Being Bullied

There was a point in my life, approximately between the age of 13 to 15, that I was Bullied by a classmate/ someone who was "kind of" a friend. I honestly have absolutely no idea where her hatred towards me spewed from but it was pretty mean spirited. I started middle school with a bunch of kids who had all grown up from Pre-K together. So when she started her bullying, I lost a few friends that I had but was fine with the one's that stayed by my side. She even went as far as creating a "I hate Sarah" fan Club, complete with button's and all. One day during snack or lunch, whatever break we were on, she walked up to me with a smile on her face (friend's in tow), handed me a button and asked If I wanted to join. I smiled and said "sure", took the button and started to pin it on my shirt. She rolled her eyes and looked pretty pissed as she stomped away.  A friend that was with me at the time asked why I would agree to take the button... as he put it in the trash. I responded "why not". I tried so hard not to let it get to me, especially in front of other people, but you bet your ass I went straight home and cried to mom.

It only got worse after we went into High school. She knew even more people, that were older than us and it seemed like every class I had with her, she enlisted someone new to hate me. One class in particular she had a friend who sat right behind me and she would constantly kick my chair or "accidentally" bump her book on my back or get her pencil caught on my hair. I would beg my mom to let me stay home sometimes just to avoid being harassed. And then one day this particular friend of hers had to be my partner for an assignment, I guess she realized that I wasn't a bad person at all and didn't understand why her friend hated me so much. This wasn't the only person to think the same exact thing. I was on the drill team and some of her friends, who had been part of the whole "club" back in middle school also realized I wasn't horrible either and couldn't believe they listened to a word she had said about me (what those words were, I will NEVER know). Eventually she stopped harassing me, but omg...if looks could kill! Sometimes (rarely) I even sat at the same table with her during lunch, because of the "mutual" friends we ended up having. All through high school we had classes together, passed each other everyday, had the same mutual friends from middle school and even graduated together but we never ever spoke or even said Hi to each other... then again, why would we?!

Even though I don't like to talk about this particular person and how she treated me, I was inspired to write about it because of two 5 yr olds, two separate incidents, where they were being harassed in some way. Maybe not as badly as I was, but come on ... 5 yr olds! That's where it starts, and NEEDS to end. Sometimes I think that maybe that girl didn't realize what she was doing but now that I'm older, I know that she knew exactly what she was doing. I hope that parents and teachers will be good role models to these young kids that might not understand what it means to hurt someone. Especially at such a young age.