Student Sheds Bullying
Rabecca Pucher has shed the weight of a vicious cycle.
The ECOT 11th-grader recalled her entanglement with the cruel world of bullying and her eventual escape. But it wasn’t just her environment that changed. Pucher underwent her own transformation as well. “It all started when I moved to Strongsville in seventh grade,” she recalled. The young girl was pulled away from her friends when her family moved from Newburgh Heights to another town. Suddenly tossed in an unfamiliar environment, Pucher found herself facing loneliness. On top of that, an onslaught of bullying from her new classmates began to erupt. She began to cope with food. “I started eating and gained weight,” she recounted. “Kids started making fun of me. They called me ‘whale’ and other names nonstop.” “It was horrible,” she added. “I was a new student, of course, so they had to have someone to make fun of.” The hateful actions of her classmates led Pucher to lash out in defense. “I would call them inappropriate names,” she said. But Pucher admitted she knew better. “You’re not supposed to do that,” she said. “You’re not supposed to make other people feel bad because you feel bad.” The constant torment over her weight fueled a tragic cycle. Coming home with deep feelings of frustration, Pucher returned to food to find a sense of comfort.
In the end, the malicious behavior she experienced became too much. Two years ago, she pulled out of her school and enrolled in the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. “When I came to ECOT, it gave me the opportunity to not believe all those words,” she said. With bullying no longer feeding the cycle, Pucher found she could focus on becoming healthier – both emotionally and physically. But the healing took time. And still does. “If you’ve been called names long enough, it’s still there,” she said. “It still hurts, but ECOT gave me the opportunity to lose all that weight.” “I feel a lot better about myself since I’ve been at ECOT,” she added. “I’ve accomplished so much.” Among those accomplishments are her grades. In the midst of her darkest hours in Strongsville, her grades were commonly “C”s, and “D”s. She was hit with the occasional “F” as well. Once enrolled at ECOT, her marks quickly heightened to mostly “B”s. Lamenting her earlier defensive assaults on her tormentors, Pucher decided to treat people in her life with kindness. “Don’t put them down too as well,” she said of bullies. “Don’t call them names, you know how it hurts. Everyone’s different, even if you’re playing; some people take it to heart … I take it to heart.” The 17 year-old has found a new outlet for herself: writing. After graduating in 2014, she plans to attend Baldwin Wallace University. After college, her goal is to begin a career involving her wordsmith skills. “I want to pursue either journalism or become an author,” she said. “I want my writing to make you feel emotion.”
15