Window

Don't let the stormy darkness pull you down - Pete's Dragon

When I started grade 7, I felt as though I was a stranger crashing a party in mid run.

The school I'd left in grade 5 was the one I was returning to, so I wasn't completely the new kid. I still knew a couple of people from my first sentence at the school, and so I thought it wouldn't be too awkward. I tried to keep my reasons for the departure and return quiet; it wasn't something anyone wanted advertised.

I didn't want to be the girl that was too weak to last through a bad teacher's class. I didn't want to be the psychotic classmate or the one that no one could tolerate. I was embarrassed that I wasn't strong enough, smart enough. Wicked enough.

I kept on a mask, pretended that the witch walking those ten year old children down the hall wasn't there. But that pretense also kept me from being a normal kid, from being an interesting one that people were drawn to positively. It was my fear; the bane of my existence was a manifestation of my past catching up with me. And I couldn't help it. Not because I didn't want to, but rather because I was afraid of what would happen if I let my mask fall away.

We, my schoolmates and the teachers and I, became coinciding entities that never knew each another, never got to experience another, though knew of the other's existence.

My fear was a glass ceiling, and one I formed. People always said that victims of bullying and abuse are faultless, that there is nothing they're doing to deserve it. I don't believe that. Not that the victims are bad people, but it might be the way they talk, the sound of their voice, the things they find interesting; it could be anything. We are not faultless as victims, but that doesn't mean we should change what our fault is or be anything but who we are. It takes two for a fight, for a conflict. The victim, possibly unbeknownst why, is one of those two.