Amanda Todd: Another Teenage Suicide Due to Bullying

So another teenage suicide due to bullying had been recently reported. It isn’t something new. In fact, when I was younger and Myspace ruled the social network world, there were already countless cases of teenagers committing suicide after being bullied. Last October 10, 2012, it’s Facebook’s turn to witness how a teenager’s plight had led her to kill herself. That teenager is Amanda Todd (November 27, 1996 – October 10, 2012).

So what prompted her to hang herself? It was after years of struggle against people who bullied her due to mistakes of her youth.

Mistake 1: She flashed her boobs on camera while chatting with an older teenager when she was in 7^th grade.

Mistake 2: She had sex with an older schoolmate and took all the blame although it was him who led her on.

The first incident resulted to her switching school since the guy started to threaten her saying her photos will be exposed if she does not put on a show for him. The threat became real despite her moving to another school again. The guy followed, stalked, and harassed her through a Facebook page with her boobs as the profile picture. She had since then been the subject of ridicule both online and offline and that psycho freak remained anonymous.

It didn’t stop there. Just when she thought she was finally able to move on, then comes mistake number 2. The guy mentioned earlier has a girlfriend and with Amanda taking the blame for sleeping with him, the girlfriend fired back at her with about 50 students watching. They publicly humiliated her taking pictures and videos while the guy’s girl beat her to a ditch. She simply transferred to another school without filing any complaint.

But they continued to bully her online. So just over a month ago, under the YouTube username TheSomebodytoknow on September 7, 2012 to be exact, she made a video chronicling her experience from the first major mistake down to the second and the consequences which followed after each from cyber bullying to actual physical beating. The video of her silent cry for help can be watched through this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E. Embedding the video was disabled.

With everything she had suffered from at her tender years, it was all too much too handle. She was often alone, only had a few friends, fell into depression, and found a companion in drugs and alcohol. She had even drunk bleach at one point, only to survive and go through the same dilemma all over again. She finally ended her misery by hanging herself. You won’t see that anywhere on the reports online. Being underage, investigators did not disclose any info related to her death. Only people who actually knew her in person provided gory details about her bodily demise.

The video above became a viral hit over YouTube and her name had become an overnight sensation after her death. The video in itself is already compelling enough. Too bad no one noticed the subtle signs before it was too late. It’s funny how people sometimes only listen when someone’s already dead The video was a desperate cry for help. It’s chilling just to watch it knowing that only about a month after the video was posted, Todd took her own life.

But what creeps me even more is the other video in her YouTube channel. She posted her own version of Outside Looking In by Jordan Pruit. She actually had a pleasant singing voice. But staring at her throughout the video late last night was very creepy I had to close the browser window. It’s as if she’s an entity come alive. The video will then preserve how she looked like for as long as the site remains. She’s actually pretty and sexy. She even appears to be fine throughout the end of the song with that forced smile and the hand gesture.

But no, she’s not OK  She had not been for the last few years of her young life. Those lines in the description of the first video extending for more than 8 minutes are words of a hopeless soul pretending to have hope. She wrote, “I'm struggling to stay in this world, because everything just touches me so deeply. I'm not doing this for attention. I'm doing this to be an inspiration and to show that I can be strong. I did things to myself to make pain go away, because I'd rather hurt myself then someone else. Haters are haters but please don't hate, although I’m sure I'll get them. I hope I can show you guys that everyone has a story, and everyone’s future will be bright one day, you just gotta pull through. I'm still here aren't I?” I highlight the last statement for emphasis because she is obviously not here anymore.

The songs playing on the background were also perfect for her story; particularly Jimmy Eat World’s Hear You Me/May Angels Lead You In. It is an ideal song for someone contemplating death. Although we normally believe that the dead is led to the above where heavens and angels are, that’s not the point of this whole narrative. It was her wasted life which makes my hands shake while I scribble these words over the keyboard. She lived a short struggling 15 years as if all alone and wondered why she was able to last that long despite everything she had gone through.

Here are the lyrics to Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World by the way with emphasis on the most important verse I believe:

There's no one in town I know
You gave us some place to go.
I never said thank you for that.
I thought I might get one more chance.
What would you think of me now,
so lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
now I'll never have a chance.
May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
So what would you think of me now,
so lucky, so strong, so proud?
I never said thank you for that,
now I'll never have a chance.
May angels lead you in. 
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.
And if you were with me tonight,
I'd sing to you just one more time.
A song for a heart so big,
God wouldn't let it live.
May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.
May angels lead you in.

Going back to Amanda Todd, although countless words of sympathy poured in for her all over social media sites and news reports portals online through comments, you can’t stop haters from being hateful too. Even after her death, she had been labeled with names I’d rather not type in and even said she’s not really dead and just wanted attention to herself. Some people are really literally sick sometimes they have nothing to do but troll the Internet right? So to them I say, get a life! 

As for me, I’ve never been bullied the way she was both online and offline. The most I can complain about was an incident in a forum where my personal identity is not known anyway – What to do about Cyber Bullying. But I know many have laughed at me and ridiculed me for who I am or what I am since high school years. When they say ignorance is bliss and what you do not know won’t hurt you, they’re mistaken. What I did not know or say did not remember had actually consumed me from within. I have pondered upon suicidal thoughts countless times such as what I’ve wrote in this journal entry I copied from a very old notebook diary – Thoughts of Death and Suicide. 

So with that, may Amanda Todd be the last case of teenage suicide due to bullying and that can only be possible if bullying stops online and offline, which also pertains to bullies being bullied; if we become sensitive enough of people who are actually silently crying out for help amidst the walls they have built to pretend that they’re fine; and extend support or show love and compassion in anyway we can.