Cyberbullying. That’s what I gathered from all of this information. She was cyber bullying me and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I was twelve-years-old and had never been bullied before, even electronically. The kick in the butt was that the bully was my couple-of-days-ago best friend. She and I had been friends for over six years and we have had many fights, but none like this. I’m not quite sure what the argument was about, but it definitely took a turn for the worst. When I got my iPad for my eleventh birthday I would text my friends with iPhones nonstop because I had a Samsung and it took forever to send messages. It became my life.

“Who could you possibly be texting now? You’re becoming more like your sister everyday,” my mom would tell me.

I didn’t even notice I was being bullied until my mom and one of my other friends told me what was actually happening. I knew the situation was definitely bothering me and I felt alone, but I didn’t know the classification of this situation was cyberbullying. I thought that shiny white  and expensive iPad was the best thing to happen to me, but it was actually one of the worst. Nothing had shocked me more than the moment I received a note in my geography class stating if I didn’t leave her alone she would go to the cops with her mother.

The note was rough and crumpled. Her terribly ugly handwriting left me struggling to read it at first. When I had finished reading the note I felt confused and scared. May I remind you that I had never threatened her before this or did anything wrong where she had to go to the police. I didn’t understand why she would threaten to go to the police when I was the one being bullied and not jumping back in and doing it to her. I may not remember what we were fighting about, but I do remember that I was being the more mature person and not fighting fire with fire. Anyway, I stuffed the note into my purple and blue backpack, smiling because I knew my mom would get a kick out of this. Mom never liked her and so she finds the things she does to be stupid and immature- which they were.

“Wow. Ha! She is going to threaten you when she is the one who started this nonsense? You haven’t even talked to her or posted anything about her for her to threaten you like this. This is the last straw. If she gives you one more note or posts one more thing, then we will go to the police,” she told me when I got home.

“Yea well if she feels threatened by my presence then she should get a restraining order,” I muttered.

The funny thing is, my mom and I were so fed up with this girl’s nonsense, that we thought about getting a restraining order against her. No one made us more furious than she did. After my mom was done yelling with me about the note, she hung it on the fridge for evidence of bullying in case we decided to show the cops. Now that I look back I wonder why we never did tell them. This girl was making my life terrible and something should have been done about it, but we never did anything except call her mother who was as arrogant as she was. My mom always claimed and joked about going to the police, but she was all talk and no do.

Anywho, I left the kitchen and went into my bright and exuberant living room, picked up my iPad, and went straight onto Instagram. It had been a good hour before something else happened. I was off my iPad that hour later doing my homework when I got a notification that said I was tagged in one of her photo’s. More confused than a caveman trying to solve a rubik’s cube, I stopped what I was doing and opened the app. The photo she had tagged me in was black with white words that read, “I’m not saying you’re a bad friend...you just aren’t a good one to me.” She tagged me in a photo that totally destroyed my reputation to her followers. The photo quickly caught people’s attention because she wrote in the comments about how she felt betrayed and how bad of a person I was.

Now, I don’t want anyone thinking I am lying when I said I did nothing wrong just to cover up missed details of what I actually did. I am being all honest when I say I was innocent in this whole situation. I wasn’t degrading her or sending her threatening notes or going around school talking nonsense about her. So some nerve she had to do that to me for everyone to see and judge me just by a lying picture I was featured in. The comments were then exploding with people’s own stories about how they went through the same thing. This girl also had the nerve to trash talk about me to them while I was seeing all of this. All of this went on for a half hour until finally a family friend of mine who followed her, told her to take the post down because it was bullying and disrespectful.

Shocked at what had been happening, I finally got the courage to show my mom that I had just been degraded all over social media. The only emotion I felt was frustration. I didn’t understand why she was doing this to me when I was leaving her alone and minding my own business. I definitely didn’t understand why she wanted to make all of those fake friends on social media feel so much sympathy for her. My mom was of course livid and was about to call her mom, but then another thing happened. I got a text message from an unknown number. I picked up my phone, scared, and tried to stray away from the thought of it being the police or someone like that.

When I opened the message the first sentence explained who was texting me and why they were. This person, who we’ll just call Mary turned out to be my enemy's eighteen-year-old cousin. Now, I’m no genius, but I think it’s illegal to text a minor without their parent’s consent or their own. I never gave Mary my phone number and I never knew who she was until I read the long text asking me to leave my enemy-who we’ll just call Lisa-alone. Mary also informed me that what I was doing was cyberbullying and then she proceeded to define what cyberbullying was to me like I was retarded or something. My mom was with me and I started yelling and throwing me hands all over the place for emphasis.

I gave the phone to my mom after I read that message and she went crazy. Together we were both screaming and stating how ludicrous this whole situation was. I was sitting on my couch with smoke coming out of my ears thinking, why am I being blamed for something I didn’t do? Didn’t Mary see Lisa’s post on instagram? And somehow I’m the cyberbully?  The last straw had obviously been pulled and my mom took my phone and called up Mary. When Mary picked up my mother gave her a mouthful. It was great. All the things I wish I could say and more, my mom was just freely blurting out. Although she was nicer than I would’ve been. After my mom was done yelling at Mary for texting a minor she told her that everything Lisa had said about me was a lie because I was the one being cyberbullied and there was proof.

That’s right. I screenshot every mean text, threat, and that Instagram post. We also had the note. While all of this was happening I thought I was in the middle of a court case where everyone in the jury knew the defendant was guilty, and her lawyer couldn’t defend her anymore because she knew nothing would work. The plaintiff was still worried, but she knew she shouldn’t be because she is the one with all of the evidence. Anyway, my mom got off the phone with Mary annoyed and aggravated. She had told me everything they were talking about and that I was not to be bothered again. Apparently, Mary never saw what Lisa posted about me on social media and was shocked when my mom told her.

The whole situation faded a couple days later. After that I never talked to Lisa again. To this day she still posts her feeling about past people on her social medias, but she doesn’t use names anymore. However, it is still very obvious that they are about me. Sometimes when I am on my iPad-which is rare-I look back at the screenshots of the texts she sent me. All I can help but do is laugh at them. The things she called me were not your average curse words, although she used many of those too. I was offended back then, and i’ll admit I still am a little, but now all I do is laugh. They aren’t worth getting worked up about anymore. I hope she learns her lesson one day so people stop getting hurt. I wasn’t the only victim and I’m sure I won’t be the last.