All I could think for weeks was: how many people had seen the picture? How many kids had saved it onto their desktops?

It was a muggy day in August when the whole fiasco commenced. My friends and I had decided to make a larger-than-life slip ‘n’ slide in my neighbor’s backyard. After I got up from my turn, I was pulled into a group photo with two other friends. Later that picture would be put onto Facebook, and it would change everything. That very picture, with me in my misplaced swimsuit, would cause me more pain than I could have ever imagined.

Two weeks later those same friends and I were reliving our summer memories after the first football game of the season. Not surprisingly, the slip ‘n’ slide was brought up.
One of my friends asked me: “You’ve seen the picture, right?”
I didn’t really understand the look on her face at the time, but I knew what picture she was talking about so I laughed and told her I had seen it.
“See you guys? I told you she’d think it was funny!” Another friend piped up. At that remark the queasy feeling in the bottom of my stomach began to intensify. Maybe I didn’t know what they were referring to after all.
“Can I go on Facebook quick?” I asked the hostess of the party. I logged on and started clicking through the pictures from that day. Finally, I happened upon the picture in question. Only then did I notice what everyone had been laughing about. Apparently the slipping and sliding had taken a toll on my swimsuit; it had definitely slipped out of place. Heat rushed to my cheeks as I messaged the original photo uploader and had her remove it right then and there. It wasn’t like it made a difference though, the damage had been done. The picture had been online for over two weeks.

Before I knew it my eyes were overflowing with tears and I blindly pushed my way up the stairs and locked myself into the first bedroom I found. I ripped out my phone and called the only two people I could think of that would make me feel better. They both managed to calm me down a little, but I was mortified. Those girls that were supposedly my friends had failed to mention to me that something was off in that picture. They had laughed about it behind my back. Unfortunately, that was only the first in a chain of awful events.

All it took was one little misunderstanding between me and (who I thought was) my best friend for that picture to be used to make my life miserable. The day of the misunderstanding I went home and logged onto my Facebook to find my wall filled with nasty comments from nearly every single one of our mutual girl friends. Even girls that were oblivious to the details of the misunderstanding were partaking in the ridicule. I clicked ‘report abuse’ on every insult that was posted, but since the girls were using code names and vague references to the picture, none of it could be removed. I tried to hold my head high in school as the girls walked by me muttering ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ under their breaths. One day I even tried to fight back against the creator of the drama, but it ended up being in vain.

These girls told me that I was worthless, and that even before the fight they had held sleepovers solely for the purpose of making fun of me in that picture. I was at a loss for what to do. One night I slept over at the house of the only friend I had left. In the morning I woke up to dozens of text messages from kids from other towns that the girls from my school had rallied against me. Once again I started bawling, but by that time it was nothing new.

Finally, after weeks and weeks of the endless ridicule… I cracked. I remember it so distinctly: I was sitting in a chair at an eye appointment, waiting for my eyes to finish dilating while the doctor stepped out of the room. My mom was in one corner of the room, playing on her phone. My own phone buzzed with a notification: yet another post on my Facebook wall. This particular post wasn’t any worse than the others, but I was just so drained emotionally that I lost it right there in Franciscan Skemp. Of course my mom was then involved, which meant that the other girls’ parents were involved. I wasn’t happy that all the adults became entangled in the mess, but it was the only thing that got the cyber bullying to stop.

I felt weak for a long time for not handling it all myself, but in the end it was telling my mom that took the most strength. And I’m so glad I did.