Amy

Bullied girl sees suicide as only way out

Amy suffered such an endless torrent of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her schoolmates that she attempted to take her own life.

Amy’s ordeal began when she entered secondary school and a few of her classmates started taunting and insulting her for the way she looked.  As more and more joined in, the problem escalated. There was nothing wrong with the way Amy looked, thus proving the arbitrary nature of bullying.

Amy said: “The words hurt. If I’m honest, I knew I wasn’t as pretty as some of the other girls, but what really upset me was that people were using the things that make me, against me.”

As the bullying turned physical, Amy began to devise ways of avoiding her tormentors.  She felt that she couldn’t leave school as she was about to take her GCSEs. Instead, she figured out her bullies’ timetables so she could avoid them in the corridor, and bunked off lessons so she wouldn’t have to face them in the classroom.

The continued absences from school began to have an effect on Amy. Once a promising student who was determined to go to university, Amy’s grades began to dramatically fall and her opportunities in life seemed to be slipping away.

Eventually, a distraught Amy confided in her mother and they immediately brought the issue to the attention of the school. The deputy head dismissed the problem as “petty girl squabbling”, and the bullies, angry that Amy had told on them, stepped up their hate campaign, until Amy felt she could face it no more.

Amy continued: “I felt awful knowing that I was being bullied and couldn’t really do much about it.  I lost all respect for myself, I hated the bullies but I hated myself even more. My self-esteem was rock bottom and I didn’t want to be on earth anymore.”

The problem reached catastrophic proportions when Amy made an elaborate noose from a curtain in her own bedroom. It is every parent’s nightmare to walk in a find their child has committed suicide, and it was this thought which kept Amy from seeing it through.

It took a suicide attempt to wake Amy up to the serious effect that the bullying was having not only on her present happiness but also on her future. She considered suicide as the only escape from her bullying nightmare, but she could not go through with it knowing the pain it would bring to her family. Instead, she faced her bullies, knowing it would end when they finished school in a couple of weeks.

Three years on, Amy is still not over her ordeal. Only now she is at university, away from her bullies, and enjoying being accepted for whom she is, is she beginning to regain the confidence she had when she was 13.