“No one likes you, go away, just leave!” she said, sinking into her seat with a sly smile after hurling her long list of invectives at me. I stared outside the window, my hands trembling. The whole bus morphed into a wave of laughter collapsing over me as I desperately counted the minutes, waiting for a rigid halt to save me from drowning in fear.

I can still hear her shrieking laughter – this shadow, which latched on to my every footstep and hovered over me, obscuring my identity for two years. Only through her deprecating eyes could I see myself. And no matter where I would try to hide, she would always find me, prepared with a slew of taunting comments to disparage my appearance, my geeky nature, my friends, and my Jewish ethnicity. I would return home with streams of tears flooding over my reddened face, unable to escape her attempts to humiliate me.

But I gradually realized how immature, how selfish I was for thinking only about my pain. Underneath her menacing smile, I detected turmoil and suffering. Her verbal abuse revealed the low self-esteem she possessed; the fact that she desired to make me miserable revealed the clawing melancholy within her. Through recognizing how much help, love, and respect she needed, I let go of being the victim. I would not let a situation fatally assign the role that I must play in my life. No. I would take the responsibility to change myself, rather than hopelessly wait for others to take the initiative. Scurrying past her in the hallways, I would reaffirm my duty as a writer: to embrace every circumstance that could help me relish in the complexities of human character. I needed to understand the causes, the feelings, and the thoughts that triggered her avalanche of emotion, rather than to ignorantly lose my self-respect from her behavior. This situation soon became an opportunity for me to grow as an individual, and to discover my own capacity of accepting the various, chaotic scenes of life with a positive attitude. I was willing to trust the hidden benefit behind this circumstance, knowing only situations have the potential of bringing out important qualities stored deep within me.

My attitude began to transform as her intrinsic specialties hummed in my mind, swelling into a forte as her piercing eyes studied my face and her lips began to throw darts, striking those red bumps on my skin. Upon hearing this comment, I stopped walking, disregarding the usual clutch-my-binder-close-to-my-chest-and-run-away move. My gentle smile broke down her folded arms. Power reverberated through my heart, as I journeyed to understand and support her. “Danielle, you and I – we are not defined by the way we look, by what media defines as beautiful. These cheeks weren’t meant to be just clear; they were meant to bulge with joy when learning.” She tugged at the end of her sleeve for a moment; and the next, that contagious hyena-like laughter split the silence. I giggled at myself too, proud for not taking the opinions of others so personally – the force of which serve as an internal reflection of themselves. In two weeks, this “bullying” or, more accurately termed, learning experience, disintegrated as each exchange ended in a rush of laughter. I became strong standing next to my new friend: the only one who could teach me the importance of unconditional love and acceptance.