Hello everyone, my name's Velvet and I'm seventeen years old. When I was about fourteen years old, I dated a boy. He was uber sweet and talented and kind. He was a pastor's son. We went to church together and every Sunday, we stayed after so he could practice and I could listen. One Sunday, things got a little heated and I said no but he didn't care. I was in the middle of recovering from anorexia so I was rather small and he was at least three times my weight. That was the first time I had my free will taken from me. The bullying began shortly after when his best friend told our entire school that I was nasty enough to sleep with someone in a church. To this day, people bully me for that. A few months later, a boy broke through my walls and built me back up and I felt wonderful but I was stupid. I slept with him and I got pregnant. I did something terrible and made him hate me because he was brilliant and in my panicked state of mind, I honestly believed he was better off thinking that I slept around rather than having to be there for me. My plan backfired. He hated me a lot more than I expected. He told everyone my darkest secrets, everything that's ever happened to me or that I ever did, and one day it was too much. The mental and physical stress was too much and I miscarried. Her name was going to be Evangeline. I became an alcoholic and pill popper by age fifteen. One night, I was out with some friends at a holiday we celebrate down in the south called Mardi Gras. I got entirely too wasted and the best friend of the boy I was dating at the time took advantage of that. A few days later, after my boyfriend found out (his best friend said I asked for it) and broke up with me, he asked to meet up with me so I went. I was constantly drunk throughout these two months so I learned all of this from the text messages I read between us later on. He acted all sweet but then he pinned me down and my will was taken for the third time. He then got up and said "Tell him that was revenge." That's when the bullying got worse. I began to get shoved down concrete stairs and beat up every day in the halls where there were no cameras. I felt worthless and depressed and became anorexic. All of my "friends" abandoned me after the two boys ran their mouths, saying I was just nasty and I was completely willing. No one cared what happened to me and I got death threats daily. A year later, when I was sixteen, I had had enough. I had made some new, better friends but it wasn't enough. I was twenty pounds underweight and covered in cuts. One day after school, I went home and curled up under the covers clutching the blades had used over and over again and I was ready to end it all. That's when the four girls I had made friends with quite literally busted my door down, ripped the blade out of my hand, brought me my favourite cookies, and stayed with me until I felt better. The road to recovery has been long and difficult but here I am; seventeen years old, at a healthy weight, sober for a year and nine months, and clean of self-harm for two months. My best friends made a purpose to become my bodyguards, to protect me from harm. They taught me to let go of the pain and use my story to help others in similar situations and that is why I'm here today.