So, the first day of school usually isn't that bad. You get to see your friends and basically goof around all day while doing no school work what-so-ever. Usually, your year doesn't get completely ruined within the first few minutes. Wish it was that way for me. You see, I was cursed with being on the same bus with the people I despised the most. Well, I should say the person. My bully since probably 2nd or 3rd grade. The others I wasn't particullarly fond of either, but I dealt with it. I have thick skin, really I haven't had a choice to be otherwise for my whole entire life. Honestly, I would have probably burst a long, long time ago and gotten some form of deppression if I had let it bother me. Anyway, that is another long, detailed story. Well, my bad times started on the bus at 7 o'clock in the morning on the first day of school. I was sitting there, with all the other kids in my grade, making an attempt to join in a conversation about the summer. Then, a girl named Jenny walked on the bus. I had never really been fond of Jenny but I had always treated her kindly and compassionaltly, always considering her pint of view. Though she had annoyed me at times, Jenny had never really done anything to hurt me before... at least not anything that I am aware of. But, when she walked onto the bus, she sucked her friend Charles and the girl that has always been my bully, Sarah, into a conversation. I heard them laughing about someone called ape. They just kept mentioning how they had always posted it on facebook as an inside joke all summer. I figured it must be a nickname for one of their friends at the time. I mean, how was I supposed to know? You know what they say, you don't see what you don't want to see.
I can't really tell you when I figured it out... actually, I might have known the whole time. It was every single day on the bus, laughing and laughing like they didn't think I could hear them... as if I was invisible. This is my problem. I want to be invisible, yet when I'm treated like I don't exist I just dig myself deeper into a bottomless pit. So, for the next couple of weeks I kept trying to get information from the other kids in my grade. I was so done. Having been bullied before, I wasn't going to stand for it again. For the first time in my life I was actually going to tell someone. Then something changed.
Finally, I felt pretty convinced that it was me that they were talking about. Planning to go down and talk to my guidance counselor, I went upsatirs and messily threw everything into my pig-sty of a locker. Then, Vanessa went up to me with a sad look on her face. Vanessa was Sarah's partner in crime for all of elementary school. She had changed though, she proved it to me.
"I told them to stop," she sighed. "I told Charles and Jenny that they have to stop the whole ape thing."
"Thanks,Vanessa. Really, thank you." This was all I could say. I guess Vanessa proved something to the world that day, people do change. Just because you have done wrong doesn't mean that you won't be able to fix it. For me, those words were all I needed to completely forgive and let go of any hate I still had boiled inside and amazngly, the word ape was scarce for the rest of the year. Even the few times it did come up, she would remind them to knock it off, and thogh she may not ever know it, for me it was life changing.
To be continued....
-Blogger 2
