Student, Susanna Barger, read her original poem for an anti-bullying assembly recently at her school---Merrimack Valley High School. Thank you Susanna for allowing us to share! This is me. You all, You see my clothes, my hair, my fingernails, that zit under my nose... You do not see who I am. The fact that I have acne, like every other teenager in this school, does not give you grounds to snicker behind my back. That hole in my jeans, does not mean Im poor or should be embarrassed it means i was helping my little sister with a project for school and my pants got snagged on scissors. You do not treat me personally badly, but Ive seen you treat others this way. Ive seen the faces, the broken looks of... despair! Ive seen the outcomes, youve seen your friends laughing at a comment YOU thought was clever. I havent been bullied, but Ive got dreams and if your stones stones made of words like stupid, fat, pointless, bad, pile up on my wings how can I fly? If I take into account every negative thing youve said to me and others my wings might ask well just snap. Because the weight of those words would sink any ship, crash any plane, and shatter ANY dream into a thousand pieces. We are HUMAN. We are not indestructible, so you know what? Quit treating us that way. We will sail, and we will fly, and we will dream until the sun shines BECAUSE were human. There are people, people who see those stones and lift them off. Dust our wings and help us use them, take those stones and build a bridge to somewhere you ARENT. So I havent been bullied, but Im not going to just sit by. Im going to look for those stones, and drag them off who theyre pinning down. Im going to hurl them into the deepest ocean, where they can never hurt anyone again! And Im going to love being me. Im going to love my clothes, my hair, my fingernails, that zit under my nose. Im going to love myself, my life, my friends, and ESPECIALLY those people, those people who realize their going somewhere, whether its to a white picket fence and family, or a space station orbiting a million miles above us all! We are inventors we are artist, we are astronauts, scientists doctors engineers mothers fathers bullies AND victims but this, this is me.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:04:51 +0000