For ever since I can remember, I’ve been alone. I can remember being in kindergarten and not having any friends, and never even talking to anyone. I didn’t mind that, though. As I went into middle school, I continued having social anhedonia. Being around other people was a complete disinterest to me and I had no joy whenever I had to socialize. At my old school, I didn’t mind it as much and it never really was a problem for me; it was when I came to this school, which was three years ago, that it really started to affect me.

     Being in the same grade with people that liked to mess with other people wasn’t the best. The first year of me being at this school was when I started to get bullied and made fun of. I was always calm and non-reactive whenever I had to deal with one of those people, but after a while I just couldn’t handle it anymore. There was an incident in one of my classes where I decided to stand up for one my friends and talk back to the people making fun of her. That didn’t end well; the people, instead of listening to me, decided to also start making fun of me. I honestly didn’t understand what was happening. The first time that I’d gotten the courage to stand up for someone had gone horrible. After that incident, I talked to two teachers about it, and received no help. I let it go, eventually, and decided that I wasn’t going to be stuck on that. I assumed they would also stop making fun of me, but they didn’t. The bullying just kept going, and going, and going. It never stopped. I couldn’t do anything without an entire group making fun of me. They even told their friends in grades above what had happened, and I was also made fun of by them.  

       In the middle of last year, I decided that I had had enough of their name-calling and unnecessary bullying, and I spoke to someone about it. I spoke to the counselor, and even multiple teachers, letting them know what was happening and how I felt. I would go almost every day to speak to the counselor. Just going to classes started becoming so hard for me because it meant I had to see them and listen to their snarky comments. I stopped being motivated to do anything and I even stopped trying in school. Everything started becoming so hard for me, and I eventually started going to therapy also to help. I felt so alone all the time and I actually started minding it now, and it would really bother me and mess with my head. I would listen to whatever they said about me, and I would take it into consideration, and I would wonder if they were actually right. I thought so poorly of myself, and when I noticed that me going to therapy and “me” talking to adults about it weren’t working, I started thinking that something was actually wrong with me and whatever that group said and thought about “me” was true. Every time I would go out, even outside of school, every time people would look at me even for just a second, I would wonder if they were thinking badly of me in their head, even though I didn’t know them at all, and it was just strangers on the street. From everything that happened, I even had people that I considered my friends stop talking to me because that group would feed them with lied and tell them that I was a bad person. This also resulted in me losing trust in everyone and never even going out or speaking to people.

     A few months before summer started, I quit therapy, and I quit going to the counselor’s office or even talking to people about what was happening. I decided that doing those things weren’t any help to me at all, and that they were just a waste of time. I started focusing on myself and I paid little to no attention about what was happening with other people and how other people felt and thought about me. I soon realized that the reason why therapy wasn’t working was because there was nothing actually wrong with me, the only thing wrong was how these people acted towards me and their manners and behavior towards me. There was nothing I could better about myself, except stop caring about what people said about me. I realized that those people didn’t deserve to make me feel like that and didn’t deserve to make me feel bad about myself.

     Not going to therapy was one of the hardest parts of growing and moving on for me but it was such an important step because I learned to not dwell on something that didn’t deserve my attention at all. I had trouble with stopping because I became attached to it, and it was just stuck in my schedule. Realizing that nothing was wrong with me was also such a huge step because I had had people talk bad about me for so long, and even I would talk bad about myself for such a long period of time that I just didn’t know how I could change that way of thinking, and I felt like I didn’t need to. As I started this year, I completely stopped caring about what others think of me, and I don’t think poorly of myself as much. I also learned to trust people and stop being so judgmental of people before talking to them, and I stopped thinking that everyone I meet is just going to make fun of me behind my back.