Dear Reader,

I would first to warn you that what I am going to share with you isn’t a pretty fairytale with a happy ending. It is a gut wrenching, wretched tale about my past. All names have been changed for privacy purposes and to prevent further pain.

Since I can remember I haven’t ever been “normal” or “part of the herd”, At age three I was known to tell other little girls and boys at pre-school that it was okay to play “house” with people who were the same gender as them, Mommies and Daddies could both be girls or boys. I would encourage other little ones in the grocery store to stop crying, because it was better to smile. My mom likes to tell me that from the moment I was born she knew I was special. Unfortunately, Other children and their parents did not know how to respond to a child who was so connected to herself and the world. I was bullied and isolated by children all through grade school, I tried all through elementary school to fix my problems with others, I statements and all. All they would do is pout their bottom lip and roll their eyes. It didn't go over so well with little me. By 5th grade I started to shut them down intellectually because it was the one skill that I had that they didn’t. The kind hearted, naïve little girl that let her peers walk all over her would come home everyday and cry until she had no tears left. I didn’t understand what I had done to make people treat me so horribly. I was just trying to get through the years, thinking middle school would be my fresh start, my light at the end of the tunnel. To my despair it was just the beginning of the darkness.

Close your eyes. Imagine the feeling of new clothing on your skin, your first thong riding up your butt and enjoying every minute of it. That was the first day of middle school. Everyone knew my name; I was queen, I was on fire. It was everything I had ever wished for, until it wasn’t anymore. I had met Emily at a volleyball camp the summer before 7th Grade, the second we met we became inseparable. She was at my house or I was at hers every day of that summer. Emily was popular, new and exciting, but she was those things for a reason. Emily filled her free time going to high school parties, hooking up with boys that she had never met, smoking marijuana and steeling liquor from her parents. The Emily that all of her peers knew was a party girl who just wanted to have “fun”, but of course the Emily that adults knew was responsible and a good little Christian girl. I knew those two sides of her and also the true one, the one that was just trying to fill the emptiness in her chest. I was pressured all summer to do these rebel acts with her and continuously said no until the day I said yes. The feelings that came after taking that sip and kissing that boy were not pleasure; they were embarrassment and pain. The summer was coming to an end and Emily and I were too. We drifted apart, no hard feelings or big blowout. She found “cooler” people to hang out with and I found my self worth again. I thought our time knowing each other was over until I walked into middle school.

The first week I was on top of the world, I had made an abundance of new friends and liked all my classes. For the first time in my life I thought the universe decided to give me happiness without pain. I was wrong. I started hearing whispers and started getting glares. The girl who I had drifted apart from had other plans for me; Emily and her posse started the beginning of what would be the worst year of my young life. The rumors of me being in love with Emily and stalking her all summer spread like wildfire. I couldn’t walk to my locker without being slammed into a locker or called “lesbian”, “freak” or “stalker”. The names got worse and the rumors got bigger and other than reporting the incidents to the administration I hadn’t retaliated. I came home everyday and cried until the pain went away; I struggled to maintain my normal 4.0 and lost the light in my eyes. One day, I was packing up to go home and suddenly felt pressure on the back of my head. Emily had grabbed my hair, turned me around and started slamming my head into lockers yelling “Stop snitching, you lesbian b**ch”. There were over 20 bystanders who were encouraging her and prevented me from fleeing the situation. I grabbed my backpack and hit them as hard as I could so I could get out. Describing this situation to you still makes me cry. I had never been through anything as traumatic as this. I reported the incident to the principal and the police and of course, just like every other incident, I was not taken care of. It only took a few days for the death threats, words under everyone’s breath and the statuses telling me to “Drink Bleach” or “Jump off a bride wh**re” to start. It was December and nothing was happening except lame excuses and promises that were never kept. My mom kept fighting but I was threating suicide everyday, I hated myself and everyone else and I would refuse to get out of bed every morning. After months of fighting, my mom pulled me out of school and basically told the school district to go to hell. We explored the option of a lawsuit but the publicity the case would get was not something my mom wanted to subject me to. I was “home schooled” until the beginning of June. My life was no longer mine; I could not set foot on a school campus without having a panic attack or curling up in a ball and crying. I avoided every place they could possibly be like the plague. I felt hopeless, out of control and severely depressed. I saw zero value in life.

I made the decision to go back to public school for 8th grade in Everett because I was not going to let this define me. Things were great for a while; no one knew my past or me. I had a considerable amount of friends and was back to a 4.0. One day some people had the audacity to pop my bubble. They trashed my confidence, my morals and me all over social networks. It really wasn’t what they said at the end of the day but what they had destroyed. I had put my bad experiences/feelings in a locked box, and choose not to acknowledge them. The box fell off the shelf broke wide open and I could not stop crying. No one could understand how some stupid kids from school upset me so much. But it wasn't them; it was the box that fell of the shelf.

I was ready to attempt suicide, to be done. I voluntarily admitted myself to the Children’s Hospital Inpatient Unit to try to get help coping with my Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety and PTSD. I continued to work on my past trauma with my therapist and mom. It’s a year later and I still fight to find motivation to get out of bed every morning, to want to be alive. The expression “everyone has their days” applies to me everyday. I am on a considerable amount of antidepressants, I see my therapist twice a week and since last Monday I have been going to to get help from 9am to 3pm to keep myself safe. To be completely honest my mom is the only anchor that keeps me alive, I know I wouldn’t be here without her. But through all of this crap and pain the one thing I hold on to more than anything else is that I know deep down that I am here for a reason, I was born to change the world and I know that all of this is happening to prepare me to help others. I am here to teach tolerance and love to the world because I will not bring children into the world that we live in now.