Throughout life, we come across people who we just aren’t meant to be friends with, yet sometimes those people turn out to be the ones we were closest to. It was the middle of my junior year in high school and my world felt like it was crashing down. Yes, my grades were good but my social life was crumbling. I was being bullied. A guy—one of my closest friends—became my worst enemy in the blink of an eye. He had been dating my best friend and there was constant competition for her attention which resulted in us not getting along in the end.
While bullying was never something I thought I’d have to deal with, my life slowly began to revolve around it. The aches, the pains, the tears, the fears; I hoped to just wish it all away, but I couldn’t. It was my reality. The aches of anxiety of stepping into school every day to the pain of knowing I’d never be enough was all too real to overcome. The tears shed over my incapability to be happy led to my fears of never living my life as the person I so desperately wanted to be. I had no words, no words for how he was making me feel, and no words for the failures I had yet to accept. It was all just the way things were, and I couldn’t help but think that I had gone too far into the depths of my brain, and I couldn’t contain the thought of never being able to get out. I despised him with every inch of my body and the sound of his name filled me with anger. I wish he knew what it was like to be torn apart for who you are, to wish you never even made it this far, and to no longer be able to find anything worth living for. I was hopeless. I was depressed. I was angry, and I was broken. I had absolutely no idea what to do with my life at this point, it felt worthless and it felt stupid. Ultimately, he took away my confidence and I didn’t want to speak to or be around anyone; I was tired of being judged and for all I knew, any of my close friends could turn on me. However, this is not a story about deepening myself into the depths of self-hate, but more importantly a story about prevailing over all of those negative feelings and starting anew.
I gathered up all the strength I didn’t know I had and climbed out slowly but surely and stole my confidence back from him; it wasn’t easy and it didn’t all happen overnight but I did all I could to remove myself from such a negative part of my life. I decided, for myself, that I needed to go see someone because I was not going to be able to get through the bullying all by myself as much as I had wanted to. I found a therapist who set up the healing process in such a way that I was pretty much on my own using “tools” she had taught me, to change the negative thoughts I was thinking. While therapy was very frustrating for me at times, I kept my patience and changed my thoughts to positive ones that were uplifting and didn’t make me feel as though I needed to please anyone around me. I was changing for myself, not for him. I was tired of feeling depressed and down on myself so I knew I needed to improve upon certain aspects of my life. I started viewing my critical thoughts as passing clouds in the sky; I’d acknowledge them but just watch them fly on by. I knew that I didn’t need to make everyone happy because that is just not going to happen. All that mattered was that I was happy with myself. There was a change in my attitude and I became overjoyed at the fact that I had bounced back in a way I didn’t know I could. I finally loved myself and realized a lot of positive qualities about myself like my humor and my willingness to be there for any and every one of my friends. Surprisingly, in the end, I can’t sit here and tell anyone that I hate that young man, but that I wouldn’t change what happened for anything in the world. He not only helped me realize the person I am and who I am meant to be but strengthened the bond that I shared with my best friend. So thanks to that guy, thank you for making me a better person and helping me to realize all the negativity I needed to relinquish in my life.