The world just keeps crashing down on me.

Hey there. My name is Stephanie.

I’ve lived a life basically filled with nothing but pain all my life, but it all really started when I was 9. I was born in Florida and lived there for six years of my life. My dad works for the government so I’ve moved multiple times in my life, and if you’ve moved a lot like me you know how hard it is. How hard it is to keep starting over from scratch, it’s even worse when you end up right back where you were before. When I was 6, i moved to Maryland outside of Washington DC. I still remember on the first day of first grade I couldn’t find a single friend. No one wanted to be friends with me. I’ve been overweight since I was a child, and VERY short. I’m only 4 foot ten, which adds to the long list of my self-conscious issues. I’m sensitive and easily hurt only because I’ve been through so much in my life words hurt me really easily. I always wanted to be one of those people who didn’t care, but I’m not. When I lived in Maryland from 6 to 9, I guess that’s where some things started. I had issues keeping friends, going back and forth. Kids would indirectly make fun of me for being so fat and short. When I was 9, I moved once again to California. I was so mad, I just wanted to be like every other kid. Taller, skinner, with friends, not having endless stress on my family for moving so many times. It was all just the beginning, though. Where I lived in Maryland was a good place for my family and me, highly educated and highly Jewish like us. A lot of the kids are like me, well as close as I can get.  When I went to California – outside of San Francisco – my life went way down hill. I already knew everything taught in school, the kids were even taller and skinner than me than in Maryland, and I was the only Jewish kid in the class. Kids would make fun of me for being so smart, so fat, so short. For wearing glasses – which I had needed since the first grade but lied about my eye sight because kids in Maryland made fun of other kids with glasses. When I had finally found a group of friends in the fourth grade that first year in California – they betrayed me. I found another girl – she then moved. I found another group – they started making fun of me into the fifth grade. I found another girl – she ditched me for her old best friend. By the end of the fifth grade I really couldn’t take it all anymore. I had started volunteering with kids during lunch in kindergarten and eating lunch with two of my new guy friends. One of them stayed my friend for a while, until 6th grade. At first – I really liked middle school. I thought, here we go again, new start, get it right this time! Of course, like everything else I do – I screwed it up. My one guy friend ditched me because kids made up rumors we were dating because we ate lunch together every day. Then, I found another girl. That friendship lasted from March of 6th grade to October  of 7th grade – she, as everyone else – got sick of me and ditched me leaving making fun of how I’m a perfectionist. And I am, I know I am. And in he end of the 6th grade, the really bad bullying began. A girl named Eva really shut me down. She told me Jews were sick for not eating pork and that they were crazy. That I was mentally insane, and fat. She took my pencils I let her borrow, being the too nice of a person I am, and shoved them in boys pants then gave them back to me. She told me I was ugly and stupid. Everything self-esteem destroying you can think of. Being shy back then, I wouldn’t tell anyone. When I told my mom, a war with the school and my family began. The principal never punished her and my family kept fighting. So… I think you’re getting the picture of this background. All my life at that point in my life I had started feeling like it was useless to try. My brothers and family had more and more stress because of all the moving and other family issues I can’t talk about. I couldn’t keep a relationship with my brothers, my mom and I would do nothing but fight because she would never see my point of view when people bullied me. And my dad… always acts like he knows my life and what’s best for me. I know, “Parents know what’s best for you.” Not necessarily. So, in October… I was without friends for a period of time. Until about December. In the seventh grade, I was in a digital media class that was mostly 8th graders, and only five girls in the class so mostly 8th grade boys. All of them made fun of me, but what else was new. But one day… in October, when walking in from math class late to digital media seeing the seats change, the teacher told me to go sit down next to this quiet, shy, self-conscious seeming guy in the 8th grade. One project, one period of talking. It was magic. Instant friendship between two really deeply, constantly left, hurt people. The deepest connection between a 12 and 13 year old you could ever imagine. We talked about everything and anything – nothing had ever been so easy to talk to someone or feel some feeling me. Now, I hadn’t started like him until all the crazy he things he did and said for me began. In December, by now I had found another group of friends, when there was a sub in my history class the kids took advantage of it. They knocked down my supplies, made a dance making fun of me, and the 8th grade started it. Saying how ugly my curly hair and glasses were, the other boys in my 7th grade history class making a dance imitating me, “Stephanie, short and fat, annoying and her currlllyy hair and glasses… Stephanie, short and fat, ugly stay away from her!” I was dying inside. So many years of these kids destroying me. It was enough I had no family, no real friends, no confidence in myself. When I had gone to my friends at lunch, they walked with me to the office to tell the principal, even though of course they never did anything. And that guy I had became really close friends with in digital media class was there waiting for his mom to pick him up auditioning for a talented gifted high school – he plays the cello at a high level. My friends left me, and he saw me there. He asked, “So, are you going home too?” I smile and laugh a little, “Umm, haha… no umm… you know Taylor H?” He starts to look worried and his whole body freezes as he begins questioning me with such care in his voice, which NO ONE HAD EVER DONE FOR ME BEFORE, “Why? What did she do to you?!?” Then the principle called me in to talk. I told him I’d tell him Monday, as I walked off I could feel him staring behind me. So, he continued to stand up for me all throughout the year…. it’s a WHOLE other story with so much detail. He was my prince charming saving the broken girl left on the sidelines. Then, in April his 8th grade friends, both guys and girls made fun of him for liking me. Anyone who was friends with me would get hate, because everyone hated me there. Then in April of seventh grade, even after all of these incredibly nice things he did for me, standing up for me, protecting me, being my friend, showing these signs of liking me, so many things..

We had been re-filming the same, simple scene, literally, 12 or more times. I was filming it. I went back to see if the three of them, -, the red highlights girl, and my friend with the tic had their lines memorized, I rushed over there, trying to get this done with, “Are you guys ready?” I asked them with an obvious streak of stress in my voice. I walked in on the two 8^th grade girls mocking him about something, then I heard this, this is what they were doing, first the girl told me, “Stephanie, he wants to know if you’ll go out with him.” I remember, I didn’t say anything, I just raised my eyebrows really high, and I’m pretty sure I showed a smile, but not too, big, I was trying to hide it.

So then, anyways, the one with highlights said, making a heart, “She completes you!” They said making fun of him. I turned over to see his reaction and he was annoyed, trying to say, (I could see his mouth moving) ‘no I don’t like her’ Then, the other one said, “She is your other half!!!” Then the two of them started laughing. He then said, in a way, crushing and snapping something inside of me, this belief that I created that possibly he could have maybe thought of me the same way I thought of him, breaking my heart, “You guys are crazy if you think I like her.”

From the rest of the year our smiles and little romance continued despite what he said which broke me for the millionth time in my life – it wasn’t really over until graduation. He went off to high school and I was stuck at that middle school for another – long, worst year – of my life. In the 8th grade, I missed him, talked about him, wondered about him… again, this is a whole other story which is so in depth no time to tell it all. In the 8th grade the bullying got physical and the kids in younger grades started to. Some kids ran over me with skateboards, threw papers at me. By now, I felt I had lost my only really friend and even my first true love, nobody would be my friend, everyone hated me, I had all these self-conscious issues, and my family problems and relationships just kept on getting worse as my depression was accelerating. I had become really obsessed with this guy, and by May of 8th grade, they ditched me too – not for that entirely though, It’s not like I was pushing people away – we got into a huge fight where they made fun of me like everyone else. Made fun of me for not knowing about sex, being so upset all the time and being uptight. Could I help it though? My life was falling apart.

I had seen this guy a few times in 8th grade, but in May when I lost my friends, we really reconnected. He came to a play at the middle school and we talked again like normal. My hair was straight and he had never seen it like that, he couldn’t stop staring at me. Things were going back the way they were supposed to be in that aspect of my life. I told him what my friends had done and he told me those things that made me smile wide all over again… falling for him all over again as he was again falling for me.

But in May, I learned we were moving back to Maryland. I was relieved and terrified all at once. It was a rough five years, but I was so upset to leave this guy. No one has ever understood what he means to me… and what I think I mean to him.

When I told him, he told me he’d miss me but we’d always keep in touch… a ton of stuff reassuring no matter the distance we wouldn’t let go of each other.

We talk sometimes, but not enough. My family stress was on A HIGH LEVEL as we had to move in a short period of time. I graduated and the official papers didn’t come until two weeks before school. We went to temporary housing, with no time to buy a house before school, I was so depressed but so excited to start over again. I went to high school and things were changing. I made good friends with good kids like me, no one bullies me, guys actually have crushes on me! My family is still stressed but it got a lot better.

But today, me and my friends lost it. A girl posted on the internet to us how we are losers. And… if this makes sense…all of my memories came back to me. They told me to leave it alone, they don’t understand that I’m a very one track person. They don’t know my background or anything about my past. I went home and cried of all of these aspects of my life slowly beginning again… but truley, they NEVER ended. The one person that made me feel normal, special and beautiful is gone. I’m still scarred with confidence issues, I can’t keep friends for longer than a year and a half, small bullying is starting again, and my family stress is beginning with the search looking for a house. I’m lost and don’t know where to go anymore. This doesn’t even describe anything, the simplest of summaries. I’m just so depressed and don’t worthy of anything in my life anymore, it seems like these past 14 years have been so useless and it’s not worth trying to turn my life around anymore. If you actually read all of this which I doubt… at least I know someone out there cares. Because right now, it feels like I’ll never be happy. I feel the need to scream somewhere, the pain is too much for me to handle anymore. I can’t take life anymore… I can’t go on but I’ll keep trying t go on… I think. </3