Computer Switch and I Get Serious About Bullying.

So, my poor desktop is starting to die. It won't turn off on its own anymore. And it turns itself on when I move around it.

It did this once before and I had to rebuild it from the ground up the last time (it took months.) I just got moved back in, so to speak, and now it's starting to do it again.

So I decided that after three years, it's time to retire the faithful desktop computer and get me a laptop.

Moving out is always hard. There's the boxes to pack and the stuff to move and then the mover breaks your favorite vase...

I'm taking my files over to the parent's computer until my new tricked out laptop arrives next week. New toys to play with are always fun. I will take pictures for you all.

Now for something definitely serious:

I am hearing a lot about bullying this week thanks to the poor soul who committed suicide last week due to some truly immature little bastards.

I speak from experience- I was bullied. I was choked in the locker room in a Lutheran grade school, I was bashed into the walls by kids that were bigger than me (while most of the rest of the class laughed), I was poked with a sewing pin in the shoulder, I was told that I was a liar and that I was going to hell and wound up crying in the school bathrooms because of it.

I also had a mother who was bullied and she had had it worse than I did. She got me through those years.

I was a too smart, too skinny kid in a class that had a pack of idiots who had no one else to pick on. I had a principal in the school who didn't give a damn about the poor kid with no importance.

It makes me SICK inside to see people picked on like this, in college no less. College people aren't always very mature, but you would think by the time you reach adulthood you would have enough brains to know when something that you do, something that you put online is going to hurt someone. It's just the same as saying it out loud in the middle of campus. Grow a brain. It's ONLINE where all can see it. You may think it's funny to put your buddy's video online...but he might not.

People need to learn RESPECT for others, and they need to learn to respect other people's private lives. So WHAT if he was gay? He was HUMAN. He deserved your respect the same as if he was bi or straight or transgender or whatever he was. I don't care what you think about homosexuality, I don't care if you think that he was damned or whatever the hell you think, HE was a person. He had family and friends who are now never going to see his smile again or laugh again because he was driven to the edge by these people's bullying. And that, people, is unacceptable.

Yes, bullying ends at some point, but the truth is the damage stays with you forever. The scars heal but they are still scars, and it still makes me furious when people are bullied like this because it reminds me of the hell I went through as a kid. I don't talk about my being bullied out loud except in front of a therapist, mostly because I get too upset even over a decade later.

Very few people know about this, but I had a friend commit suicide because of depression. Suicide is not painless, not for those who are left behind to grieve for those who are gone. It fucking hurts those who are left behind. I still can barely speak about it to this day and it's been five years.

I don't have an answer for the bullying. I just want it to stop. I don't want another kid or teen or adult to be driven to the point of no return by this, PLEASE. Respect your friends, your classmates, your co-workers. You don't know how close to the edge they might be, and your shove might be the one that sends them over the cliff. Remember they have families and friends and lovers that would miss them, that don't want them to be cut off in the prime of life because of your bullying. You don't want that guilt on your conscience that you were the one that shoved them away when all they needed was someone to give a damn.

Ta,
Bec