(This one will be really long, I apologize majorly) I was eight. I was smaller than everyone else, I wore clothes that were too big for me, I wore thick rimmed glasses (they kind of looked like the type of nerd glasses that people now just love so much), and I had bright red hair. I was a cute kid, looking back at all the pictures. But that's also where the bullying started. I was in third grade, and there was this girl in my class who was two years older than me. She'd been held back twice. I had my first anxiety attack the week that the bullying had actually started. I had the anxiety attack in school, on the playground at recess. There were a group of boys, and I had been playing basketball with them. I was winning. They got mad, and they started teasing me, saying things like "you should've been born a boy" or "you're a girl, you can't play with us any more". I wanted then to stop, but they only laughed every time I'd asked. I remember feeling my heart rate exell, my chest tightened, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I was shaking, and I curled up on the ground, my knees were by my face, and I was covering my ears, because I couldn't handle the noise around me. The boys looked at me like I was the weirdest human they'd ever seen. I was sent home, because they didn't know what happened, and my mom took me to the doctor where I was diagnosed with a social anxiety disorder, and given medication to see if it would fix anything. It didn't. I stopped talking to people besides my family. I found it harder and harder every day to talk to someone. I was called a freak. I was called stupid. Dumb. Ugly. All because there was something wrong with my head that made me unable to talk to people without thinking that they might hurt me, or the fear of people in general. And the girl that was mentioned earlier was the main cause. I had rarely spoken. By the time I was in sixth grade, I'd grown a lot, but I had my growth spurt earlier than everyone else, leaving me smaller than everyone else by sixth grade. I still had not talked to anyone besides my lifelong best friend, who had not been mentioned earlier in the story for privacy purposes. The same girl had been bullying me since third grade. One day in school, my best friend came up to me. She had a bruises on her cheek, her arms, and her lip was split. She was crying. She took me into the bathroom, where she told me everything I'd never heard of. Her dad was an alcoholic, and had been since her mom died. Her dad would beat her. That explained why she would always wear oversized sweaters and jeans that covered every part of her skin. She told me that the night before, her dad drank so much that he hadn't known anything he was doing, and he raped her. She was crying so much that she slid down the wall and cried for two hours straight. I hugged her, and cried with her for the same amount of time. I couldn't believe this had actually happened to my best friend. I never had anyone to talk to but her, because I had actually been terrified to talk to anyone else. After that day, girls would make fun of us for being a lesbian couple, though we weren't. Kids would call us whores, and one day, my best friend just couldn't take it anymore. She said "this is the day. I can't take it anymore." By the time I had actually realized what she meant, it was too late. My mom got a call (since she was on the emergency contact list for her) from the hospital. My heart sank to the floor. My best friend had attempted suicide, and I blamed it all on myself. I went into the hospital with my mom, and we found out that she hadn't succeeded, but she hadn't failed, either. My best friend was in a coma. It ripped me apart. Any time I was allowed into the room by myself, I sat there next to her. I begged her to wake up, to not let the thoughts and the words of others get to her. I remember taking her hand, and collapsing beside her bed, and screaming for her to wake up. And she did, that night. But, at once the thoughts flooded back into her head, and all she saw was tears. She ripped the IV from her upper arm, and stabbed it into the vein in her arm. She died in the hospital that night. For the rest of sixth grade, I'd never been the same. The bullying mostly stopped by the time people realized that she hadn't only killed herself, but they killed her too... And me? I was left broken. Shattered. I didn't feel like I could ever be whole again. I moved for the beginning of seventh grade. Unlike me, my little sister actually had friends to miss, but she made new ones quickly. I was a completely different story. I was still terrified to talk to anyone. One day, I went to pick my sister up from a friends house. If they hadn't known sign language, I'd've been screwed. It was my only defense. Then, however, I was stopped by a kid. A boy, no less. He looked about my age. He told me who he was, and asked me my name and what school I would be going to. I was terrified to speak to him. I thought he would think I was a freak, like everyone else did. I grabbed a pen from my pocket, and wrote him the answers he'd been looking for. He nodded, and asked if I was mute. I nodded. He took my phone from my other hand, and put his number into it before handing it back. I knew there was something interesting about him. He asked for the pen, and then wrote on my hand that if I ever wanted to explain it to him, or some one to talk to, I could text him. I smiled at him, and signed "thank you", before walking off to pick my sister from her friends home. As the days went on our bond grew. My feelings grew for him. He had a girlfriend, and I'd tried to hide it from him. Three weeks before school ended for the year, he informed me that he was moving. I cried, right there in front of him. And then, I'd spoken my first words in four years. "I don't want you to go." I had a stutter. I guess, that was because I hadn't talked for so long. He looked over at me, his eyes were wide. The awe was clearly written on his face. "You talked" he said. I nodded, shocked for myself. He hugged me, and lifted me in the air. I didn't know what he was doing. I felt him smile against my shoulder as he put me back down. He was laughing. "Your voice is beautiful. You're beautiful." He said. I blushed at his comment, and a look I hadn't recognized flashed across his face. Him and his girlfriend had been broken up for a while now. Before I knew what was happening, he kissed me. I never felt so special to anyone, until that moment. I'd like to say he saved me, because, well, he did. We've been dating for a year and a half now. Even though he lives really far away now, we're still held together by the fact that we still have a chance, maybe several, to see eachother again. I love him, and I'm positive that he loves me too.