David Eddington Professor Hoke TTH 9:30-10:45 9/17/2011 Outline for my Rough Draft Thesis: Bullying at a young age can lead to a person having thoughts of suicide and without something to fall on or somebody to talk to they can make those thoughts reality or go through life thinking that they are useless.
Outline: 1. I’ve been bullied for as long as I can remember a. The first bullies that I remember are Conrad and Daniel i. Conrad lived behind me and Daniel lived a few houses down from him. They used to do things to our backyard and swing set as a means of bullying ii. I was only eight or nine years old when this happened 2. I walked off of the bus with my head hung low and my feet dragging on the asphalt of the street as I crossed, knowing that they were going to rush up behind me with their rude comments and remarks like they always did. a. It was a bright, sunny day, but I remember it as an overcast, chilly day. b. All of my senses seemed to be dulled and repressed so that I could block out the things that they were saying to me.
3. The rude comments began as I took the two street walk to my house. It felt like an eternity when I knew that they were teasing and taunting me a. They started talking to me about dead fish and the smell of the female organs. b. I started running as fast as possible to my house, trying to escape their comments. i. I heard a loud BOOM and shards of something sharp brushed against the back of my calves. ii. I looked back and saw that Daniel had picked a large stone out of one of my neighbor’s yards and had thrown it at me. 1. I stopped for a second to take it all in and then started running as fast as possible. a. My backpack thumped hardly against my back as all of my books tried to keep up with me b. The scent and taste of the Dogwood trees that were scattered in my neighbor’s yards entered my lungs sharply and quickly as I tried to supercharge my blood with oxygen c. The houses and trees blurred together as I sprinted as fast as my eight year old legs could take me. d. My house seemed to be the only one that I could see. There was a beacon of light over it and I knew that I would be safe from all of this once I was inside. 4. Conrad shouted to me as I ran away “Yea, faggot. Run as fast as you can!”
a. I was confused as to what the word meant. I shoved the thought of the word into my mind so that I could think about it later. b. Rocks kept flying at me and I was only about halfway home. i. My house was all the way at the end of the street on the right and I was on the left side. 5. Daniel had stopped throwing the stones once he saw that I was crossing the street and realized that he should stop in case he was seen by one of the adults on the street. a. They both kept yelling slurs like “Homo”, “Fag”, and “Gay boy” at me while they walked away chuckling and high-fiving like they had just won a huge battle. i. This never made sense to me because these kids, who were two years older than me, were acting like they had just beat up the roughest, toughest guy at school when in reality they had just picked on one of the weakest. 6. I pushed my body up the steep inclined driveway, across the stone path, up the three concrete stairs and through the heavy, blue door. a. As soon as I slammed the door shut I felt safe. I dropped my backpack and ran upstairs i. The white carpets and walls seemed to be one as I rounded the corner to my room. 7. I went into my room and started to bawl my eyes out. I was so scared that this was going to be happening for the rest of my life and I didn’t want that to be true. a. Thoughts of suicide raced through my mind as I lay strewn across my bed with my face in my pillow
i. “Nobody would miss me anyway. They all hate me.” ii. “Just go ahead and do it. Obviously nobody cares about you.” b. My eight year old mind started to think of what a knife would feel like with my chest as its sheath and what the warm blood would feel like against my cold, seemingly numb body. I started to think of all of the pills that we had downstairs in the wooden medicine cabinet and how easily they could have been swallowed. Thoughts of drowning myself in the bath tub seemed pleasing because the water would silence the jeers of Conrad and Daniel and I would finally be at peace. c. I sat there and cried for what felt like hours, but in actually was only about ten minutes. i. The words that Conrad had shouted at me earlier ran through my mind at a million miles a minute and I couldn’t help but wonder what they meant and why he kept calling me these wretched words. I wanted to know why I was categorized as a “fag” and if I really was one or not. 1. The word itself left a bad taste in my mouth and I couldn’t help but wonder why. 8. I started to think of how I was too scared to tell anybody about this because I didn’t want Conrad and Daniel to hurt me any more than they already had. a. I wanted to talk to somebody about this, but sitting on my bed and crying while thinking of dying seemed like a better idea b. I ended up pretending like everything was normal when my mom came knocked and asked how my day was. i. The tears quickly dried and a smile emerged on my face.
1. I knew that everything was going to be okay if I had mom there to protect me from all of the hatred that these boys put upon me.