Your past doesn’t define you but it does change you. The moment you go on social media and let strangers message you, can make you feel emotions you have never felt before. The same thing happened to me on an app called Kik. One message that I never expected to change my life over five months did. I only had one close friend to help me through it all, nobody else.

When I received the message, it was from a complete stranger. Someone I never would have ever thought that could teach me a lot of life lessons. The message read “Hi” it made me wonder, Who are you? How’d you get my username?, his name was Michael and was from California. The feeling of hesitance to reply to his text filled my body but then disappear and changed to agonizing feeling. I replied in a mean way but it was in a way where you freak out and wonder. He kept messaging me as if he already knew everything about me. I was scared. Bringing out my mean yet worried side I didn’t answer any of his questions. Keeping him distanced as much as I could.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen for long.

Talking to him made me feel safe in an rare way. He made me feel so happy until he made me cry. When someone treats you as if you’re a princess, you don’t notice they trap they put you in. I was one of those people who fell for his trap. Every day was the same. When I woke up he was nice and when I did anything after school he’d get mad and make me feel bad. It would go from, “Morning princess you are so gorgeous and wonderful don’t let anything get you down.” to “You should only talk to me. You are so useless. Nobody deserves to be friends with you. If you ever died nobody would care.” I was caught in his trap that I couldn’t escape. He controlled me with his meaningless works. I let the meaningless words take over, leaving me with nothing. The only person I could talk to was my good friend Ashley without him getting mad. If I did anything he’d yell at me. Even talking to my mom from going to work he would make me send him pictures prove to him I was really doing what I said I was. This caused me to distance myself from my friends, family and everyone. It felt as if nobody around me noticed the small gray world I started to live in.

As the days darken I realized the only people who were there for me was Ashley and Michael. Ashley never seen the messages he sent me. I couldn’t let her see them. I felt as if I would my world would go from gray to black. She was always asking me if I was okay. I replied the same thing every time, “I am just fine.” As this continued to happen everyday it would get worse and worse as it went on. His words started to because my dictionary. I started to believe all of his words that he defined me with. He would tell me, “ Your ugly, fat, gross.” He made me feel like the only way people would like me better if I didn’t exist. It reached breaking point after five months of dealing with it. I was at school and not answering his text messages. He began to tell me horrible things like, “Your family doesn’t love you. How can you love yourself when nobody ever will. You're better off dead than alive.” It made me cry as I left class to escape to my locker. Ashley was at my locker as she usually was before lunch. I couldn’t even look at her. I didn’t want her to see my tear filled eyes, but she did.

I went to the bathroom and started to cry. I was fine after a few minutes and went down to lunch. I showed Ashley the text messages he sent me. Instead of him stopping he kept, proceeding with his cruel words. I tried to ignore him but it didn’t work. Then end of the school day was finally over. I felt that my gray world turned to black and that I was alone. Sitting in the car with my mom made me nervous and depressed. I started crying and told her what Michael told me. All I can remember her telling me is, “This isn’t your fault, honey. You did nothing wrong.” In my mind I felt as if this whole thing was my fault. As soon as we arrived home I blocked him on everything. I wanted nothing to do with him.

I went into a depression state; my parents were worried so was Ashley. My black world slowly changed to a light colored world. I started talking to Ashley more and some friends who were closed to me. Things started to get better and brighter. Everything that happened made me realize how the “nicest” people you meet online can become your worst nightmare.