StandUp — Make anti-bullying a law in India

They had this game at school. They called it the Invisible Boy. The rules were simple. I was invisible, so everyone could hit me. Because if someone is invisible it doesn't count, right? It counted. Every day walking to school I would brace myself. Pushed in the corridor. Prodded on the stairs. Shoved from behind when I wasn't looking. After a while it just became normal. That sick feeling in your stomach before you even reach the school gate, that became normal too. Things kept disappearing from my pencil box. New pens, new pencils, gone the same day I brought them. I stopped asking my parents for new ones because I knew they would just vanish again. One day I found a notebook. Someone had written in it. Hundreds of ways to bully me. Page after page. They had actually put thought into it. Like it was a project or something. So many mornings I just didn't want to go to school. I cried. I really cried, the kind where your whole chest hurts. The kids at school had a name for me. Horizontally challenged. They thought that was really funny. You have no idea how it feels when you are sitting and eating lunch and someone tells you to leave the table. Just get up and go. Because you are not their type. The worst part was not any one thing they did. The worst part was just how unhappy I felt. All the time. That heaviness when you wake up and remember you have to go back there again. When you get bullied enough your body goes into fight or flight mode. I chose flight. I used to run to the infirmary. That was my safe place. The one room in the whole school where nobody could get to me. I would sit there and just breathe. Some days that was the only way I got through. My parents have been amazing through all of this. They listened every single time. They fought for me. They taught me something that I will never forget. Don't stay quiet. Never stay quiet. And they didn't just say it. They showed up for me, again and again. But here is what keeps me up at night. If this happened to me, it can happen to anyone. It can happen to my 6 year old brother. It can happen to the quiet kid sitting in the back of any classroom in this country. No one should have to go through what I went through. That is why I am taking things into my own hands. I am 13 years old. I can't vote. I can't file a bill. I can't walk into Parliament. But I can collect 100,000 signatures from people who believe no kid should have to live like this. And I can hand those signatures to the people who can actually change the law. I need your help. One signature. That's all it takes to be one more voice that Parliament can't ignore.

I am 13. I have been bullied for years. This is why I started this.