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It does get better
Oct. 6th, 2010 02:05 pmSince I can't get my camera to work, I figured I'd post what I was going to say here instead. Feel free to link this anywhere you want. And no, I'm not putting it under a cut.
It does get better
I used to love school when I was a child. I say used to, because in second grade something shifted. I still to this day don't know what and why, but suddenly, my friends started to turn on me. At age 7 my life completely changed. I can't really remember the time before that, since I was so young, but when I finally moved to fourth grade, this was my life. Daily jabs at my looks, how slow I was in track and field, my weight. In winter, snow balls filled with pebbles would hail down over me. I've had things I've crafted for my parents destroyed by people in my homeroom, clothes hidden in the PE locker rooms.
The year I moved to junior high, I was so convinced I was worthless that I just wanted to die. My own fear of pain is the only thing that kept me from a suicide attempt.
Then something happened. First day of seventh grade, my classmates actually wanted to talk to me. They seemed genuinly happy to see me in the mornings and always greeted me in the hallways. Things still weren't perfect, and every comment about my looks, ever PE class seared me.
My family and I moved that same fall and I started a school closer to home. And the nightmare started again. No words or jabs, nothing stolen. People just treated me like I was invicible. They even started spreading lies about me. These groups of people who had known each other since kindergarten, really refused to let new ones into their world, and after five or six lessons about bullying and alienation, nothing had changed.
The next shift came with high school. I ended up in a wonderful crowd, two of my old nightmares actually apoligized to me and everything started out good. I switched school again to persue my major, and old tracks were tread. Some people from junior high was in my class and they seriously treated anyone they didn't like as if we were lower than dirt, blaming us for not taking the first step to be part of their Popular Party.
It took me 13 years from that day in junior high to realize that I am not worthless, that I have friends who like me for who I am, and that I should stop seeking approval from others. Because only one person's opinion about you counts, and that is your own.
So it does get better. Find that one thing you are good at and cling to it with everything you have. Nurture every talent, how mundane and boring it might seem, and you will excel.
Now, I live on welfare, in an apartment that is way too small, in a town as dull and boring and poor as the rundown parts of London, and yet, I am content. I know my own value, I know what I am good at and I am finally starting to believe in myself.
Even if your life seem like a black whirlpool of pain and doubt, try to bite down. Find that one thing that makes it worth the struggle and cling to it. Because it gets better. When you hit the bottom and everything is black pain raging around you, remember - the only true constant in the universe is light, and when we hit our all-time low, you can only reach higher.
It does get better
I used to love school when I was a child. I say used to, because in second grade something shifted. I still to this day don't know what and why, but suddenly, my friends started to turn on me. At age 7 my life completely changed. I can't really remember the time before that, since I was so young, but when I finally moved to fourth grade, this was my life. Daily jabs at my looks, how slow I was in track and field, my weight. In winter, snow balls filled with pebbles would hail down over me. I've had things I've crafted for my parents destroyed by people in my homeroom, clothes hidden in the PE locker rooms.
The year I moved to junior high, I was so convinced I was worthless that I just wanted to die. My own fear of pain is the only thing that kept me from a suicide attempt.
Then something happened. First day of seventh grade, my classmates actually wanted to talk to me. They seemed genuinly happy to see me in the mornings and always greeted me in the hallways. Things still weren't perfect, and every comment about my looks, ever PE class seared me.
My family and I moved that same fall and I started a school closer to home. And the nightmare started again. No words or jabs, nothing stolen. People just treated me like I was invicible. They even started spreading lies about me. These groups of people who had known each other since kindergarten, really refused to let new ones into their world, and after five or six lessons about bullying and alienation, nothing had changed.
The next shift came with high school. I ended up in a wonderful crowd, two of my old nightmares actually apoligized to me and everything started out good. I switched school again to persue my major, and old tracks were tread. Some people from junior high was in my class and they seriously treated anyone they didn't like as if we were lower than dirt, blaming us for not taking the first step to be part of their Popular Party.
It took me 13 years from that day in junior high to realize that I am not worthless, that I have friends who like me for who I am, and that I should stop seeking approval from others. Because only one person's opinion about you counts, and that is your own.
So it does get better. Find that one thing you are good at and cling to it with everything you have. Nurture every talent, how mundane and boring it might seem, and you will excel.
Now, I live on welfare, in an apartment that is way too small, in a town as dull and boring and poor as the rundown parts of London, and yet, I am content. I know my own value, I know what I am good at and I am finally starting to believe in myself.
Even if your life seem like a black whirlpool of pain and doubt, try to bite down. Find that one thing that makes it worth the struggle and cling to it. Because it gets better. When you hit the bottom and everything is black pain raging around you, remember - the only true constant in the universe is light, and when we hit our all-time low, you can only reach higher.
