*I am continuing the story I wrote for submission 774*

I am the victim. I have been bullied all my life but everything started to get worse in eighth grade. I had a friend or so I thought. The start of the year we were the best of friends. We did everything together. Then a group of popular kids wanted him to sit at their table. The people there didn't like me and little did I know was that they had a plan to break me and my old friend up as friends. They had him thinking he was one of them and then they told him to choose one victim from our lunch table. He chose me. The comments that he had been saying to me really hurt.

Fat, pig, annoying, bitch, ugly, unwanted, lesbian, nerd, and there were many more. I didn't know what to do. And to make everything worse was that none of my friends stood up for me. They didn't even care. That hurt even more than the comments knowing that my friends didn't support me even when I was being bullied. I went to our school guidance staff and he talked to him for me. They had us sit down with him and talk about all of this and "work it out". After he apologized to me everything was fine. He started to sit with us at lunch again and he stopped his mean comments. But after two days it took a turn for the worst. We were in gym class and he needed head buds for workouts. I always keep extras so I let him borrow them. After class he asked if he could borrow them for his next class. As the good person that I am I said yes Not knowing that when he went into my pencil pouch to get the head buds he also took some things from me. I was hurt to hear this after his stepbrother had told me after school. As I was texting him i received a text from my old friend. he said.....

Bully: Hey loser! How dare you blame me for stealing your stuff. You know that I would never steal from a dirty, poor, bitch like you. You are so unpopular nobody would ever think these are your head buds. So fuck you! Bye bye.

I didn't even know how to respond to that so all I did was cry. I cried for about twenty minutes and then I received another text. It was from my friend. She had been with the bully when him and all his friends were talking about me and saying comments about me. I thanked her for telling me and then my mom came to pick up my brother for his guitar lessons. I was home alone for about forty five minutes so I had taken out my journal and I started to write about my thoughts of cutting myself and how no one liked me and how they didn't even know that I was alive. I locked away the journal and never went back. That is until the next day. I was walking to school and he lives near me. I tried to walk past his house as fast as possible but he came running out. He came up to me and started acting like I was his friend. I told him to fuck off and then he stuck up his middle finger and then he punched me. I started to run but he chased after me and then punched me again. And to make this all worse my friend and my bully's step brother started to laugh as they watched. By the time I got to school they started to mock me and laugh at me. I felt worthless and soon developed depression. I no longer felt safe at school anymore. I no longer felt welcome with my friends and I no longer wanted to be at the school. I got inside and went to the school bathroom where the girl that my old friend was hanging out with was. I was scared and I started to walk out when she came up next to me. She started to mock me and I just couldn't take it anymore. I burst into tears and she called me a fugly baby. Then she walked out acting all innocent like nothing ever happened. Another day more comments and I sunk more and more into my depression. I went home and I started to cry. It hurt to think that people thought about me like that. I went into my craft drawer and pulled out an X acto knife. I was holding it thinking about cutting myself. I decided not to but that didn't mean that the thought wasn't still there. After that, I took out a blank journal. I wrote across the cover in big bold letters My thought journal. I used it to write down every negative thing that happens to me but then I write down a

substitute for it that is good. It helped for a few days until I had volleyball in gym class. My bully was in the gym class and I knew something was going to happen when he started to whisper to his step brother. He also had a devilish look on his face like he was planning something that was going to be "funny". We started to practice our serves and I made sure to stay as far away from them as possible. But they kept coming closer to me. Then my bully took his volleyball and threw it at my back as hard as he could to hit me. I was so mad I went up to my gym teacher and told her but all she did was tell me to move away from them. They did it three more times before she actually did something. But by the time she did something class was over. All this was getting way out of hand. I didn't understand what I did to deserve being treated this way. My bullying has never gotten so bad that I was thinking about cutting myself. So I went to my principal for some help. He took me into his office and we started to talk about what was going on. I told him everything from the verbal harassment to the punch and the volleyballs to the thing that happened in the bathroom. After he heard all this he was starting to look really concerned. He said that he was going to have the bully come in here and he was going to talk to him. That made me felt better and I was happy the rest of the period. Up until he was stopped in the hallway by the stern looking principal. He was walking with the girl that bullied me in the bathroom and she went ahead while he was spoke to. She saw me and I tried to hide my face in the crowd but I didn't fit into the crowd that I was in because she knew it was me. She came up to me and said "So you went and cried to the principal you big baby. Did you really think he was going to do anything. He is my friend not yours and you can't make him become your friend because you can't handle being a friendless loser." Then she walked off with her cheesy smile when she passed the principal. The principal stopped me in the hall and told me to meet me in his office during math class tomorrow. I told him okay and walked away not realizing that my bully was at my locker. He said some words to me and then I said some back.

"You know that just because you don't like me doesn't mean that you have to make my life miserable. I'm sick and tired of you being a little bitch. Just leave me alone!" At that point I realized that my tone of voice had that started to get that tone that showed that I was serious. Which I was. He had made my life so miserable that I was thinking of killing myself. I wanted to die because I didn't feel welcome in school anymore. The bully's hated me, my friends hated me, and other students hated me. So what was the point of living. I texted him at the end of the day saying "When I'm not around you anymore you will remember this moment and remember how we used to be friends." He received that message after texting me some very horrid messages. And he tried to facetime me. I didn't pick up. He tried two more times and I didn't pick up again and again. Finally on the fifth time he called me I picked up. He was in tears and I knew that I had done the right thing. I had scared him so much that he felt that it had went too far. Everything was fine the next two days until the principal got involved. He went into my gym class and made my bully sit out and not talk to me. After that he thought that I snitched on him. He started calling me a snitchy bitch and a lot of the old names too. I went to the principal again but it wasn't to talk about the bullying. One of my friends had gone down to the office and requested a meeting with the principal. They had told him about me wanting to cut myself and my thoughts about suicide. The principal sat me down at his big desk and started to ask me how I was doing and how I was feeling. I answered that I was good but it was a total lie and he could tell. He asked me about the cutting thoughts and I just broke down in tears. I had reached my mental and emotional limit. The principal sent me out for a few minutes and then he told me to come back in. He had contacted the teacher of the class that the bully was in and told him to come down to the office. He sent me out saying "You are going to be okay, we are going to solve this together." Then he gave me the most heart warming smile. I walked out and the bully was walking down the hall. He gave me a really threatening look and he said in a deep tone "some nerve you bitch had coming down here again." He walked in and I tried to forget it as I was walking back to math class. My friend that had went to the principal had told me things that he had said to her. Things like "she's so annoying she makes me just want to kill myself" and "yo mama jokes should be about her because she is so fat, ugly, and stupid as well as annoying." She gave me a huge hug and I felt a little better. But I knew that things were just going to get ugly FAST! I had spanish right after math class and right when I walked in my teacher was on the phone with the principal. He wanted to see me again. I wondered why and I became very scared because I didn't know what was going on. I sat in the chair literally shaking with fear. He called me in and I was a little less worried. Inside, there was him and the guidance counselor. They had told me that they had talked to my gym teacher and they were going to put my bully in a different class than me. I was happy to hear that because most of the harassment coming from him was in gym class. So they did exactly that. He was sat on the sidelines in a chair in our gymnasium watching the rest of the class play vollyball. The principal came in to tell him that he was being moved to the other class because of what he was doing to me. I felt bad when he started to cry when they said that he needed a parent conference to talk about this. But I knew that this is what he had deserved for what he had done to me. After class, he was talking to a cluster of people and saying that I was doing all this for attention because I am an "attention seeker". I was really mad but I kept my anger inside myself. It worked for a total of one minute because right when we left my friend from the grade below me came up and started to talk to me. He is bisexual and my bully is gay. They used to go out over the summer and then I came and they broke up. We started to hang out with each other making my bully really jealous. He then asked me out and I said yes and he's been really mad at me ever since then. And the relationship only lasted two days so it really wasn't worth it. Anyway, I started to talk to him and then he went and started to make kissy faces at me and put hearts around us. Him and I are friends but we don't like each other like that. Then my real crush walked by and I looked at him (like any other teenage eighth grader with a crush would). Then my bully screamed really loud "Hey name, isn't that the guy you like! You know the one you want to have sex with!" My crush looked over at me as I had tried to hide my face behind my binder, but it was too late. But right after that he had done that he came up to my friend and I and he told me I was a slut for liking two guys. Things were really weird next class because he was in my next class at my table. Nothing bad came out of that and that was really good. By the time the day was over, I had just wanted to go home. I wanted to imagine none of this ever happened. I walked through the door to see that my mom had a letter from her boss in her hand. My dad was yelling and my mom was stressed. The letter was telling her that her job was being eliminated which had meant that there was going to be less money in our family. We had to rely on the money that our father brought in from his job. But with winter nearing, and money would be very tight because my dad is a roofer and not much happens during the winter. So not only would I have to deal with my bully, but I also had to deal with financial issues, plus my parents being really stressed and having them yelling at the littlest things. My life was falling apart at the seams and I didn't know what to do. I just went to sleep hoping that this whole thing was just some kind of twisted dream. But I woke up the next morning and everything was the same :(. No change whatsoever. I still went to school and received the same harassment from the same people and I went home and my parents were still stressed and yelling a lot. And to make everything worse was that my grades were slipping and they were slipping fast. I had let all this get the best of me and it wasn't helping me at all. It finally was Friday and I was glad that there was finally going to be a weekend. Two days to escape the harassment and insults coming from the bully's mouth. But then something really surprising happened. My bully came up to me and he started to cry. I didn't know why until the words "I'm sorry" came out of his mouth. I could really tell that he meant it because he never cries like that unless he really means it. His apology was really sad because someone had told him about me wanting to commit suicide and how I had just had enough of it. His apology meant a lot to me so I accepted it. Now to this day him and I are back to being the friends that we were. :)

~bookandwritergeek13

ADVICE: People will always come to your rescue. Just keep holding on! :)