Bullycide

“Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me!”

I really wish we’d stop saying the above – because it is one of the biggest lies ever told to mankind. Millions and millions of kids and young adult world-wide are bullied every day, by schoolmates, siblings, parents, teachers, team-mates, and so called friends.

As a survivor of bullying, I still suffer the consequences – social anxiety, panic attacks, night-mares, PTSD, physical pain-reactions etc. Only compassion with those who would have to clean up after my bullycide have kept me from actively killing myself as a child, a young adult and later.

How ever macabre it seems – I like the word “bullycide” – because it puts the responsibility for the deaths of many, many kids and young adults squarely where it belongs – with the bullies.

Bullying is nothing but delayed murder, regardless of whether the victim kill themselves or not.

The most horrifying thing about all of this is that as a Society, we encourage bullying, we endorse it. By teaching our kids that being the best, the smartest, the most beautiful, slimmest, strongest etc, we set them up to point at others as “second-rate” human beings, objects of ridicule, disrespect, violence and bullying or we set them up to be victims of those who consider them second-rate human beings. Either way, the responsibility is ours.

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