Being the One Bullied (Part One) by Wes Huntington

This is part one of a three-part blog post that had Kaarina, Katie and I wrote for Youth Night on April 13, 2016. 

Hi everyone.  I’m Wes Huntington, the student resident here at Crossroads.  I want to speak on behalf of someone who was bullied, in that case it is myself. Being the one bullied is no fun, right? Constantly put down, people telling you you’re stupid and not worth people’s time.  I lived with that for nearly all my years in grade school.  Granted when I was in 11^th and 12^th grade it was a little better, but not by much.

     I was bullied because I have autism, and before I briefly explain what autism is, let me say that I was verbally and emotionally attacked. I was called many names, like stupid for example. The other ones are ones I’d prefer not to mention because they were too vile for students such as yourselves.  

Good, now that we got that out of the way, I want to briefly explain what autism is. It affects your ability to express yourselves fully and sometimes you are unable to take sarcastic comments as what they are. You feel like the comments are truth and react very, very negatively.  Sometimes there was comments that were truly meant to be sarcastic, but I would react to them like they were bullying comments and react angrily and maybe start physically fighting with people. Most of the time it was just starting a yelling match with the people around me and it would escalate to actual violence with fists and whatnot.

      It was no fun and it would feel like you have no friends, no one to rely on but yourself. However, you can choose to let the bullying affect you or you can choose not to. Unfortunately, until I learned better, I chose to let the bullying affect me. That would include me lashing out, pretty much assault the bullies and then that would land me in one of two spots. It would be either detention, or worse, getting suspended. When I was in middle school, and to be precise, in eighth grade, any fists shown resulted in me getting suspended.  The bullying continued even as I reached college.  I had a friend – the name is unimportant - who betrayed my trust and then started bullying me too.

     Thankfully, I found a community where bullying is frowned upon. They also came to eventually embrace my autistic abilities. That community was Crossroads, and it made me feel that I was loved by God even though I was bullied. Being in a campus ministry makes you feel like you are loved by God, regardless of where you are at in your faith journey.

     My advice for the bullies and the bullied for this is quite simple: don’t provoke the victim to act out if you’re the bully and don’t react to the bullying if you are the one bullied. If you stop reacting to the bullying and get help from support groups, the bullies themselves usually are the ones who will stop it.  Now the bullied are even attacked online. You must really be careful of what you see, say and what not on line as well. The bullies themselves can now be anonymous. It’s still probably the best advice is not to react to those as well because they will respond with even more vile things.

     I really don’t know what else to say about being the one bullied. I know how hard it is not react to those hurtful comments, but it is probably for the best that you don’t react to those. It only fuels the fire for the bullies to even come up with even hurtful comments and put downs.

     I hope that you now have a better understanding about being the victim of bullying. Remember, bullying can happen to anyone at any given time. The only advice is this: don’t provoke it further, walk away and tell an adult. Only by doing those two things can the world around you change for the better. God knew you before you came into this world as He shaped you in His image. You are loved by him, no matter what you do.  Mark 12:31 says “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” That is true, and if you love yourself and your fellow neighbor – like your bullies – you are truly with bliss that is unparalleled.