Hi, my name is Giovanna Gagliardi. Bare with me because it’s a long story, I’m leaving out every single detail otherwise this would be a book…let’s begin.

 

My story starts when I was only four years old. I met this girl in Pre-K who shared the same birthday as me (how ironic). Let’s just pretend her name is Lola. So Lola and I became “friends” I guess you could say. I was always a shy kid I was too afraid to talk to other kids, so I deeply cherished the friends I did have. I guess because Lola went out of her way to talk to me, I considered her a friend.

At the young age of four I was afraid to lose people. At that young age I was afraid of rejection and abandonment, so I would join in her devious ways just to please her. I was afraid to lose her as a friend, even though being her “friend” was miserable.

 

She would tease and make fun of my own brother, and if I didn’t play along with her and join her: she would get very mad at me and call me name and say how “I’m not gonna be your friend anymore.” Let’s skip to Kindergarten through sixth grade now.

 

Well, Lola’s parents and my parents were close friends, so I would have to see her every Friday night going out to dinner. Usually every Friday we would have play-dates during the day before these dinners. Whenever we were at her house, it was always what she wanted to do because my ideas were “stupid” or “boring”. When she would come over my house, she would always want to play with my dolls. She told me she wanted to play hair salon with my dolls, she would cut off all of their hair saying, “Oh, I didn’t mean to do that”. Every time she left my house, it would be a mess and/or something would be broken or go missing.

My mother noticed she wasn’t treating me right and would be upset and address it to me all the time. She would even have these “meetings” where it was me, Lola and Lola’s mother. Lola and her mother would always say, “Oh nothing’s wrong!” and because I was afraid of losing her as a friend, I would assure my mom we were fine.

 

I kept it inside. During second and third grade we would get into fights all the time because she did something I didn’t want to participate in, and every time I went against her she would say something mean or, threaten to tell the boy I liked that I liked him. Stuff like that.

She’d also bring me down indirectly by saying, “My hair is longer than yours” trying to make me feel like the hair I have isn’t good enough. That hers was perfect and mine wasn’t.

She was really thin too so she’d say the same thing about my weight, or about how my eyes are brown and her eyes are hazel. Stupid stuff that got me to think “there must be something wrong with me if I don’t have the assets she has.”

 

The bullying got bad when I was in fifth grade. She became close to this other girl and t hat’s when the teasing really started. In the fifth grade, I developed before everybody else. I was the tallest girl in my class, I had breasts while everyone else was flat chested, and on top of that, I was a tad chubby. I remember her taunting me about how I “needed a bra”. One day her and her friend came up to me and pinched my boob shouting “Titty twister!” and they started to laugh hysterically.

 

I was very passionate about horses, Lola found a way to make fun of me for that too.

One day Lola came up to me and told me, “You’re so freaking obsessed with stupid horses, why don’t you go hump and make-out with a horse.” She would make remarks about my body weight as well, she said so many things I don’t even remember the exact words, but the whole “I’m skinny and you’re fat” was implied.

The worst part about all of this bullying was that when I told the principal, Lola would twist things and make herself seem so innocent.

That really crushed me as well as angered me. Fifth grade ends and her friend changed schools. Guess who came crawling back to be my friend? And guess who was desperate for a friend so she took her back?

Yep that’s right….I did. I remember an Indian girl transferred to our school and because she was different, Lola made fun of her. She made up this song about her to tease her. She would never tease this Indian girl to her face, but she would do it behind her back and she made me join in, because if I didn’t, once again: she threatened me she would tell the boy I was interested in, that I liked him.

Eventually, the Indian girl over heard the song being sung and we both were called down to the office. She blamed the whole thing on me, that I made up the song, that I sang it to her face. I got in a lot of trouble. I stood up for myself, but the principal did not believe me.

 

I finally told my mom what was going on, all those years in silence. She was always there for me too, and she helped me through a lot. Anyway, its the beginning of the year, seventh grade, and I am still “friends” with Lola. It wasn’t until I overheard her talking to somebody that my “stomach is so fat it looks like I am constantly pregnant.” That was it. I was done. I didn’t stand up for myself. I didn’t have the energy anymore. I tried standing up for myself and yelling at her when she was mean but, nothing worked. She would always win. I gave up.

 

I let her win. I hated myself. I hated my body, my face, my personality…everything. It was Halloween day when I decided I wasn’t going to talk to anyone anymore. I was a mute. I shut myself out from everybody. I would walk around the playground at recess waiting for somebody to ask if I was okay, some people asked but they never asked me to come join them. After a while nobody would even ask if I was okay. Not even the teachers who watched would say anything. I hated myself. I thought, what’s the point of talking and being social when I was going to be shut down for it anyway?

I was miserable. I was depressed. Lola called me a word I never heard of before, “emo”. Now emo is a stereotype of people who liked to listen to metal type screaming music, who always wore black, and who were depressed.

Apparently emo people are known to cut themselves when they are sad, and I didn’t understand that. I looked it up and I read that they do it as a relief, to them: they would rather feel the physical pain than the emotional because at least with the physical pain, they knew it was really a true pain that was present.

 

So one night in November, I tried it out for the first time. I took tweezers and I started scratching my wrist until it bled a little.

In the moment I was performing the act, I felt calm for some reason. However, when I finished I felt this guilty and empty feeling. It took about a week for Lola to notice my scars and when she did, she would make fun of me for that too. Calling me “emo” or “a freak” or “crazy” oh my favorite was “psycho”. It made me feel worse and triggered me to continue. During the end of seventh grade I decided that being mute was way too much and I wanted to be social again.

 

I got close with my old friend and we became best friends again. Eighth grade was a lot better. I was being bullied yes, but I was distracted. The worst thing she said to me that year was that, “Your mom isn’t your real mom. You don’t have a mom. You’re adopted. Your real mom didn’t want you!”

I had my best friend with me. It distracted me, but I was still depressed and I still hated myself and how I looked. I knew that in a few months, I would be graduating and going off into high school and I would never have to see her face again. It gave me the strength to try as best as I could.

 

 I GRADUATED! NEVER AGAIN WILL I SEE LOLA! NEVER, EVER! I was so relieved about that, but yet throughout high school, a piece of her still was with me. She was the voice telling me I wasn’t good enough every time I took a test.

She was the voice telling me I was fat when I went to try on new clothes. She was the voice telling me I was ugly when I looked into the mirror. My freshman year of high school, I went to an all girl’s school. Most of these girls were well off. They had A LOT of money. I didn’t make friends at my orientation. A lot of these girls had known each other and I didn’t know anybody.

 

They would tease me because I used a stupid red wheel backpack while they used these designer backpacks and purses. Nobody let me sit with them at lunch either, even if there was room I was denied.

I tried to eat in the library but I was yelled at, so I went to the bathroom one day, sat on a toilet and ate my food so I wouldn’t pass out since I had a late lunch. After that day I decided that was really gross and just ate on the bus ride home.

November of that year I transferred out of there and into a co-ed school close to my house. I had a lot of fun and made a lot mor e friends. My best friend from grammar school and middle school was there too! I was still depressed though. I would self-harm when I felt lonely and sad.

 

I decided that enough was enough. I asked my mom to put me into therapy. I wanted to end this sadness. And so I did. It took two years of counseling with my therapist to get me to stop self- harming. She showed me ways to cope differently, and even just talking about how sad and lonely I felt really helped me. I still go to her but, I went from having to see her every week to now where I only have to go in once a month.

 

Slowly but surely I am learning to love myself. I have come a long way. I am not afraid to be myself. I am not afraid to say no. I am not afraid to speak up for myself. And the best part about all of this is that I am able to tell if a person is manipulative or not now.

 

So now I am able to avoid it. I am happy now, and with myself. Yes there are things I wish I had and things I wish I didn’t have, but everyone has that. The difference between me now and me two years ago is that I accept it,

I stop making excuses, and I change what I don’t like. I am starting college now and I am very excited because I feel so much stronger and I know that nobody will bring me down.

I won’t let them. I would hate for anybody to feel the way I felt.

It is not worth it. Life is too short and valuable to be miserable and sad.

If you are going through any form of bullying, please break the silence and tell somebody. (haha see what I did there) Please remember that you are loved.

Even when you feel alone and that nobody loves you…I am somebody, and I love you. Stay strong. Because you are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. -Giovanna Gagliardi