I've always been that girl that tries to 'fit in' with everyone. All I ever wanted when I was in elementary was to be popular. At the time I was kind of, ya know, average. Then, when I went into my first year of Middle School,6th grade, I decided why fit in, when you could stand out? So, instead of trying to be something I'm not, I decided to just be myself. Little did I know that, being myself, would led to other bullying me. I started dressing different than everyone else, dying my hair unnatural colors, listening to different music than everyone else. And hey, I was happy with myself. They way I dressed made me happy. But, soon people started calling me, mean names. They told me, that I was 'emo'. They told me that, I was unwanted, and that I should go kill myself, or to cut deeper. At that time, I wasn't even harming myself in any way. The thought never even crossed my mind. They told me I was a slut, even though I've never even dated anyone in my life. They called me lesbian, they said that I'm a faggot. Yeah, I actually am lesbian, but no one really knew. I never told anyone I was. I would make no attempt to stop them from teasing me. I tried to ignore them the best I could. The bullying mostly happened on the bus and sometimes in the hallways. In the hallways people would scream at me, 'monster'. I would just ignore it. On the bus when people would bully me, I would just turn up my music and try to ignore them. But, everyday I'd still go home crying. Someone even described to me, how I was going to kill myself. I eventually told my parents and they actually ended up, calling the kids parents, since they lived in my neighborhood. It did mostly stop, for the rest of 6th grade. When I went into 7th grade, for the beginning of the year I got very few mean comments. Until, my best friend started harming herself. Everyone found out because she couldn't hide it in gym. So, everyone started bullying both, me and my best friend. That was when I also started self-harming. I did this to myself for 2 reasons. 1. I felt somewhat responsible for my friend harming herself. And 2. I didn't know how else to deal with the bullying. Harming myself, was kind of like my escape. Later on in 7th grade, I got a girlfriend. And we were very open about it. So mostly the entire school knew. It even got all the way to the high school. Both my girlfriend and I got bullied for liking girls. I am now going into 8th grade. Hopefully it'll be better than 6th and 7th. In 7th grade, I pretended like the bullying never hurt me. But to be honest, in same ways it does. It hurts a lot. But, I don't let the bullys know that. Whenever the make a rude comment towards me and/or my friends, we make a joke out of it. We laugh about it. I most defiantly, don't get bullied as much as I did in 6th grade, which is awesome. But, sadly, to this day I still struggle with self harm and self hate, do to a lot of personal issues. But, hopefully, one day I'll be able to stop harming myself and get the help I need.