I Was Bullied

I didn’t want to have to get my GED, because I love learning and I used to love going to school, but then I started to get bullied. But getting my GED was my only option, because my whole middle school experience and first two years of high school, people constantly picked on me for being too ugly or too fat. The summer before my 8th grade year, I went on a diet and went from 180 pounds to 140 and when I came back people still called me ugly/fat. I eventually stopped eating out or in public even in front of my parents and brother. Then another three months passed and I was 104 pounds.

On my 14th birthday something very bad happened to me by a group of two boys and one girl. I was at school during lunch sitting with my only friend and they came up to me and one girl handed me a water bottle filled with something and I asked, “What’s that?“ She said, “It’s bleach. Since no one likes you and the world would be better off without you, you should drink up.“ Then, two of them chewed their food and spit on me. For the rest of the year, I got spit on by them and called names by other people. Then on the last day of school, I got beat up and thrown into a ditch during PE.

That summer before 9th grade, I worked on looking better and I gained a little weight, but I was still really skinny. Ninth grade was a good year, until my mom found out about my eating disorder (anorexia) and sent me to inpatient. I felt like I lost everything and I stopped trusting people and I kept having flashbacks from middle school bullying and I just took a lot of days off my sophomore year of high school. And then this year, I found out I was missing two credits to be a junior. Also, people were bullying me again because recovery made me gain a lot of weight. I got social anxiety and I just couldn’t handle school anymore. But I always knew I wanted to go to college and have an education because I love learning. I decided with the instruction of my mother and old guidance counselor that getting my GED certificate and going to college next year a year earlier would be my best route.

My dad got his GED back in the 80’s and he’s very successful and is making more money than the teachers that told him he’d never amount to anything. My friends have been very supportive. And I want to be a film/movie director and actress, and reading about other famous people who dropped out and went to college, or just became what they wanted, has really inspired me.

I hope to get my GED by next year, and go to Santa Fe and then transfer to UF my junior year and study film to become a film/movie director.