I don’t want to walk into the school today. Maybe I should pretend to be sick so that I don’t have to face those girls again. I can’t handle much more; I’m going to explode. I anxiously walk through the front doors. Darting my eyes back and forth through the commons I do not see any of the girls that have been texting and harassing me for the past 2 weeks. I put my hood up and slowly walk to my locker. Keeping my head low as to not attract attention, I walk through the hallways trying to avoid the girls. They know where my locker is, it isn’t safe to stay there and wait for my friends. Then I see her. She’s staring right at me, with her light blue eyes, purple hair and lip piercing. She has a menacing smile on her face; she’s ready to attack. Licking her lips she calls out to me,” Hey lying snitch b****, come here, I want to talk.” I look behind me, semi hoping she found a new victim. There was nobody insight. I proceed to keep my head down and walk faster. As I am about to pass her, she pushes me with her shoulder and whispers,” B****.” With amusement written on her face, she looks towards her friends and they all begin to giggle.

The torment continued to rage on as I moved through my freshman year. After I dropped my boyfriend at the time, his friends decided to join in on the never-ending torment train. Not only did Taylor threaten me by saying she’d ‘beat the living s*** out of me’ if I left my boyfriend, but his friends decided it would be an awesome idea to call me inappropriate names in and out of school. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away from them. My mom eventually took away my phone knowing it’d save me in the long run. I began to bust at the seams to every new word they decided to call me. I feared their torment each day I woke up and thought about it as I drifted in and out of sleep. Slight relief arrived when Taylor was expelled from school.  Things seemed to calm down when Taylor left Wisconsin. Her minions didn’t need to follow orders and were lost without her. They soon lost interest in me and went there own ways. Thankfully no longer bullying others.

I knew that my ex-boyfriend’s friends wouldn’t relent, they’d fire all of their anger on me until they were feeling bored. I hardened my exterior. I was bullet proof, no matter what you said, I kept a straight face and walked away. It took everything inside of me not to fire back insults, I wanted them to feel what I felt. I wanted them to hate themselves as much as I hated them. I could feel the resentment grow the longer I allowed them to harass me. Why was it fun hurting me when I no longer gave them a reaction?

A few days would pass without hearing a word from the boys. I wouldn’t go to school with anxiety anymore. I could walk in with a normal heart and respiratory rate. It felt amazing to feel okay. That was until a guy with dark brown hair, cloudy dark brown eyes and a menacing smile came up to me holding a penny. He had an eerie smile on his face as he approached me.  “ Why don’t you bend over again so I can see your boobs? I mean you’re worthless anyways.”

“I don’t appreciate the way you are talking to me. Please leave.”

“ I’ll give you this penny so you can bend over again.”

I grab the materials I needed for class and am readying up to walk away when a cold object falls down my shirt. He chuckles,” Well you can be worth a penny now. Will you bend down and show me now.”

“ No.” I sniffle. I look him right in those dark cloudy eyes and walk to the bathroom. I cry in the bathroom stale. Even if I said something I have no definitive evidence against him. The school didn’t help me with Taylor. They won’t help me now.

I go back to class tear free and calm. I can’t let them get to me any longer. I already knew I was worthless. They cannot change it now. I tried to talk to my parents. They didn’t listen. I always came home with a new term people were referring to me as. It wasn’t anything new and it seemed like they were beginning to mass together. They no longer made a big deal of it. I hardly told my therapist about it at that point. It wasn’t worth my time, they no longer wanted to focus on it, I was becoming over bearing. I sat in silence as they asked how my day was. I wasn’t going to complain. Even if I told them about it, no one would believe me. I felt like the boy who cried wolf. I couldn’t decide what was worth saying any longer. No matter how hard I tried, my parents couldn’t see how serious my depression was beginning to progress. They didn’t understand why I allowed the words the power to hurt me. Instead of telling them how I felt, I just didn’t say anything; in fear that they would just start to call my pain a bluff.

I fear walking into school. The anxiety attacks that consume me grow stronger. My sanity and anxiety fought a one-on-one battle the moment I opened the first glass door into the tiny high school. I know that in a few years this wouldn’t matter but the words stuck with you. I didn’t want to hear the new term people would decide to call me that day. It was terrifying walking through the school waiting for someone to notice you and harass you. My anxiety would beat me each time and I’d spend most of my time in the bathroom looking at myself trying to find one admirable trait that I contained. Nothing popped into my head.

At night the words twirled around my head as ballerinas twirled around the dance floor. They were not graceful rather they were vicious. No matter how hard I tried to turn it off they would pound harder into my skull. Did words ever haunt you as much as they haunted me? I never knew that words could have such an impact on your life. Unlike physical bullying, the words could scar you forever where as the bruises from a punch would last a week. Words can destroy your sane thoughts and take over what little sanity you contain. It was a matter of time before I would mentally break down in front of the entire school. Boy would that make my bullies happy.

Have you been afraid to look at yourself in the mirror? The sight of myself sent me into a wave of disgust. The words were catching up to me and I was beginning to believe them. I saw how disgusting I looked. The bright red pimples on my face, the fat that hung from my stomach and the fact that maybe I did look like a s***. My clothes were too small for my physique, my muffin top popped out of the bottom of my shirts and my boobs popped out of the top of my shirt. Although it was almost summer, I wore sweatshirts or sweaters, trying to avoid being called a s*** by my ex’s friends. It worked, until they started accusing me of cutting. That gave them something to be proud about; they could brag that they broke my hard exterior. I changed what I wore so they couldn’t bother me but instead it gave them more to harass me about. I couldn’t make the right decision. I wanted to give up, I wanted to leave this town and never look back.

Did you ever fear walking into your school doors?  Did your eyes dart among the people, checking to make sure you were ok to walk to your locker? Were you ever bullied? The long-term effects of bullying stand with me today. We walk hand-in-hand down the halls, reminding me to always be fearful of others. With a little coaching I am able to calm my thoughts and my anxiety by using breathing exercises my aunt showed me. These exercises allow me to walk through the school without running into the bathroom and crying when someone gave me a glance. The girls that used to text me now have bigger problems then I ever did, they were bullying me because their life wasn’t filled with sunshine or rainbows. They were broken just as I am today. Although these events are in my past, they still leave an impact on my life. I forgave my bullies, letting go of the pain they caused. I will never forget what they taught me. I am stronger than I ever thought I could be. I no longer fear walking into those tiny glass doors.