When You Think You’re The Problem And You Realize You Aren’t
When you’re bullied for most of your life and realize it isn’t your problem
I looked at very rare photo of my family and I at a party and our family was called up to stand. All of them turned their heads to the voice and then there was me. I was so young, the dress I had on was actually my mother’s and didn’t fit, floor length, white T-shirt underneath the sprawling green with small buttons.
I was side-eyeing whoever called me with a smirk on my face. While everyone else turned, expectantly to this voice I refused to follow their heads and just slid my eyes to the side to acknowledge whoever was calling my family by name.
In my photos of my younger self I really want to hug this kid hard.
There was a lot going on, but I think the biggest thing was anger and self-hatred. I was so angry at myself all the time and got bullied so consistently, in every interaction I had when I was younger I would either by kicked out of a community I was trying to enter because I was too weird, too quiet, too little, too much, and expected to be rejected because that’s what happened.
We get to that lovely little failure ingredient, it was an if but a when that I would get bullied for who I was and how quiet and…
