According to DoSomething.org, over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying every year. I was one of those victims.  In eighth grade students should be focusing on schoolwork, but during my eighth grade year, I was focusing on what people were saying about me. People saw me as this quiet girl who was easily picked on. Everyone has feelings and bullying gets taken way too far. During my eighth grade year, I was getting picked on more than anyone can imagine, but they used the thing that they knew what hurt me the most: my insecurity.
As I sat in sixth period mathematics class, I had one thought in my mind: getting out of sixth period mathematics class. My best friend at the time had this new friend that she hung out with all the time, so I felt like I was getting left behind. Her new friend, was the new student the year prior, and we were friendly with each other even though we never spoken a word to each other besides working together in seventh grade English. Once we started eighth grade, it seemed like the girl changed her attitude about me and started hating me for no apparent reason. I found out later in the year that the reason she hated me so much was because of being best friends with my “best friend.” I had other friends at the time, whom I am still very close to today, stand up for me because I couldn’t stand up for myself. 

My best friend and I were sitting in class. The seats were in rows across the room, and she sat in front of me and the other girl sat beside her.  My best friend turned around and handed me a note, and it said, “Talk to me after class. It is really important.” I did talk to her after class and only found out that this other friend was talking bad about me to my best friend. She told my friend, “She is so small that if you put her in a glove box of a car and got into a car accident, she wouldn’t be found.” Tears rushed down my face in a second, and I ran up to my eighth grade math teacher and asked him, “Will it be okay if I could go down to the restroom?”

“Is everything okay?” he said with worry on his face.

“No,” I said before he let me go, and I went straight into the girls’ restroom. A few minutes passed by, and I realized that it was now seventh period English; and I was late.  My best friend walked up to me and hugged me. Looking concerned, she said “You should go talk to guidance counselor.”

In the guidance office, I explained everything that was going on to my school counselor. “Tell me what she was telling your friend,” she asked, writing down in a yellow notebook.  I told her what she had said about the car accident situation. I felt relived that I told someone other than my friends.  I thought that the bullying was finally going to be over, but really it wasn’t. 

After the girl was talked to, she apologized, but I knew that it wasn’t a sincere apology because she was smirking when she walked away.  I know she only said sorry because she had to. The bullying stopped for about four months. I had great friends who supported me, and during our eighth grade trip to Washington D.C., the bullying started up again.  This time it was a different girl.

This girl was always rude to my best friend, but I didn’t understand why she hated me.  To this day, I still have no clue why she bullied me so much.  When we had to pick seats on the bus to Washington D.C., all my friends were already sitting by each other. I went to an empty seat, and the girl walked on, I said in my head, ‘Please don’t sit by me. Please don’t sit by me.’ She didn’t choose to sit there, but she was forced to because there were no empty seats.  She made an excuse saying, “I can’t sit by her. My parents do not want me sitting by her.” She didn’t have to sit by me. I had never done anything to this girl, so again I was in tears. She was done hating me on the last day of the four-day trip we went to the George Washington house, and after that day she never said a word to me again.

I learned that when someone talks about me behind my back not listen to him or her  because these people don’t matter in my life.  The only people who matter in my life are my family and friends. I am in eleventh grade focusing on schoolwork, not focusing on what people say about me.

Also according to DoSomething.org, approximately 160,000 teens skip school every day because of bullying, and one in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying and will only intervene 4% of the time. Over 67% of students believe that schools respond poorly to bullying. We lose children, teens, and young adults every year due to suicide because bullying is taken way too far. Before people let words slip out of their mouths, they should think about if it will harmful? Will the person feel miserable? I don’t want children, teens, and young adults to go through bullying like I did.  Bullying needs to be taken more seriously.  The next time anyone sees bullying happening, the person witnessing should stand up or talk to an adult. Bullies should ask themselves why are hurting someone else’s life? If victims of bullying need to know it is not their fault, and they should talk to someone about being bullied.