It was ten years. Ten painfully long years. I loved that school, I was dedicated to it. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that’s why they didn’t like me. Or is that not it? I guess you can never really know can you? It started very young, simple, but young. They picked on me for the littlest things in the beginning, but I didn’t think much of it, I knew it would change. Well, I thought it would anyways. Then after two years, it didn’t get better, it got worse. They got ruder. And I know everyone says kids in the first grade just don’t have filters, but even then they were told to stop. They never did. They kept getting slightly worse and worse every year. It got harder and harder. But then it came, my seventh grade year. Oh how it hit like a truck. I didn’t know they could get so horrible. I was already left out 99% of the time at lunch. I was forced to sit with my own grade level. Which you wouldn’t think was bad, but that’s not where my friends were. These two girls, they were fully fluent in Spanish and they would sit one on either side of me. I thought things were changing, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. They spoke in Spanish to each other with me in the middle. It was so disrespectful. They would do it everyday, the more they did it the closer I payed attention to what they said. I studied harder than ever in Spanish class. Little did they know within two weeks I could get a pretty good idea of what they were saying. Why would someone say that about me? What did I do to deserve this? It ended up getting to the point where I would fake sickness so I wouldn’t have to go to school and deal with it all over again. The principal wasn’t any better, my parents and I would talk to her about it and she attempted to talk to my class but other than that it was swept under the rug. My parents had already had enough, but there was nothing more we could do. I heard them too, the boys. They would talk about the girls who had that perfect Barbie doll figure. It’s so hard to feel like you’re not good enough for a boy. No, I didn’t base my life on just that one factor. But it hurts. Every girl wants know, to some extent, that there is a boy that would pick them out in a crowd. It makes a girl feel special, but I never felt that. Not with them. But that’s ok, things are better now. Much better. I’m a sophomore in highschool, I have an amazing group of friends who would jump at anyone who would try to hurt me. Best of all, I have a boy who loves me just as much as I love him. Things do change, no matter what happened in the past. Those ten years are gone and passed, but I know where I’m headed is sure to last.