This is the worst day of my life.

I guess you could say that I tend to use that phrase often. It just seems that no matter what I do, I can not seem to get a grip on my life.

I used to let this group control my life. They were like this huge wall, that I did everything I could to avoid. Too bad this wall was in band with me.

The boy was the worst. I guess you could say he was like the king of a country. And I was his opposing country. He had these two girls; they were like messengers that would tell him lies about me. Then when he heard of the latest ‘crime’ I committed, he would find a suitable punishment for it. The punishment was usually a public confrontation, where he would tell me what a horrible person I was, and then when I tried to defend myself, he would tell me to shut up. And I listened to him.

There was one confrontation that I remember the most. One of his ‘messengers’ told him that I was telling people that my friend liked a junior saxophone player. I do, however, feel that I must applaud him on his strategy, because it was very well thought through. First, during class, he summoned each of my friends in that class and told them exactly what the girl told him and then went on to talk about me as if I were something that had been sent from hell to destroy their lives. Then, after I had been informed by one of my friends of what he was saying, and I had had the entire class period to become worried enough about what would happen. When class was over, and we had about five minutes until we had to leave, he made his move. He came up to me while I was talking to the very girl that I supposedly spread a rumor about. He told me that I needed to stop talking about his friends because he was tired of it. I told him I never said anything about him. He told me to shut up. I listened. He then proceeded to tell me how I was worthless and that I deserved to die. When I finally got up the nerve to say anything, I barely got out the stuttered words “l-le-leave me a-al-alone”. To that he replied: you are such a fake! Just leave! And I ran to the bathroom, with tears welling up in my eyes.

I stayed in there for about ten minutes. I didn’t want to see anyone. As I was walking out, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I saw a frightened little girl that was letting people that weren’t even her friends control her life. I didn’t want to be that girl.

I realized that I was enabling them to do this. Not only was I letting them control my life, but I was giving them the power to control it. I was convinced for so long that I was the victim, and it wasn’t true. By giving them the power, and not standing up for myself, I was just as bad as them.

The worst part of all of it was, if I had just had the courage to stand up to them on day one, things would never have gotten this bad. I might have not lost a few of my friends.

I recently was talking to one of my friends, or who I thought was my friends, that I lost to this huge mess. She told me that she couldn’t believe that I was so shallow and that I had become who I was today. I knew where this was going, so I told her I wasn’t going to get wrapped up in the drama. She obviously didn’t like that I was insinuating that she was drama. She told me that I was the drama and that I caused it. I laughed. For the first time in a long time, I realized that I had been worrying over nothing. She was the one that texted me. She was the one looking for the drama, and she knew that she could find it, because I would get upset over it. She wasn’t a good person, and she wasn’t good for me to be around either. I had made the right decision to end the chapter of my life that she had been a part of.

Even though I still miss her, I know I did what I had to do. I had to remove myself from the people that weren’t good for me, and I am still sad to this day, that those are the people she had associated herself with. I hope that what happened to me will never happen to her, but if it did, I think she would realize why I stopped talking to her. She would see what I saw, that I didn’t like who I was becoming.

And she would see why I had to sacrifice the friendship that meant the most to me, instead of sacrificing who I would become.

I had to learn the hard way that who you associate yourself with, reflects who you are. But it was something that I'm glad i learned now, instead of ten years from now.