Cyberbullying

I got bullied by a group of adults online today. It was a harsh introduction to the real world.
I made a post to Facebook, something about an injustice I saw at my school involving animal cruelty.
I guess that bubbles, sunshine, smell of grass world I live in was never real
because within a minute I was reading some of the most disgusting comments,
all made by middle-aged, "anti-woke" grandmas-and-pas.
"I wonder what this one identifies as" some lady wrote,
as if her disagreement with my statement was an excuse to be homophobic and hateful.
The amount of times my- nought more than a teenager- personal life was insulted and abused was excruciating to read;
couldn't they see how bad this thing I cared about was?
Maybe because I'm young, and maybe because I'm a girl I am not taken seriously.
My dad suggested that "maybe they didn't know it was a kid behind the post"
breaking my heart ever further.
How could these people, my people, treat anyone this way, regardless if I was 50 or 15?
It's not like I didn't know the internet was a gruesome place:
hate comments under videos of cats,
kids like me pushed to suicide by internet threats.

I deleted my account.
They say I let them win, but I can't support that world,
and despite wishing that I could rip my heart out of my body, I took courage in the few people cheering me on.
The comments that returned me to this society and kept me from floating away.
"Guys, this is a little kid. You're bullying a kid."
In return they said I shouldn't be here, shouldn't exist somewhere I could be so easily hurt.
Maybe I did give up, or maybe I refused to be harassed by the people I should trust.
Did I mention that the post was made on the community page?
Shit, they're no community of mine. My friends, my family, didn't seem to take me seriously either.
The counselor at the school suggested it was my fault for posting it in the first place, as if I could control the response I got.
They brushed it off with apologies and things that sounded a little like watered-down versions of the comments I received.
"People are mean," they said.
That's why I fight, for us. Against a society that's okay with being nasty because their victim speaks in letters, not words, and lives in the screen.
Because I'm not real to you. Because I am the one attacked for this, not them.
I knew the world was brutal, but I chose to see the pictures of your kids and the sunrise from your back deck and, man, I don't know.
I thought we were above this. But I learned here that the bullying starts with us.
2/9/2024