You never really think that you’d become a target at school. One day you’re walking down the halls with your friends smiling and laughing and the next you are being shoved against a locker and the person just laughs and walks away.
Being terrified to go to school is something that I went through in middle school but I was always afraid to tell my parents because if they got involved it always made things worse. I dealt with everything my own way. Every time that I was shoved against a locker or called a fat pathetic loser, I let off steam by cutting myself.
I felt like I was alone in everything. The ones that I called my best friends didn’t do anything. They just saw it happen and then they would act like they didn’t see a thing. Nearly my entire 8th grade year I would go to school in fear that things would get worse for me than they already were. I remember one time I was in class and the girl sitting behind me put her gum in my hair and I had to get my hair cut somewhat short.
It wasn’t until halfway into the school year that my sister noticed the cuts on my arms. She was the one that went to my school and stood up for me against the girls that were so horrible to me. Things got a little better but I was way into cutting myself that now I was the new school freak and that gave them a new excuse to pick on me again. I had lost weight too. I had spiraled into a depression that I was losing weight and I was hardly eating at all.
We ended up moving and that day was when things changed because I was finally away from that school and I had a long road of recovery ahead of me. I had to stop cutting myself so I started wearing a rubber band around my wrist so every time I wanted to cut I would just snap the rubber band.
Bullying is something that no one should ever have to deal with anywhere. Just because someone is different in any way doesn’t give someone the right to target them. In my experience I think when someone is a bully it is because they are insecure about themselves and they feel the need to make someone else suffer for the way that they feel. They try to make themselves feel better about their insecurities by trying to bring everyone around them down.
I still remember everything that happened like it was yesterday but I know that I'm stronger now that I was then. Everything that I went through has made me a strong person and I'm happy about that.