When I was in eighth grade, I had a best friend that meant the world to me. I thought that we would always be friends and that nothing would ever change. One day I came to school and no one would talk to me. I was being given dirty looks and my best friend would turn the other way whenever she saw me. I didn't know what was happening or what I had done but I felt awful. At lunch time I went to sit at my normal table with the people I usually sit with and when I sat down they all looked at me and told I couldn't sit there. They said that I wasn't welcome there and had to leave. So I did. I figured that whatever was bothering them all would go away soon. The next day I found out that all my so called friends had spread a rumor saying that I said my best friend looked like a man. That's why no one would talk to me and my best friend wasn't even a friend. When I tell people this story I feel pathetic. I feel like I should have been stronger and not let something like this affect me. But It did effect me and to this day it still does. Skip forward a few years to high school and I yet again have a best friend. We were attached to the hip. She had gotten a new boyfriend and in the end she broke up with him a total of 5 times. Through their relationship we had become great friends and after she broke up with him the last time, we ended up having a "thing". I know that it probably wasn't the best idea but what she did is probably what has affected me the most. She gave my phone number out to all these different people and had them send me hate texts. They called me a "whale", "whore" and said that i wasn't good enough for anyone. Since then, that's what I've believed. no one really knows all of these details that I've written. I try in keep it to myself in order to keep it from happening again. Reading this back to myself, it all sounds pathetic to me. Like it's all my fault and I shouldn't be writing this. But I never want anyone to feel as badly about themselves as I do. All I want is for young kids to be able to grow up and be able to be themselves without being judged for it. We are all equals and it's time that people were treated that way. My mom always told me to treat people the way I want to be treated and I live by that. You should never treat someone badly. No matter what excuse you have. IT'S NOT OKAY.