Today I am publishing a video I haven’t done. But this topic is really very important. This video comes from Anderson Cooper’s CNN show.
Parents send their children to school because children need education, they do not expect schools to become the place where their children are pushed to suicide, after being bullied by other kids.
They do not expect that the school vice principal supports kids suicide because of children’s “difference” (=gay).
Homosexuals are human beings equally important for society as any other citizen. I am shocked that when someone in such a position makes those statements (see video) he can’t be attacked and fired, because he has been elected. Only way out is for him to resign.
Thank you to Anderson Cooper: he has understood the real sense of the “It gets better campaign”: there is no sense to promise to suicidal kids that it will one day get better. Suicidal kids need to be told and shown that it gets better NOW!!!! Not tomorrow, NOW. Tomorrow for suicidal kids is too late.
Anderson Cooper takes action. He is very inspirational.
When I was a kid and was going to school I saw other kids being bullied. I remember an Italian girl who arrived at some point during the year. She wasn’t thin. She was Italian. Guys and girls in my class used to bully her. I tried to support her, as I am Italian too and as I am Swiss as well they couldn’t attack me for that reason. But of course there was little I could do.
Some years later going to the secondary school it was my turn being bullied. But I didn’t know why (does anyone who is victimized know why?), I had no idea. Yes I was different, I didn’t have the same interests as other guys. But wasn’t conscious of anything.
In the same time I was mistreated home by my mother. Maybe this is the reason why I didn’t resent as strongly as it was my school’s bullying. I had too many problems home to really care about school’s ones.
One day I took action. After another attack from my mother I decided I had had enough. I wouldn’t live with her any minute longer. It was February 1990, I was 14. After my mother left home for spending her evening and night (living a 12 year old daughter and a 14 year old son home alone all night – well that was not the worse she did, was it 🙂 ) at a carnival event, I picked up the phone and called my father. I told him that I was packing my staff and that I was no longer living with my mother and he’d better come and pick me up or I would leave home anyway. He came and that was the end of my “relationship” with my mother.
School’s bullying didn’t stop and got worse. After years I still couldn’t understand the reason(s) for it. And one day I took action as well.
Living with my father I had the choice between finishing the school year at that school or changing for my new village’s one. As I had only 4 months to go I decided to finish my year there, as the following year I had to change anyway.
But suddenly I told to myself I couldn’t take it anymore. The bullying was going too far and I was resenting it much more strongly then ever. I went to see my teachers and told them that I had had enough and that I couldn’t go on that way. I thanked them for their lessons, their teaching, but I was going to change school for the few remaining moths.
One teacher told me to wait and reconsider.
A couple of days after it, one of “my” bullies came to me and apologized. He told me that he had no idea what I was going through and that he wouldn’t bully me anymore.
From that day on no one else bullied me at that school… or anywhere else.
My teacher took the time to talk with those guys trying to let them understand that their behavior was not correct.
I didn’t ask for help, but I found it though.
I had the strength to fight and not letting them bring me down. I have never believed I was less good as anybody else. I have never let anyone tell me that I was sick because I am gay. Even not my father. I have learned very early to fight. For my life. I have found people ready to help and support me. I know who those people are.
But unfortunately my reaction to my situation is not common. Children kill themselves because they can’t see a way out. Others don’t go as far as taking their lives but remain with heavy mental conditions, with no self confidence and go through life from depression to depression hating themselves.
Anderson Cooper is taking action and this blog is all about action.
Thank you Mr Cooper for being an example: Anderson Cooper’s 360 blog
Breakfast with Max 