{"id":161,"date":"2011-09-29T12:51:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T17:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/?p=161"},"modified":"2011-09-29T12:51:55","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T17:51:55","slug":"alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/2011\/09\/alone\/","title":{"rendered":"You are not alone."},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, I hope you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard about the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer<\/a>. I say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hope\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to get a lot of mainstream attention and I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story that everyone needs to hear. \u00c2\u00a0It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made the rounds on my RSS feed but then, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m prone to subscribe to feeds that would naturally cover this. So often, I get bombarded with news stories that I feel everyone MUST know about just because I see them constantly, only to learn that many people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening.<\/p>\n

And maybe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also heard the story that after Jamey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funeral, his sister went to a dance at school where the bullies in Jamey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life chanted that they were glad he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dead<\/a>. Remember when you were told to just ignore a bully and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d go away? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lie. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been a lie. Today, they bully you even when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re dead.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got my own stories of being bullied. In grade school, a wealthy classmate offered to buy a brand new BMX bike for anyone who would beat me up. In junior high, I got tossed around a bit. High school was more about psychological abuse. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face it: when your last name is Farrey, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve pretty much got a bullseye on your forehead 24\/7.<\/p>\n

When I think of how prevalent bullying was in my life, it seems insurmountable. Like NOTHING could ever be done to stop it.\u00c2\u00a0 And there are elements in this country who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible to stop, or insist it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153natural part of growing up,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or have no interest in trying. (Yes, Representative Bachmann, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking at you.)\u00c2\u00a0 But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only in recent years that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve begun to believe we CAN do something. We SHOULD do something.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to suggest some fairly small\/easy things you can do that could make all the difference to someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being bullied:<\/p>\n

–Donate to the Trevor Project<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a great hotline dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBT youth.\u00c2\u00a0 At our wedding last year, my husband and I did a dollar dance where we contributed the money to the Trevor Project. I say that not to boast but to show that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting behind when I say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153please donate to the Trevor Project.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

–If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the Twin Cities, check out a performance of MEAN<\/a>, an original drama about bullying and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s increasingly tragic consequences. Produced by the Youth Performance Company, it traces the story of three students being tormented based on physical appearance, perceived sexual orientation, and religion.<\/p>\n

–Donate a copy of the recently released DEAR BULLY<\/a> to your local library. 70 authors recount stories of their own abuses growing up in an attempt to reach out to anyone in a similar predicament today.<\/p>\n

–Follow Caleb Laieski on Twitter<\/a>. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a 16-year-old guy from Arizona who is lobbying President Obama to to appoint a youth advisor to work with the administration on the everyday emotional and complex issues that LGBT youth face. You can sign Caleb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s petition here<\/a>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got tons of respect for Caleb and what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to do.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be honest: I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how I got through it.\u00c2\u00a0 I know I had a close knit group of friends in high school who were a large part of helping me achieve some mental stability. But before that? I have no clue. I just know that as long as I can do SOMETHING to reach out, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to.<\/p>\n

I am, of course, not just talking about LGBT youth. But I can speak from experience that maybe the greatest moment in any gay man’s life is that moment of recognition, knowing conclusively that you’re not alone. \u00c2\u00a0It’s liberating. \u00c2\u00a0That’s what I want any teen considering suicide to realize.<\/p>\n

Never pass up a chance to tell someone who’s being bullied that they’re not alone. \u00c2\u00a0Never stop reaching out. \u00c2\u00a0We can do something. \u00c2\u00a0And we will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now, I hope you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard about the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer. I say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hope\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to get a lot of mainstream attention and I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story that everyone needs to hear. \u00c2\u00a0It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made the rounds on my RSS feed but then, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m prone to subscribe to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianfarreybooks.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}