Bullying.

Bullying seems to be a rapidly growing epidemic in our society, with more severe endings than the world has previously seen. This horrifying trend is heart breaking and mind blowing. Every time you walk into a school you are bombarded with posters of ‘taking a pledge against bullying’, ‘anti-bullying regulations’, ‘safe schools initiative’… with all these things in place how is bullying still such a rampant issue? The countless stories I hear and read about all have two very important things in common: suspension and lack of attention. Most students who are bullied claimed to have asked for help from teachers, principals and their parents. The parents all seem to address the issue with the school who in turn suspend the bully for a couple of days and assume that is the end of the problem. In what world is giving someone a couple of days off school a punishment? Rebuttal: the suspension goes on your permanent record. Well if that’s not going to terrify students into behaving I don’t know what will… I hope you found the sarcasm there. Kids of all ages are scared to go to school. They dread getting up every morning knowing the problems they will face that day. They are living in agony, hurting themselves and in a growing number of cases taking their lives. HOW IS THIS NOT A BIGGER ISSUE? How are schools not doing absolutely everything in their power to prevent this? If my child was bullied, physically or verbally and it did not stop I would be filling harassment charges. And getting the school board involved for neglect. Parents are losing their children, and the world is losing young minds for absolutely no reason. In elementary school I wasn’t bullied per say, but I was occasionally teased, who wasn’t? It’s not fun and even now, seven years later I still remember it. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain, and fear that is inflicted on these kids who face this every day. If I discovered my child was bullying someone I would be disgusted, with myself and with my child. The Board of Education needs to implement serious consequences to students who verbally or physically harass other students. I don’t know if there are rules regarding expulsion, but I think that would be a fair consequence for tormenting someone every day. Even serving in-school suspensions would be better than being told to go home for three days… Something needs to change. And it needs to happen now. It makes me sick knowing that someone is sitting at home right now in agony at the thought of going to school tomorrow.

Comma splice.

I’m in the midst of writing my final essay of the semester. It’s only 1500 words and I am struggling (I'm currently at 346). I feel like all my intelligent critical thoughts have been used up. I need this vacation to mentally power down and start storing new intellectual ideas to write about next semester. Ahah just kidding, I have to read a pile of Shakespeare, novels, poems and critical essays… there is no time to let my brain relax. But I guess that’s why I write here. Anyways, I must get back to discussing the effect of gossip in regards to Jane Austen’s thrilling masterpiece Emma. Note: I use to love this novel but this will be the fifth time I’ve written on it. Hint to the English department: other novels have in fact been written, and by Austen too.
Also, the 'comma splice' is my mortal enemy.

part of me is made of glass

Part of me is made of glass. It breaks.
Not often, but it happens.
The first time it happened, I hardly noticed.
It was just a scratch. Hardly worth acknowledging. It barely even left a mark
The second time, the scratch went deeper. It cut right through.
But no matter, I taped it to prevent further cracks.
It was okay for a while, but over time the tape dried. The edges began to peel.
It happened a third time.
But this time was different.
The blade slashed through one side, and pierced right through the other.
Cracks branched off, weakening the entire structure.
Pieces broke off, and had to be collected.
I knew it couldn’t take much more.
I put the pieces back, and tied it together with strings.
Because of all the damage it didn’t quite fit together perfectly anymore.
But it held up rather nicely.
The strings proved to work as a barrier, preventing the full force of the blows from reaching me.
It has been a while now; the strings are getting old.
The knots are slowly loosening, day by day; slipping out of place.
The cracks are becoming more visible, and I know what is coming.
I cannot recover from another blow.
No amount of tape and string will be able to hold me together if it happens again.
So please remember;
Part of me is made of glass. And also, I love you.

GET ME OUT

This town is eating me alive. And everyone loves it. I don’t understand. It has no pulse; there is nothing to this place. It makes me want to vomit. Harsh. I know. But I can’t help it. People flock here. They go on and on about how much they love it. And I am counting down the seconds until I leave. I don’t know whether I pity the [fool] people that like it or I’m jealous that they can be content with settling… But I’m leaning towards pity. The greedy north wind is hungry for my soul.

also, don't you just love the angsty-teenager-I-hate-everything-and-noone-understands-me vibe? yeah. it's a good time.