My Story

Stop bullying - save a life. 

My goal is not just to make people more aware of bullying or to just speak up if you see someone being bullied - my goal is to stop bullying altogether. 

My name is Jessie. I'm just a quirky teenager who loves to read and write. But back in junior high, that made me nerdy. I'm not exactly the skinniest person alive, and that made me fat. Not having sex at eleven years old made me a prude and not making a passing grade in a math final the previous year made me dumb. Stupid, ugly, weird, and so much more that I don't want to repeat. Not only was I bullied by my peers, but I, along with some of my friends, were bullied by the school system. 

To tell you my whole story, I have to go back a little further than sixth grade. Throughout all of my public school years, I was known as the fat, geeky, know-it-all girl who was nice, but no one ever really wanted to hang out with. I never really fit in, which is what every kid strives for. I was pretty much a teacher's pet because I came in early every morning with my mom, who worked in the library, and, because of that, I only had one best friend, who I've known for a decade now and she's still my best friend. We did everything together and, even though we don't see much of each other anymore (since she's still in public school and I'm home-schooled), I still consider her one of my best friends. 

At the end of fifth grade, everyone had to take a test, one that would determine if we could go to the 'smart kids' program the next year or not. I knew when I was taking it that I would fail the test, because it was full of trick questions and questions that wanted us to circle the choice that we would answer if we were mindless drones. Needless to say, I was right, and I did fail, but my best friend, who we'll call Sarah, passed. Keep in mind that up until this standardized test, I'd had straight A's since kindergarten, but I don't test well. 

The next year, in my area at least, sixth graders started junior high. I went to the brand new junior high that had been built for us that had opened the year I started junior high. So, new grade, new school, new teachers, and new bullies. Along with that, my best friend was going to a different school and I wasn't close enough with anyone else. So I was stuck wandering around most of the time. I'm happy to say that I did eventually make a new friend, but I haven't talked to her. I thank God that I met her, because I'm honestly not sure what would've happened if I hadn't met her. 

The teachers were the first problems. The teachers, the principal, and the school system. Before I go on, you should know that the last time I got in trouble for something, it was talking during nap time and that was once. I'm a good kid. So when teachers tell me that I'm apparently too smart for normal science and history but too dumb, I was confused. They put me in pre-AP (pre advanced placement) history and science and then tried to take me out of pre-AP math because I hadn't passed a test (not the standardized one that I talked about earlier) they said I had taken. When my mom confronted them about it, they said that they had lost all the records and couldn't say what I had made. But because of that, my mom made sure that I wasn't taken out of pre-AP math, but she couldn't stop them from sticking me in the two classes I hated. So, I was taking pre-AP math, science, history, and language arts along with PE and theater. This is where my perfect scores were ruined. 

I won't reveal her name, so we'll just call her Mrs. Y. Mrs. Y didn't want to teach sixth graders pre-AP stuff, so she taught us things that I didn't learn until ninth grade and expected us to know it. She told us to write a five-paragraph essay at one point (keep in mind that we were only eleven) and when I asked her what that meant, she told me that I should already know and brushed it off.She gave us ten page packets to use to study for a test and when we took the test, half of it wasn't in the test packet she swore had everything we would need. Everyone in the class was either failing or close to it. On the last day I went to public school, we got our progress report cards. Mine was as follows: PE - 100, Science - 96, Math - 100, Theater - 100, Language Arts - 100, History - 76. When I showed my mom, she said that I wouldn't be going to school the next day. And I didn't. That Friday, she pulled me out of public school and on Monday, we started home-schooling. 

There was also the girls' gym teacher who apparently didn't do anything about the bullying that happened to a friend of mine, but I was never told completely what had happened or why. 

Now, there were the kids the bullied me. Most girls, but there was the occasional guy that would slip in a fat joke while walking past me at lunch. Girls laughed at me in the locker room and during theater (because I was always paired up with the only other 'weird girl' in class, who skipped class half the time and hung out in the bathrooms). There was the creepy boy who would put his arm around me every chance he got, even though I kept shoving him away and even tried to grope me once. I can't even isolate one instance when I was bullied because those seven months of sixth grade at that school just blur together of one long sentence to pre-teen hell. I came home crying more days than not. 

But at least I wasn't beaten up in the girls' locker room like my friend was. You might be thinking: wow, a girl beat another girl up? That never happens! Well, it does happen, just not nearly as much as the verbal abuse most people deal with at some point in their lives. My friend, who we'll call Hailey, was beaten up in the bathroom section of the locker room (the bathrooms connected the seventh/eighth graders and the sixth graders) by an eighth grader, who accused her of bumping into her and not apologizing. She shoved Hailey into a bench and beat her up. The eighth grader got three days of ISS (In School Suspension, which is literally just detention all day). The eighth grader got a slap on the wrist and Hailey got a black eye, a bloody nose, and bruises from being shoved into a bench. Hailey and her mom threatened to sue her, but I haven't heard if they actually went through with it or not.  

My story isn't the worst. Neither is my friend's story. Some people have it so much worse and I hate that. I hate that people get joy from hurting other people.

It's not my job to stand up for the bullied. People might tell me that it's not my place or that it's none of my business. But maybe the bullied kids, teenagers, and adults need someone to fight for them. 

As one of my favorite authors said in her novel The Help, "Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else." This is also why I'm writing a novel called The Blind Leading, which focuses on a girl who bullies everyone, even her closest friend, and they end up turning on her. It's going to show that bullying is never the right or good thing to do. 

There are more stories out there about bullying. If you would like to share your story, leave a comment. Or you can go to my Contact Me page and send me an email. If you'd like some advice, go Ask Annie. And remember that you're not alone.