Dialogues surrounding the issue of bullying have been unavoidable in recent years as more and more victims of bullying have used social media to share their stories. Countless people have used platforms such as Youtube and Facebook to recount personal testimonies of what it's like to be bullied and what the resulting effects are. David Wang, a personal trainer and student at the University of Southern California, is one of those very brave souls who decided to share his story. If you were to meet him in a classroom or at the gym, you would never be able to tell from his trainer's physique that he had been bullied for most of his life, but this is part of what makes David's story so powerful.
David was tormented by bullies through most of the formative years of his childhood and well into his teens, and sadly, his experience is not so different from what many children go through on a day to day basis. David was always a bit smaller than most of his classmates, and he admits that he even had to wear braces on his legs at one point because his quads were so weak.
His peers saw an easy target and routinely teased David, but the verbal taunting was just the tip of the iceberg. David also suffered physical attacks from his bullies, including an instance in which he was choked. By the time he was a teenager, he was desperate to escape the torture that waited for him each and every day, and unable to cope with his emotions, he punched a hole in a wall. This was the defining moment that made him realize he needed to change how he approached his life, and his transformation from that point on is downright inspiring.
On June 18, 2015, Seeker Films released a powerful short film about David and his journey to overcome the emotional and psychological trauma that resulted from years of being bullied. After punching a hole in a wall, David realized that his negative emotions were controlling his life and that, if he didn't make an active effort to regain control, he would continue spiraling into depression. This is when he started to use fitness as a release for all of his negative feelings, and he quickly found that setting healthy and positive goals for himself was exactly what he needed to build a positive self-image. Now at 20-years-old, David seems like an entirely different person than he was in his childhood, and the change is written evidently in the huge grin he wears plastered across his face at all times. He hopes that in sharing his story, he can inspire other bullying victims to use their frustration and anger as motivation to pursue their dreams. With David as an inspiration, it's impossible not to see how amazing the payoff could be. Be sure to check out his unbelievable transformation in the video below.
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