School Bullying, a Silent Murder

Valerie was a regular teenage girl. She was not very outgoing but she loved reading books and listening to her favourite music in her bedroom whenever she was home from school. Valerie liked going to her middle sized town high school and although she may not have been the most popular kid, she got on well with the other pupils and never caused any trouble. She was a good student. She was a bit shy and awkward as teenagers can be and she was well liked by her teachers, without being a teacher's pet.

Valerie's parents weren't rich not poor; they only owned one car and were careful with their money spending, but there was always enough food on the table and the bills used to get paid on time and they even managed to put a bit aside for when their daughter would go to college. Valerie's mother was a stay-at-home mom; when Valerie was at school, she would clean the house, watch her favourite TV show, go shopping for groceries or pop in to a neighbour for coffee and a chat. "Valerie has a bright future ahead of her", her parents used to think; "she is smart and pretty, she is a good girl and we love her, she will go to college, get a good job and maybe one day she will get married and give us beautiful grand-children". Sometimes on Saturdays Valerie's mother would bring her into town to buy new clothes; nothing fancy, just regular jeans or sweaters, she never bought any make-up, as she had never fooled herself into thinking she could become one of the cool kids at schools; she was just an average kid, doing the things most kids her own age used to do.

Then Valerie started 9^th grade and everything went downhill, even though her parents did not realize it at the time. They put the blame for Valerie's anger outbursts on the fact that she was in her teenage years; "sure all teenagers get mood swings", they would say, "it's the hormones kicking in, she'll get through it". Little did they know that the reason why she played her music so loud in her bedroom was because Valerie did not want her parents hearing her crying. Crying herself to sleep, talking back to her mother and slamming doors in the house were the only ways Valerie could find to get some relief, albeit for a short time only, from the two boys who were making fun of the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she looked. The truth was that Valerie did not talk, walk or look any different from any other teenage girl her own age, but after weeks and weeks of bullying, she had managed to convince herself that she was the ugliest girl in her school and that somehow, she did not "fit in".

In the privacy of her own bedroom, Valerie would keep staring at her nose and the longer she stared, the bigger her nose looked; she had also started biting her bottom lip to try and make it swell; every day, she would bite until she bled in the hope of making her lips appear fuller. She didn't have access to cosmetic surgery and she was not into make-up but she tried to find other ways to change the way she looked. She became very self-conscious because of the way those two bullies made her feel every single day. They never hurt her, physically, that is; they would stand right in front of her and imitate her, exaggerating some of her traits and making her more aware of the physical features she had never really liked, but had now grown to hate.

Funnily enough, the boys would never bother her when they were on their own. It annoyed her friends, the way they treated her, but her friends never really knew how deeply hurt she was inside and they just ignored the boys; she knew they were cowards, taking their power from her weakness, and for that she despised them. She knew that showing them how hurt she was would only encourage them to keep up the bullying, and so she tried not to let them see her crying. As for teachers and supervisors, had they even known what was going on, as long as there were no name calling or physical injuries, there was nothing they could have done; Valerie would have felt stupid and childish complaining about something so apparently benign.

So Valerie kept on living her life as best as she could, being attentive in class, trying to ignore the bullying as much as possible, keeping her feelings inside by day, crying herself to sleep at night. She wished she had never been born; she started to hate her parents for allowing the fact that she existed and some nights she even tried to stop breathing to see if she could quietly put an end to her silent suffering. She visited the medicine cabinet but was disappointed to find nothing powerful enough to make her stop being. She thought about cutting her veins, but feared her parents' questions in the event that her attempt would turn out to be unsuccessful, so she kept leaving the house each morning to catch the school bus until she couldn't bear the bullying anymore.

One day Valerie never made it to school. She got up and dressed like every other morning and left the house on time to get the bus, her school bag on her shoulder but that day she took a different route. Her mother worried when she didn't come home or phone to say that she had missed the bus, so she phoned Valerie's father at work but he had no news of their daughter either. She then rang the houses of Valerie's friends but all they knew was that Valerie had not been in school that day and they had thought that she was sick. Later Valerie's parents phoned the local hospital and the police, fearing that something dreadful had happened to their darling daughter but it was only after a sleepless night the following day that they were told that their daughter's body had been recovered from a nearby river.

Somewhere in this country there is a house, and in that house there is a mantelpiece displaying a picture of a bright and beautiful teenage girl who had a great future ahead of her; alas, the beautiful young girl in that picture did not think she was beautiful; the bright girl in that picture did not think she was bright; the young girl with a great future ahead of her in the picture doesn't have a future anymore, because for some reason she thought her life was not worth living. In the meantime two murderers go on about their daily lives, perhaps looking for another victim, perhaps somewhat a bit uncomfortable at the thought of being responsible for a school mate's suicide, but whatever remorse they feel, they will live their lives unpunished and have a bright future ahead of them, until one day their lives will come crashing down when they realize how easy it was to become murderers.