Sakura’s Story
When I was younger, I had grown up being bullied, but after the fifth grade, and after I had changed schools, I thought I could start anew, and hopefully put all of my horrible bullying memories behind me. I was wrong.
It kinda started during the summer of 2010, when I started writing for a website called fanfiction.net. It wasn’t until the summer of 2012 that I became bullied again, but this time, it wasn’t from people I knew in real life. It was from a complete stranger. It started as a simple ‘flame’, which was fanfiction lingo for ‘a review that would count as criticism, but with more hate’, and an anonymous reviewer had said so many mean things about it. The guy said things like ‘this is honestly horrible’ and other things I won’t add in, so, out of pride, I deleted the review, but I made a mental note to myself to try and change my story so it could be better. The next day, things were worse. After I got back home from a course I was taking to get ahead at my school, the guy had reviewed me again, and this time, the person said that I couldn’t take criticism and insulted me once again. It made me furious, but it also hurt me. When I told my mom about what was going on, I had hoped that she would understand, but instead, she took the bully’s side and said that he or she was right to say those mean things. When she had said those words to me, I felt like my whole world had shattered. Mom was the one person I felt like could help me with my problem, but instead of helping me, she did the exact opposite and hurt me instead.
I felt like right there and then I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep. I even considered to run away for a while too. To make matters worse, the bully just kept attacking me and attacking me, just making me feel worse and worse. It affected me so badly that I never left my room except to eat or for other reasons I couldn’t avoid while I just avoided fanfiction, because I didn’t want to read those horrible messages.
After I finally had the courage to log into my fanfiction account again, the reviews had gotten worse and worse while I was in my social media blackout. They became so bad that I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. But then, after three of my friends saw what was going on, they were standing up for me, against the bully. For the first time in that long week of bullying, I felt something that I forgot that I had ever felt. Hope. I talked to my friends about the situation, and felt relieved that they were there to help me. After they had, I had contacted the admins of the site and sent them the reviews that I had received and kept watching to see if things would stop. Surprisingly, the bully wasn’t scared of the admins, probably because he had used an anonymous account to send those reviews.
On the final day of my story, I did the one thing that I knew through my knowledge of Cyberbullying that I should not have done, but the situation had deemed it necessary: I had to fight back. The words had gotten worse, but this time, they weren’t directed at only me. They were directed at my friends as well. He called them mindless and stupid, and that was the final straw. I sent a message of my own that I knew would hit home. I told him or her that if he or she wanted me to improve my story, then he or she should’ve clarified after the second message. Instead, he or she kept harassing me, and I had used his or her own words against him or her. I don’t know how the person took it, but it was after I sent that message that I never heard anything from that person again. I don’t think I would’ve finished the story I was writing if it wasn’t for the support of my friends.
The experience changed the way I wrote on the internet, but it was for the better, and not the worse. I am still writing to this day, and I am glad that I had friends like them to help me out.