So let's see... I've never really fit in at any point in time in my life. I've always been the black sheep, the lone wolf, whatever you want to call it, but it didn't really start to get bad until 7th grade. My homeroom classroom was set up with individual desks in rows and columns so everyone was basically their own island. We were assigned seats in alphabetical order, resulting in literally all the other girls on the left side of the room and me alone on the right side entirely surrounded by boys. I was already the socially awkward girl with glasses and now I was totally by myself in homeroom. The guy who sat behind me, Al, was the ring leader of them all. They would TORTURE me. Al would throw bits of paper in my hair during testing we did and they would all laugh at me. Always saying rude comments to me. The whole thing. But it didn't stop there. Al's locker was right next to mine in the corner and on multiple occasions he would come over and slam my locker shut while I was trying to get my books and things out of it. He would push me out of the way and wouldn't move to let me in. But that's not even the worst of it. On the school bus home there was me, two other girls who always sat together and about 8 or 9 boys in my grade. I always ended up sitting alone and without a teacher's supervision, opened up a whole new can of worms. Al and everyone else would sit behind me and pull my hair or punch the back of my seat. He would always say things like, "Talk to me, talk to me. Nah guys I don't think she'll go out with me, she hates me. Why do you hate me? Come on, go out with me." and tons of other stupid comments. I always did my best to just ignore them and listen to music. Only having one friend didn't help either, but I just kept to my own business and even through high school (which was a huge improvement but not great) I just did my work and got straight A's almost every single semester. During Winter break of my Sophomore year of college, I was at the gym with my best friend when Al walked in and sat down on the exercise bike next to me, not recognizing it was me until he had already sat down. He wouldn't even look at me and I literally just laughed at him. I think the moral of the story is to do your best to not let bullies destroy who you are and to find a healthy outlet for yourself, whether it be sports, exercise, art, dance, nature, animals or school work like it was for me. Something that you can be proud of that will make you feel better about yourself. At least for me, that has paid off in the long run and I'm now a Junior in Nursing school with a great GPA. It really does always get better.

- Dana