Bullying for me started at a very young age, I think I was probably three. I met my best friend Jordan, and I always wanted to hang out with her. When I started going over there everyday to 'play' with her, her brothers started not liking me. They always called me names and they were always mean to me. Her brothers started to convince her that I was annoying and told her horrible things about me, keep in mind I was three or four, Jordan was four or five, and her brothers were two or three and six or seven. That's insane looking back at it now, we were little kids and her brothers had the power to do that. After her brothers did that, she would tell her grandma lies so I couldn't hang out with her, and when ever I would see her brothers they would always have to say something to me like, "You're ugly", "You're stupid", "You're fat", and a lot of other things, those things made feel like I was worthless, I felt worthless at a REALLY young age. Soon they were able to get their other friends to bully me too, I had like, four boys bullying me on a daily basis. They bullied me until, like, fifth grade. But, that was an out of school kind of thing that happened, I always had someone in school saying things to me every single day. In kindergarten, I had two other boys telling me that I was ugly, fat, and all these other horrible things. In first grade, one of them moved away thank God, but the other boy would still tell me all these horrible things. No, he wasn't the only one in school that did that but he is one I defiantly remember the most. The same people bullied me until fourth grade. In fourth grade, the one other boy from kindergarten moved back and that's when it got worse, especially since I started to have a crush on him. His name was Aidan, and he would tell me I was ugly all the time and call me lesbian, but for some strange reason I cared, and it hurt to know that he actually thought those things about me, but I couldn't stop liking him and that was the bad thing. Soon he ended up moving again, and hasn't come back yet, but what he said to me in fourth grade, made me become a bully myself and I regret that so much. I changed that summer and went back to being myself, but everyone knew that I was a bully last year and they were scared of me. But, thankfully in fifth grade the bullying stopped. I mean, yeah, I still was depressed and stuff but, at least no one was actually being mean to me anymore. When I went into middle school, I didn't get bullied until two months into my sixth grade year. It wasn't even by the same people, it was from two guys in my grade that were popular. I was friends with one of them for a week, but my friend said something stupid to him and we ended up getting into a huge fight and he told me that I was annoying. It honestly hurt, because I liked him. Soon, he got his friend to help him bully me, and they pretty much only cyber bullied me, rarely did they every say anything to me in person. But they said these things exactly;

"She's stupid."

"You look emo with your gay ass eye liner in gym."

"No, she looks like a queer too."

"Katie's a bag of uglyness."

"Katie get a life and get some non gay eyeliner, oh wait it's just you that's butt ugly and looks like shit every day. So, yeah you have a fed up face and life."

"Ugly bitch."

"Oh my God, I don't believe it, Katie has friends. Oh my God the world's gonna end if she has friends."

"We're not fighting, were just letting you know you have an ugly ass face and will never get a boyfriend and your a bitch with no life that's all."

"Umm, you're a joke."

"I see how you try to be hot but you fail at that like you fail at life."

"Your parents probably don't even care about you and you are so f'in butt ugly with NO LIFE and you're a disgrace to this world. It would of been best if you you never born cause it's like you're not alive cause you're butt ugly with no life."

"You look like shut that comes out of my ass you f'in slut, oh wait, you're not even a slut cause you can't even get a boyfriend, that's sad you really don'y have shit."

Yeah, that's what they would tell me all the time. Soon I stopped going to school, because I feared that people were always judging me and that everyone hated me. By the end of my sixth grade year, I developed depression. I ended up sleeping all the time and never doing anything. Luckily, over the summer I got a little bit better. But, in seventh grade this one person on my bus would always tell me I was ugly and that I'm fat, and over the course of that year, I ended up failing classes, not wanting to go to school, stopped eating, wanted to die, felt stupid, felt worthless, and yeah, I just wanted to die. No one actually knew what was going on inside my head, they just thought I was being a teenager, the only person that I could imagine knowing about how I felt was my partner in French, who was also my crush. We sat next to each other, so the teacher automatically always made us partners with each other, but one day she told us to describe ourselves to the other person in French, and I did describe myself to him, I told him I was stupid. He replied to that by saying, "you're not stupid, I know you're really smart, I've witnessed you being really smart before. The problem is, is that you just don't try anymore, you need to start trying again." When he said that to me, it gave me motivation to start trying in school, and I did, but by that time it was too late and I ended up going to summer school. Over the summer, on top of me having to go to summer school, my friends who live in Deleware were visiting; when I told them that I had to go to summer school they got mad at me, and I expected that, I knew they didn't know what was going on in my head either, I mean I barley knew until this summer. I still had a month of no school at all before I had to start going to summer school. During that month, a lot of things ended up changing in my life, just no one knew that yet but me. The change that ended up happening in my life was that I started cutting myself, and what led me down that path was my friends, I knew they were joking around when they were saying things about me, but it still hurt me, and I couldn't tell them that it hurt it me, why? Well, because I was afraid. Afraid that they wouldn't like me anymore, and that they would say something to me because I couldn't 'handle' their jokes, so, I ended up taking it out on myself. I didn't care anymore, after being bullied for so long, and everything just hurting all the time I started become numb, and I wanted to feel something, but that something I could only feel was the pain of hurting myself. No one knew I was doing it, and when life got even a little bit hard I would break down and cry, then go outside in my aunt and uncle's backyard and cut myself. At the time, I never cut deep enough to produce blood, but I cut deep enough to cut the skin. In July, when summer school started, I ended up getting into a fight with my friends, and all I can remember was I had summer school the next day and I was staying up until 3:00 in the morning. I forget how the fight actually started, I know my ex friend was getting cyber bullied and I couldn't stand watching her being hurt by people anymore. People were bullying her because she was posting depressing statuses on Facebook and because she used to cut herself. Anyway, I didn't want her to do something stupid, so I ended up sticking up for her, and the people that were saying horrible stuff to her are people that were 'friends' with me. So, I came out and I told them, "if you're going to hate on her because she's depressed (which is a mental ILLNESS) and because she cuts herself, then I'm not better. I'm depressed. I cut. Get over it! Who cares what she posts, it's her Facebook, and don't give her a hard time about cutting herself, and hating her because of it, instead you should be trying to help her stop!" Yeah, well, my friends that were visiting from DE and my friend Jordan don't like my ex friend and would've never helped her, and they got mad at me for helping her. They started saying stuff, but the one thing I remembered the most was they said that they don't think that they could be friends with me anymore because I was helping someone they didn't like, and when they said that all I remember was that I started bawling my eyes out because that meant I was going to lose friends that I've known since I was really young. I was mad, sad, and I didn't know what to do, so I tried to text my one friend, Joanna who I always went to for advice and when I needed help with something. By that time, I was outside on my aunt and uncle's back porch with new cuts in my wrist and my phone in my hand waiting for Joanna to text back. I waited for about 5-10 minutes and she never replied, and finally I had so much anger built up inside of me I threw my phone on concrete and shattered it and I was almost at the point where I was going to commit suicide. But, later that night I was finally able to explain to my friends what I was going through and they finally excepted it. That summer changed my life forever. When my mom found out, she was upset and I saw a psychiatrist because my mom thought I had ADD and it turns out I did, it also turns out that I have a chemical unbalance in my brain, I suffer from depression, and I have 7 different types of anxiety. Now, I'm in eighth grade, and the school year is almost over. Yes, this year I'm still getting bullied and I try to ignore it. In the beginning of the year I was really depressed, I honestly didn't think I was going to make it to the end of this year, and I remember saying it to my friend too. I also thought school this year was going to be horrible and I also went into the new school year thinking I was stupid. But, I am glad to say that, I have a month left until I graduate middle school, my grades are amazing, I've overcome starving myself and eat all the time, as of today I am 48 days clean from cutting, and I'm a lot happier then I ever was! I still have problems with my anxiety and I never think suicidal thoughts anymore. Now, I am 100% against bullying and I've talked to my school's counselors in the beginning of the year to start a bullying prevention program in the middle school, sadly they didn't go through with it 100%, but my friend, David and I are already working out starting a self-harm, bullying, and suicidal prevention/support group for high school next year. 

The moral of my story is, bullying needs to stop. Bullying hurts people, mentally and physically. If someone tells someone that they're worthless or not good enough all the time, that person is gonna start thinking that, and that's not right. Everyone is beautiful, amazing, good enough, worth so much, and they're enough. No one should ever have to feel differently because of something someone said to them, that's not right. I know how it feels, and honestly no one should have to feel the pain I went through. To me, bullies are no better than people who kill people or abuse people, bullying should be a crime. People who are murders are in jail, yeah, they killed people directly, but a bully kills people indirectly with their words and actions, not with a knife or anything else, bullies are basically murderers. No one sees that though, the only people that do, are the people who have been through it and the people who have lost someone close to them because someone made that person kill them selves. Like I said, no one should have to go through that, no one should have to feel like I did, and no one should have to start hurting themselves because of what people say to them, no one should have to feel pain that was caused by someone else's words. 

My name's Katie, I'm 14 years old, and that's my story.