This video inspired me to write this blog
entry. In it, a girl goes on the show X-Factor and reveals that she was
severely bullied all throughout middle- and high school. The girl’s beautiful singing is filled with
so much raw emotion and still-lingering pain, and I felt compelled to write
this. I’ve never written about my own
bullying experiences before. This will
definitely be a new experience for me.
Watching the video brought my own memories to the forefront of my mind,
and I can no longer ignore them and bury them as I have been doing for years.
Bullying didn’t start for me until middle
school. When I lived in Utah throughout
elementary school, it was as if I lived in a protective bubble. Everyone in the classes got along, or at
least they seemed to. I was definitely
less shy and more outgoing than I am now.
When we could no longer afford to live in our townhouse in Utah, my
mother, sister, and I moved to Yuba City, California to live with my
uncle. About a month after we arrived, I
began attending Gray Avenue Middle School as a sixth grader. (Let me just say this: I was very unprepared
to begin attending middle school. In
Utah, middle school starts in the seventh grade, so I had not been prepared at
all to begin attending middle school in the sixth grade. I simply wasn’t ready.)
From the moment I began attending Gray
Avenue, I hated it. I started my first
day with hope that everything would be great, exciting, and that I would make a
lot of friends immediately. I was very
wrong. In my homeroom class, the second
I sat down in my assigned seat, the boy next to me insulted me. And he didn’t stop. Immediately my dreams of a grand, fresh start
crumbled. By the time Open House arrived
in the beginning of September, I was already begging my teacher for a new seat. It wasn’t just this boy, either. I somehow managed to turn the other students
in the class against me without ever saying a word to them. For boys and girls alike, I was the target
for their teasing.
At the time, sixth grade students got to
attend an “outdoor school” called Woodleaf for five days in the Fall. Students went at different weeks throughout
October depending on their class.
Unfortunately, one of the only friends I’d made was going at a different
time. By this point, I hated it when
teachers told us to “pick a partner” for any sort of group work. Of course, we were required to “pick a
partner” to be in our cabin. I ended up
with a girl in my class with whom I got along relatively well. We weren’t really friends, but she didn’t
torment me.
If I could go back in time, I would stop
myself from ever going to Woodleaf in the first place. One of the girls in the cabin to which I was
assigned was the best friend of a girl who lived in my apartment complex. I didn’t even really know them, but they took
it upon themselves to laugh at me, mock me, and be generally rude to me. (They were fine with everyone else in the
cabin.) So I preferred to stay as far
away from them as possible. Then their
dislike slowly trickled to the other girls in the cabin until everyone but two
or three girls were against me. And to
this day I still have no idea what I did to offend them so.
It wasn’t just at school, either. The apartment complex in which I lived was
ripe for drama and childhood fights.
Unfortunately, my best friend in the complex was friends with everyone
and therefore managed to be friends with people who had decided that they didn’t
like me. So I interacted with them more
so that I would have enjoyed to. Some
situations were actually that we seemed to be friends for a year, but then
suddenly they loathed me passionately.
No matter where I went, I couldn’t escape people bullying me, taunting
me, stealing my things. I was trapped.
This continued all throughout middle school. I dreaded P.E. in the seventh and eighth
grades because were forced to do square dancing. At one point my mother let me skip school one
day after I begged not to go to the point of tears. We would be learning a dance in which we had
to closely interact with our partners, and I knew I would be forced to dance
with a boy who would refuse to even touch me.
I was used to it, and it was beyond humiliating. I remember one afternoon in which I was
instructed to dance with a new boy who didn’t know the steps at all. He wouldn’t even touch me. I understand that boys that age can just be
like that, but it was only me they wouldn’t touch. Every other girl was fine. Anyway, this boy basically refused to do
anything, even though I tried, and I was frustrated to the point of tears. Because we weren’t doing it right, the P.E.
teacher took it out on me and sent me over to sit on the stage.
At the time, basketball was my favorite
sport. I wasn’t great at it, but I liked
it. There were two seventh grade teams
so no one was excluded. I knew I wouldn’t
have made the team had it been more selective, but I wanted to have fun. I wanted to be part of something. My enthusiasm, however, was lessened when I
heard one of the girls from the other team snicker something to the effect of, “At
least we don’t have Ashlee Estep.”
Eighth grade was the worst. It was during this year the bullying reached
its pinnacle. It seemed as if the people
who torment me felt even more compelled to do so now that we were in the
highest grade level. I was in the
probation office at my school multiple times just trying to get her to get
people off my back. (To no avail.) No matter what class I went to, there were
snide remarks, insults, and teasing following me everywhere. It got to the point where I would be teased,
not only at school and my apartment complex, but in public, too.
I lived down the street from the Yuba
City Mall. It was a small mall with no
real remarkable stores except GameStop
and Hot Topic, but it was the place where teenagers went to hang out. From the beginning of the eighth grade, there
was one specific girl out to get me. I
don’t know why, but she was the most evil out of anyone I had ever met, and she
seemed to make it her goal in live to drive me crazy. So, of course, it was her I saw at the mall
one afternoon. I had seen her and her
friends earlier, but I was with a friend of mine, so they didn’t do anything
but shout at me. After my friend and I
split up, I left the mall and had to pass through the food court where they
were sitting. They yelled insults at me,
I flipped them off, and it started.
They seemed to take this as proper provocation
to follow me. I should have realized
that they were just trying to get an excuse to start a fight. I didn’t know they were following me until I felt
the girl shove me in the parking lot.
Now, everyone who knows me knows that I am not a fighter. At all.
I can get into long arguments, but I can’t fight even to defend
myself. Certainly not when it’s
three-on-one with a girl who’s probably been to jail before. I told her to leave me alone and kept
walking, but she and her friends followed.
It continued that way for a while until we ended up having a shouting
match on the grass, with all three of them screaming at me with me saying I
didn’t do anything and that I just wanted to be left alone. Passer-by paid no attention to us.
After a while, I finally crossed the
street to the other side. (It was a
four-lane street, so it put a good amount of distance between us.) I thought I was safe, but they followed. Finally, the girl pushed me so hard that I
fell over. Of course, they laughed. I got up and kept walking, and then saw and
felt the rocks whizzing past me as they threw them. They quit following me after a point, and
when I got home, I fell into my mother’s arms and sobbed.
Throughout middle school, countless
people made my life a living hell. It
wasn’t like I just had one bully, I had tons.
Almost everyone in that school seemed to hate me. At one point, these girls managed to convince
me that there was a piece of homework in one of the bathrooms with my name on
it. I don’t know why I believed them,
since I hadn’t been in that bathroom all day, but when I went inside and saw
nothing, they held the door shut and wouldn’t let me out. By the time they let go of the door and
allowed me to leave, they were laughing their heads off.
Sometimes I didn’t even know these
people. Sometimes they were just random
people on the bus who didn’t like the way I looked, so they decided to insult
me. I remember one instance in the
seventh grade. I went to these regular “girl
power”-esque meetings with counselors, and a number of girls in my grade attended. There was a girl in my English and Social
Studies class who went. She was always
rude to me throughout the sixth grade, but I felt the need to ask her if we had
a meeting that day. It was in class, so
I whispered the question, and she just kind was like, “I don’t know,” in the
tone that clearly says, “Whatever, go away.”
Our teacher heard her say something and immediately gave her a
break-time detention for talking. Good
revenge for the girl who was bullied for her, right? Well, I told the teacher that the girl was
just answering a question for me and that it was my fault. The teacher gave me the detention
instead. He told the girl she should
thank me for standing up for her and telling her the truth. I can’t recall if she said anything.
High school improved, I suppose. It wasn’t as bad, but it certainly wasn’t
fun. I found solace in choir, and that
was where I made all my friends. But I
can never forget the nightmare of middle school.
It may not seem like I went through much,
at least compared to others, but middle school absolutely destroyed my
self-esteem. I was suicidal when I was
thirteen years old. I couldn’t handle what
people did to me every day. The bullying
followed me everywhere. No matter where
I went, there was someone pulling me down.
Someone saying I was too fat, too white, too ugly, that I looked like a
boy because my hair was so short, that I was stupid. I believed them all. It wasn’t as if I could look in the mirror
and say, “They’re all wrong. I know I’m
beautiful.” No, I believed them. I just wanted them to stop saying it.
Middle school turned me into a very
combative, defensive person. I wasn’t
afraid to scream and yell at people because I thought it was the only way to
get people to listen to me. When that
didn’t work, I just shut up. Now, if I
don’t know anyone, I don’t speak unless spoken to. It takes a lot for me to warm up to
someone. When two people are whispering
and laughing in class, I can’t help but wonder if they’re talking about me,
even to this day in my sophomore year of college. I’m so afraid that everyone will revert to
how it used to be.
I’m not quite sure why I wrote this. I know not many people read this, but if
there’s someone who does and they’re being bullied, just know that you’re not
alone. I got through it and so can
you. Maybe to also show those who bully
others what their words and actions really do and how they make people feel. And to show them that I’m not going to hide
away forever, and that despite them and thanks to them, I’ve become a stronger
person.
Thinking back to all this, about having
rocks thrown at me, being locked in a bathroom, being talked about, all of this
still humiliates me to this day. I truly
feel like these people crushed my spirit.
It’s no longer like that, but at the time, my life revolved around
trying to avoid these people. Most
often, the names of people you knew in middle school fade from memory. But I remember everyone. I remember their first and last names, and
can recall everything they said to me. I
wish I couldn’t. I wish they’d just
leave my head forever.
All I know is, I can’t wait for the day
that I make something amazing out of myself and show them all that they were
wrong about me.
