Luckily I've never experienced anything
terrible, but I was picked on in year 7 and 8. At first, it was one girl who picked on me, but her friends didn't do anything at all to stop it. I think the worst thing was when they lied to other people about things that I had apparently said - really mean, awful things that I would NEVER think of saying. It hurt to have everyone think I was a complete cow, even though I had never said any of those things about anyone. Hopefully they realised later it was all bullsh*t.
Then I moved tutors, and although I had friends, it continued. Nothing physical, just the odd comments, dirty looks, whispers and giggles as you walk by. It's silly but it affects your confidence so badly. I also walked in on a girl doing a ridiculous impression of me once in front of the rest of my class, hurt like hell. Looking back it was completely stupid - nothing like me whatsoever! (which is what my true friends said at the time) - but the fact that she was trying to make me look stupid was bewildering and pretty painful.
Thankfully things got better, I made more friends, started to fit in more which helped it to stop. But I am still quite self-conscious which definitely stems from the bullying of those first years at secondary school.
A few years later, I got to know a former close friend of the first girl who had bullied me. We got on really well, and one day she said - "I cannot believe we were so mean to such a genuinely nice person, I am so sorry for not doing anything" etc. She wrote it in my leavers' book. We still get on well, and I'm really grateful for what she said. She is a lovely person, and I guess she was just "going along" with it due to peer pressure, and I know she had her own problems too. Another one of the girls sent me a message over Facebook to apologise. The one who actually did the bullying has never said a thing to me though!
Pfft.
I've also had a few random people say things in the street for no apparent reason - when I was in year 10, some guy laughed as I walked past and I heard him tell his friend I was ugly. A couple of other things like that have happened. The only explanation I have is that I must have looked at them funny by accident, or maybe they were just total pricks, I have no idea.
At the time, I assumed all these things were said because I had some huge flaw - I was hideous, a horrible or boring person, fat, weird, terribly unfashionable, I don't know. But it's only looking back that I can see I was a perfectly normal, quiet, nice girl. Not beautiful but far from ugly and I certainly wasn't fat or anything like that. So I don't know why people said what they did
For anyone out there reading this thread, who is being bullied, stay strong and know that it will get better. In a few years you'll look back at what happened and see those bullies for the pathetic people that they are - you may even feel sorry for them. They're not doing what they're doing because there's something wrong with YOU, they're doing it because there's something wrong with THEM. Don't listen to them.