Disclaimer: I will not be using real names of the people in my life to protect their privacy!
Okay so my first story is going to go back to when I was in 4th grade, or as I call it the year of hell. My best friend Ally had just moved to a city in a completely different province (I’m Canadian), she was really my only friend at that point because I found it hard to connect with people around me and I had known Ally since pre-school and we had clicked right away. So I was left alone with the mean girls (cause they all happened to be in my class). I was diagnosed with alopecia at the age of 5, and my trigger was stress. So when I was stressed by hair would fall out in clumps and because of this my mother cut my hair really short. I was the girl with the shortest hair and would often had to part my hair certain ways to hide thinning patches, Jessica took this upon herself to point it out to her crew and say “only losers have short hair” this made me upset because I had no control over it. If I could have long hair I would, in fact my hair was down to my butt before I was diagnosed. I couldn’t stand having nobody to talk to, all the girls thought I was weird and all the guys just went along with what Jessica and her minions did. I was truly alone, and at 10 years old that can really mess you up mentally. I was always very bubbly and never paid any attention to what people thought of me, but this was the first time in my life that I was self conscious about myself. I hated my hair and to be constantly picked on really caused me to become really introverted, whenever someone new came to class I would ignore them because who would want to friends with someone like me anyways? I became very scared to speak up in class and often lost marks for participation because I would go to the washroom and stay in there until recess.
As I sit here now at 23 years old, I realized that Jessica was probably just as insecure about herself as I was about myself but saw me as an easy target to make her feel better. I don’t think this is ever okay, I know that when I don’t have anything nice to say I just don’t say anything. I am proud that I can now say I don’t care what others think about me, I walk to the beat of my own drum and if that bothers you then you need to stop focusing on my life and worry about your own.