No matter the morals we ingrain in our brains, tears will crash onto tiled bathroom floors, knives will slice stone cold wrists, and birds will screech at heartwarming funerals. Bullying is inevitable.

I sit among a sea of desks and paperback personalities. Friends destroy friends. Enemies watch foes burn pain and suffering. Whispers leap from “did you hear this?” to “did you see her?” And we sit back and watch it happened. Peers, teachers, and even the monsters causing it.

Anti-bullying week creeps around at the end of November. We paste friendship quotes on posters and grow fake smiles during group activities. But once the bell dings, lives become a battlefield. The hallway is where our hardest armor protects us from the words others catapult. Social media litters with acidic insults crawling over every page. The battle wounds are prominent. Scars remind us of the torture done. We all want to believe the words “I’d stop it if I saw it,” but those are the words of people who enforce it.

But then, there are saviors--silent angels who rhythmically arrange words across whiteboards to bring solar beams through the darkness. The words they write are locked away, never to be exposed in fear of being robbed. Those saviors hide amongst the shadows unnoticed.

Congratulations are not handed out and parties are not celebrated in their honor. Yet, lives were saved because of their words of hope.

Hours of cramped hands scribble uplifting notes across the bathroom mirrors. Wide eyes and enormous grins spread throughout the school because of them. The words of these heroes were never to be forgotten. They have reached out and rearranged the thoughts of students, creating new perspectives, changing lives, and creating inspirations.

“Love and hate are beast--and the one that grows is the one you feed.” Bullying begins and ends with us. Schools may try to tell us the right and wrong, but it’s our choice. Will we be a bully, or an angel in disguise?