[Hiroi Sekai]

I feel ill. Perhaps it's because I lived a somewhat quiet and sheltered life in my earlier years, but hitting my twenties and getting out into the world more, I'm witnessing event play out in my area, and it is a terrible world out there.

Spoiler for Not exactly for the weak-minded.:

It all started about 8 years back when a very young girl was kidnapped from our tiny community of 5000 people. Shook up the entire town and police were all over it for weeks. After little luck, we feared she had been killed. I have an undying respect for this girl as she managed to leave a trace of her path along with the fingerprint and DNA evidence which eventually lead to her rescue and the criminal's arrest. She had picked up a lighter he had dropped for fingerprints, and by scratching his face at one point she left marks along with DNA under her nails. The criminal was found to have raped her and was found guilty for multiple charges.

Spoiler for Continuation:

Things seemed to calm down for a while, but after I graduated from high school (was in late elementary when the first incidence occurred), it was within a couple years later that terror struck again. A very good friend of mine was found beaten badly on a set of train tracks on Halloween night, and died later in hospital. I saw the Facebook posts at the time and felt absolutely sick to my stomach. This was a kind girl who heard I had moved into the neighbourhood, and along with a couple others, came by my house and invited me to hang out with them. I had known her for about 8 or 9 years to that point. The murderer was found months and months later, and he escaped from British Columbia all the way down to Ontario. He had an additional charge on him with sexual assault on a woman right here in my current city, and he has finally been set up for trial and was denied bail.

Spoiler for Continuation II:

And it's just today that I popped onto Facebook to find something else that haunts the province of British Columbia. A young woman named Amanda Todd had been led on at an early stage of her life to believe that someone liked her and cared for her. In order to fit in, she made the error of "flashing" on camera, and that's where the disasters started. Not long after, somebody messaged her on Facebook and blackmailed her, claiming they would release the pictures of her flashing herself to the public if she didn't put on a show for him. It got worse as she transferred schools and an old male friend led her on once again, telling her to visit because his girlfriend was out of town. Later on, she would find the guy with about 15 of his friends at the school, who endlessly barraged her with insults, hate and physical violence. They beat her and left her on the floor, and the depressed victim crawled into a ditch and basically accepted her fate. Getting home she attempted suicide by drinking bleach, but was saved at the hospital. What followed were a torrent of comments on Facebook saying things like "she should have used a stronger bleach" and "make sure you actually kill yourself next time". The poor girl left the city entirely, but that group stalked her and made sure her life was a living hell. She tried everything from cutting herself to drugs and alcohol to help ease the pain, but ultimately she had succeeded in committing suicide, which brings a sad end to the story.

I feel especially sick because there is already a Facebook page which downright ridicules her. Viewing the page creator, this is a person who just created a Facebook account 5 hours ago to make this page. Thankfully the responses towards the page have been mostly negatory, but the fact that this page exists disgusts me. There are just some people in the world who wish to cause nothing but harm to others, and I'm so very sad to hear another victim's life was claimed like this.

I hope you all think the same about bullying like I do, as I have been a victim of it as well. Let me tell you, when I was down in the dumps, I regretfully resorted to bullying as well at one point to get through better, and I feel like absolute shit admitting that. What I did was wrong and I deeply regret it. I have found most of the people who I acted very badly towards, and have apologized, but what's done is done. It's why I try so very hard to be a peaceful person now, both online and in real life. I hope everyone else can at least value that.

Here is everything the poor girl documented, pressed into one YouTube video.

And here is the Facebook page, to prove my point. Like I said, this was created AFTER she had killed herself from the bullying.

I want to take a moment out of the happy posting to be serious. Take of these stories what you will, but hopefully we can all value the importance of being a good person. Everyone had flaws, but choose your words wisely in life. Bullying sucks, just ask someone who's been through 11 straight years of it if you need to.