Hi, I am a 22 year old girl from Norway, and this is my story.. (Just so you can follow the story, here is some facts about the Norwegian school-system.. Here in Norway we start school in August the year we turn 6 years old, which is first grade too us, and lasts about 10 months to june following year. After the 10th grade, when we turn 16, we go to a 2 or 3 year school that is just about what want to study, something like a junior college or something, but this is optional to go too but also smart so you can get a job) 

During my 2th grade we sold our house and moved to a different part of town, but I got to finish my grade before I moved to a different school. When I started 3 grade at my new school I quickly made good friends and life was pretty good, I was 8 years old then btw. I got a new best friend, lets call her Ellie, and we got really close and was together aaall the time.
In 5th grade, we got three new girls in our class, I'll call them Molly, Mary and Janet, and at first we all got along really well, but soon some started to make little clicks. And it wasn't hard to see who had more money and who had the "better" looks. Neither Ellie or I was one of them.. We got along with Janet, and she also fell on the outside, so we only had each other. Soon the whole class turned on us, mostly me because I have always been the chubby one, but since they chose to be my friends they also had to endure it..
Mary was the worst, her parents had alot of money, and she always had the newest of everything and she bought things to the others all the time, so of course she was very popular and what she said was the law. Also one of the "original" girls Carla was extreme, she and Mary quickly became bestfriend with eachother and also some of the girls in grade above us.

Like it almost always is if you are a group of three, one becomes pushed aside. That happened sometimes with us also, but after we started 6th grade it got uglier. I can't remember why they started hating me, but somehow they did. Janet convinced Ellie to ditch me and to become friends with the other girls instead. I had the whole class against me, plus the girls in 7th grade.
They shoved me whenever they got the chance, yelled out nasty comments to me, froze me out, followed me home, beat me, wrote things about me around the town, threatened me and said they would kill me if I told anybody.. I have to add that Ellie was never a part of anything, but sadly she didn't stop it either..

After a few months I stopped going to school, first I lied to my mom and said I had stomach problems for a couple of weeks, I even threw up on purpose many times a day so she would believe me. After a while I had to go back, so I got dressed and ready for school everyday, but never went. I was hiding on a playground in school hours and went home like nothing was wrong. Pretended to go out to meet friends all the time, and even faked a couple of sleepovers, I just slept outside..
The school eventually called my parents, and I had to go back, but I just said it was because I was sick of school. I was to afraid to tell anyone what was happening..
When I got back to school it was like nothing had changed, they were just as mean as always. One day the teacher was sick so we just got assignments to do by ourselves, and Mary and Carla and some of the other girls cornered me and started to kick and yell at me.
Then they took lots of paper with soap on it and started to shove it in my face and in my mouth. Ellie got sick of them and got in the middle and got me out of there and went to a teacher to get help..

It took a while, but I forgave her and started to hang out with her again. Soon it was us against the world, sure we got invited to birthdays but I think that was the parents and not the girls. They stopped being so extreme, but they still made many comments when the adults didn't pay attention. I started to like this guy and we hung out a lot, but we had to keep it a secret because he was afraid they would turn on him too..

In 7th grade my big sister got very sick, she had a sickness called Cystic Fibrosis and after having a baby she got worse, and in November she was picked up by the ambulance because she stopped breathing. She was on a respirator for a while, but on December 7, 2003 she passed away :/ When I went back to school almost everybody treated my different, they were nice to me, and was glad it was all over because I was so fragile then. But it didn't last very long, about a week later they started again.
They started picking on me because of my sister and because I was sad over it. It was back to only having a couple of friends, only two in my class and a few from some grades under.. That's when I started to hurt myself, it started with punching things or banging my head against the walls, and it escalated quickly to cutting and burning myself. I didn't know why I did it, but I knew it was bad, so I hid it and tried to hide it from everyone..

When we started 8th grade, it was at another school, and we got separated into three classrooms together with another class. I was hopeful that this was going to be different, but I soon understood that this was going to be worse. Because the ones who was in a grade over us, also went to this school.
The new class from the other school quickly became good friends with Mary, Carla and their "followers", and they learned fast when it came to me and Ellie. It escalated fast, and they joined the girls from the grade above again, threatening us, following us and waiting for us after school.
We had to be escorted home and my dad also had to meet us one time we went to the mall because they were there to and they were waiting for us on the outside.
Two days later they met Ellie on her way home from school and they started pushing her around but she ran away and got home, I went to her place later in the evening because we were going to tell her mother about it, we were sick of it all. She was going to talk to my father about it the day after, and they were going to go to the school, they were sick too..
On my way home from Ellie that night, I met Carla and some of the older girls and they started pushing me and spitting on me and one of the girls bitch-slapped me too. I ran home, and of course my dad understood something was wrong, so I told him what happened. The next day he followed me to school and talked to the principal, he was pretty pissed. Not long after one of the older girls got kicked out of school, and the other girls got the message, they mostly backed of.

When we started 9th grade Mary changed schools, and thing got a lot better, a little bit at least.. They still made comments and tried to freeze us out, but we did get some friends at least. I think they got tired of it at last, but some of them had to throw out a comment or two all the time.
It looked like I didn't care, but I cried myself to sleep every night and I cut myself a lot. I thought about suicide a lot, but I couldn't do that to my mom, she had already lost one child..
I had a boyfriend, the same boy I fell in love with in 6th grade, but we still kept it a secret, he was ashamed of being seen with me other than as "pity-friends" as he called it many times. I had to sit and watch him flirt with the popular girls, he said that he had to make the others think he was interested in them so we wouldn't be caught. I finally got rid of him, and then my old friend from when we were little started in our class.
He quickly became one of "them", but he liked me. And after a few weeks, we got together, and he actually was proud of it and didn't try to hide me! To bad he was a complete jerk, and both cheated and beat on me, but I let him like I had everyone else. We broke up eventually and he dropped out of school and started using drugs.

Over the summer Ellie and I lost contact and stopped talking to each other, but I had made a few friends in the grade below when we started 10th grade. We stuck together, but started to experiment with weed and some pills, but most of them stopped within a year. I on the other hand started to hang with the wrong crowd and started letting boys use me and smoked a lot of weed and took many different pills.
I still cut myself to, and I went to a shrink to try to get help without luck. I straitened up on my own, stopped hanging out with the wrong crowd and stopped with drugs. But I couldn't stop with cutting, and it's not until now I finally can say that I have been free from that for a year!

Many people still talk about me to this day, and I don't have the most friends in the world, but the ones I have are worth their weight in gold!
I also have the man of my dreams and we are getting married next year♥
Many people see me as bitchy, and I come of as arrogant sometimes, but that is only because I am so afraid they wont like me for me so I rather they hate me without knowing me.
I am still working on myself, I got torn down for so many years so I know it will take many years of hard work to build me back up.
But I'm trying my best, and I have made some progress at least..

Sorry for the long story, but I couldn't get it shorter.. I hope my story can help people who is living trough bullying, or maybe help bully's understand what they are doing to someones life. We have to stand together to fight this vicious thing, bullying destroys so many people, we have to do something!
Thank you for taking the time to read my story!