff too. Online or off, we really need to learn that what we say and do impacts others. Even if you feel justified, don't do it. It'll take a conscious effort and a lot of time, but people can change. We can also be nicer. Sometimes sitting with someone or asking the lost looking person just sitting there when assigned to groups to join yours can make all the difference. You may just meet someone for a class, or you could make a friend. You never know, and if nothing else, I can guarantee you that that person will appreciate it more than you can know. Sometimes the little things add up, and that goes in either direction. Maybe if we're all better people at least most of the time we won't be losing anymore beautiful children. Maybe.

It's worth a shot.

The Thing About Me and Adrenaline

For those of you who haven't clued in - I'm crazy! No, seriously. I suffer from a clinical mental disorder. I have OCD, as well as accompanying debilitating social anxiety disorder (we're investigating if it's a product of my OCD or a separate condition). Alongside that I've had to deal with depression, and self-harm (moderate cutting and dermatillomania - ie obsessive skin picking). Because my best friend also suffers from a mental disorder, we decided to vlog about it, and our experiences. We've had a very positive response so far, until today when someone decided to be very accusatory and a total know-it-all because he happens to suffer from something that I mentioned. Rather than say what he didn't like, he (paraphrasing here) said that we aren't qualified to talk about mental illness, and his is more difficult to deal with than ours.

That upset me. Immensely. I can take constructive criticism. I can respond well to that, and figure out how to adjust it when people tell me what I did wrong. Instead, he belittled our efforts to provide a positive space for other people going through similar things to what we are. We weren't at all trying to say that we know everything. That couldn't be farther from the truth. In the context of the video, I simply mentioned that borderline personality disorder is an example of mental illness, and that people are often misdiagnosed as bipolar when they have bpd, which means that they aren't necessarily given proper treatment. Which is bad. I was more trying to bring more awareness to bpd (which is often very overlooked, sadly), but I suppose my intentions were misunderstood. Now I'm fretting that I've done something wrong and also very angry that someone would have the audacity to be so cruel about it. I checked out this gentleman's channel, and he seems to discuss bpd in all his videos, presumably to raise awareness, much the way we are (although for us in a more general way right now). It's like he thinks we're enemies when were working towards a common goal - showing that there are others out there going through things and that sometimes life is tough. I get the feeling he's the sort who blames everything on his illness, and that the world hates him. Sometimes you just have to go through it and make the best out of it. Be someone with and illness, don't let it define you. It's only a part of the bigger picture, and it's all about what you make of it. My friend and I are turning it into an opportunity for us to bond, and to hopefully help others.

The side effect of me being so antsy about this has to do with adrenaline. When I get agitated, my flight response goes into overdrive and I shake uncontrollably, get chills and have difficulty breathing. It also usually leaves me exhausted, but unable to sleep for a very long time and with a horrible headache. Basically, in his search for conflict, the lovely composer63 has left me extremely ill, but I'm sure he's sleeping just fine. In the future, the folks at luneverse (our channel) shall just delete those comments if they aren't polite.