My phone was blowing up with notifications. I picked my phone up and noticed I had been added to a group chat. Nothing unusual, normal to be added to a group chat without warning. As I scrolled through the participant list, I noticed that all the people were from my old school. The group had around six participants in it, including myself and my best friend and it was a girl only group chat. I started to chat with them to catch up since we hadn’t talked in a while; after all, we hadn’t seen each other for years. Everything was going well; we talked for hours and caught up on any drama, anything new that had happened.   

Although I didn’t want to leave the conversation, I had to go because I had to shower. After wasting about 90% of the hot water, I got out of the shower, and again, my phone was blowing up with notifications. This time, it was a private message in the form of a paragraph from one of the participants. I was curious as to what this person had to say considering the length of the paragraph. As I read it, I could feel my anger rising by the second. She had written a long paragraph calling me all sorts of names and insults almost as if she read the whole dictionary and tried to incorporate every curse word she could find.  

Out of anger, I replied to her with the same energy, and I don’t regret it a single bit to this day. I could feel a mix of emotions stirring up within me, all connected to anger. I had been friends with this girl since 1st grade, not aware how much of a psychopath and a liar she is. I hit the send button, immediately shut my phone, and did something to clear my mind and hopefully soothe my mind enough to make me sleepy. Before I went to bed, I checked my phone one last time to make sure my alarms had been set and go on social media. I clicked on my best friend's story and there was an unusual post.  

“Must have been a dare. I’m too tired for this I need some sleep.” I said to myself as I gathered all my stuffed animals. Yes, I still sleep with stuffed animals to fill the emptiness in my heart. The next day, instead of an alarm, a call woke me up. It was my best friend; I picked up the phone and she said, with a shaky breath, “Check my story on Snapchat really quickly please, I can’t go on my account right now.”  

I opened Snapchat and there it was. There had been a photo of me posted that I would have preferred to be kept a secret. Especially not on a public story. I start panicking as I feel my eyes water up, not knowing what to do, who to trust, who to confront. I started bawling my eyes out as I was wondering as to who would be sick enough to do this and it all clicked in my head. I texted the girl who I had fought with last night, but she said she didn’t do anything and had just noticed the story. As I sat and thought about it for a long time, I confronted everyone in the group chat and there it was. Two of the girls confessed what they did just out of spite, and they had no shame.  This really is devastating and mentally draining. It feels like the world has fallen right in front of you or a heartbreak. What you think could be a trusted person could be someone so evil and have no remorse for others. It really did show me how easily people can turn on you and how vulnerable they can be to one's decisions. 

I was at disbelief that they would do something so childish yet so harmful. This experience really did harm to me, much more than I had recognized and it did heighten my senses and ability to read the room. Now that I sit and think about this, the photo posted of me wasn’t a necessarily bad photo, I would have rather for it to have stayed a secret. This really showed me how far people are willing to go to get revenge for themselves and for someone else.   

Unfortunately, bullying is a very common thing nowadays, almost unescapable and it can really change someone that being either good or bad. No matter how much we try, bullying will never go away but it can be reduced. There are many forms of bullying, one which I have gone through and that is cyberbullying or online shaming. Unlike face-to-face bullying, cyberbullying can’t really be controlled since it is just people behind a screen being mean or even worse. Being bullied can take a terrifying toll on your mental health no matter how big of a degree it is, and it can lead to suicide and self-harm. Although the victim of the bullying is to be considered more, have people ever considered what the bully is going through?  

Bullying is a never-ending loop of people mistreating each other until one stops the loop. Bullying is almost like the saying “The abused becomes the abuser if not healed” because bullies just project their trauma or problems onto others; they have no one to talk to so bullying is like their coping mechanism or output. Unfortunately, there have been many cases where bullying has led to suicide or attempted suicide which is why we need to try our best to reduce bullying.  

To conclude, always keep your guard up and watch out who you hang out with because not every friendship will last. Friendships can be mentally draining and sometimes even destructive. Pick your friends wisely because one thing can lead to the other and it might even lead to you getting bullied or shamed online; although we can’t fully erase bullying, we can surely try our best to avoid being caught up in it.