Still Jenne from the block

Bullying seems to be a hot topic right now...So I thought it would make sense to share my experiences.

I remember when I was in kindergarten, walking home with my older brother, whom I always looked up to! When two older kids started picking on him, pushing him, putting snow in his face and pushing him down on the ground, I thought why would anyone want to hurt him, he is the best brother anyone can have and would never hurt anyone, I remember screaming at them, calling one of them a pencil dick and telling them to leave him alone, this went one for awhile. I don't remember how or why it stopped, but it broke my heart. I remember my brother telling me maybe a decade or more ago that one of those kids killed himself in his garage...So I think of it like this, the person that needs help is not always the one being bullied but the bully. We need to help these kids so that kids aren't bullied, cause the after affects of being bullied can last for years.

I was bullied in elementary school, in grade 5 specifically. I went to a new school, I took the bus for the first time, there were two girls that made fun of me to no end, they threw my mitts off the bus after throwing them around to their friends. They called me names, they had boys call me names. I remember a specific day I was wearing a really ugly jacket that my grandmother bought me that my mother made me wear, told me I shouldn't care what others thought and one of the girls asked if I got it at the salvation army, in front of everyone, I wanted to die.

Now I don't know why I was bullied, was it because my hair was too blond or my eyes too blue, was it because my jokes were bad or I was nice. I really can't think of it, maybe it was jealousy, cause this one girl had really bad hair...Anyways, I know that I did not deserve this treatment, no one does. I remember when I was a hair dresser in my 20's, a girl I worked with said that one of these girls coached her daughter in swimming and she said to the girl I worked with, "oh you know Jenne...She is such a little bitch". Funny thing is, I hadn't seen her since I was 12 years old, so for ten years she held these feelings.  Why?? No idea, I was bullied on numerous occasions and sometimes by my friends in high school.