I've struggled with bullying all my life that got progressively worse as I grew up. At the beginning, I was just ridiculed for bringing my stuffed dogs to school in second grade. The next year I was ridiculed for walking on my toes. The next year, I was called anorexic because I was skinny. The year after that they switched to bulimic. I was nicknamed "cereal box" and made fun of for my low weight every day. People think that you get made fun of for being fat and that skinny is a good thing, but I was criticized more for being really skinny than any of the overweight kids were for being overweight. I was told that my weight was disgusting. I was called ugly. I was called a nerd. I was always too afraid to speak up. It wasn't even just at school, kids in my neighborhood would say the exact same things to me as the kids in school. I had one girl on my bus telling me every day what she thought was wrong about the outfit I was wearing. I never told my family what was going on because I was too ashamed. I felt like I didn't measure up to everyone else. I had three older siblings who were all pretty popular and known for being good looking and athletic. I was known for just the opposite. I was told that boys would never like me, I had zero self esteem, and I felt horrible all the time. The comments that haunted me throughout my elementary and middle school days were nothing compared to my experience with bullying in high school.

My freshman year, I moved to a new town with all new people and had to make all new friends. It was hard. I still felt plagued by the insecurities I had been developing since grade two. I tried to ignore them, I even quickly made new friends. Through them I made even more friends, or at least, that was what I thought. I became friends with a few sophomore boys and their freshman friend who were particularly terrible. The sophomores pretended to like me. They would smile at me in the hallway and text me all the time. They told me I was pretty and that we should go out some time. The freshman, who attended a different school, made an attempt to warn me that the sophomores were lying to me, but the other boys told me he was just jealous. Eventually, they got tired of their little joke and decided to tell me that they thought I was hideous and walked like a duck and they wanted to push me down a flight of stairs. I was incredibly hurt because I had grown quite fond of the boys. It worsened all my insecurities. I couldn't walk without thinking about what they said. I couldn't look in the mirror without believing I was ugly. It was absolutely horrible. Every weekend the boys were together and they would all harass me, saying the same things over and over. They told me I was stupid and way too skinny as well. They would attempt to prank call me. I thought that if I said anything to an administrator, it would make things worse.

When I received a phone call from my brother one night that my father, who had been in the hospital for a week due to health complications, was most likely going to die, I was devastated. It was the beginning of April vacation and I knew the boys would be together so I begged them to leave me alone for the time being and even told them why. They still tried to prank call me. When my father died the following morning, I told them I was serious, that trying to prank call me was beyond wrong and to just leave me alone and they essentially did. They asked questions about my dad, but that didn't bother me. The worst things they did came a few days later. Someone made a website about one of the sophomore boys and a fake Facebook profile to post the link on. They assumed it was me and told everyone that I did it. I had people adding me on Facebook asking me why I would do something like that and I tried to tell everyone that I didn't, but it only worked with some people. They decided to retaliate and have the freshman boy make a website about me. The entire website compared me to a horse and made fun of me completely. In the family section was the most wrong thing I have ever seen to this day: a picture of a skeleton with the label "Sorry we couldn't find an old pic of her dad, so here's a more recent one". This was just five days after he died. I was devastated. I even added the fake Facebook and started yelling at the kid who made the site about the boy that caused the whole fiasco. When the real maker of the site about the boy was revealed, all I got from the three boys was a "thanks for trying to help and defend me, but I still don't like you" from the boy the site was about.

I didn't hear from these boys again until the summer. They decided it would be fun to prank me. It was just a normal, mildly entertaining prank call until they took it way too far. The freshman boy yelled "I have to go now, my dad just came to tell me to quiet down, but you wouldn't know anything about that because your dad’s dead" and then hung up. Again, I was devastated. They tried calling again and I ignored it so they left me a message in which the freshman boy sang "Daddy wasn't there he was never there to comfort me, because he's dead" and started to laugh before hanging up. I knew it was only him on the phone, so I texted the others asking why they would allow him to do it. They said he thought he was being funny, but they didn't, but weren't going to stop him. I tried to stick up for myself by telling the freshman boy to "go to hell", but he simply replied "Sorry, I don't want to go chill with your dad". I just didn't understand how people could be so cruel to each other. Here I was, being treated in such a morally wrong way by someone I had never even seen before or did anything to that was just trying to impress a few of his friends who had already bullied me enough. After these boys, I was still ridiculed for the same old things; I wasn't pretty enough, I didn't walk right, and I was just an all around freak. What changed in high school is that I began telling my friends what was going on and they supported and loved me completely.

I found comfort in my friends and music. I began attending local shows and meeting all sorts of new and wonderful people. All my new friends were always telling me how awesome and beautiful I was and still continue to do that now. I am currently a senior in high school and in a much better place than I had been in the past. Through being bullied, I became a much stronger person. I have the most amazing friends now. Music helped me a lot when I was upset about being bullied. It helped me in unspeakable ways. I felt like and still feel like music provides a voice to the voiceless. Bullying is a huge and terrible issue, but I learned a lot from it. I learned about forgiveness, for I have forgiven all my bullies for what they did. I have learned to open up and express my feelings and emotions instead of bottling them up. The biggest lesson I learned is that in defending yourself, you should never fight fire with fire. All it does is create a bigger fire. I learned not to be afraid of seeking help. I learned that it's okay to vent about how other people make you feel and that it feels really good to listen to someone else vent and help them find their own way. There is always someone out there who loves and cares about you. Everyone is beautiful in there own way. I now hold myself in such high regard. Bullies only have the power you give them. No matter how hard it is, you should always try your best to make sure you never let them see you sweat. Bullies bully for a reaction and typically stop when they don't get one. The second a situation gets out of hand you should seek help immediately. Always remember, we are all here for a reason. We are all beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful in our own ways. We all have flaws. True "perfection" lies within the strength to overcome "imperfection" and you are never, ever alone. 

-Jen