In some cases, school is a place where people can escape from the real world and have fun with their friends. But, for some of us, that’s not even close to how we feel. School can be a jail, where the people with a higher status, have the most power. While, the ones with a lower status, the weak ones have no power, nowhere to hide, and nowhere to escape. By the end of freshman year, I’d go through broken friendships and endless bullying. Freshman year was definitely the worst year of my life.

“Are you ready for your first day of High School?” my best friend Anna asked me. I was nervous, obviously, but excited at the same time. Little did I know, I would go through so much in just a little portion of my life. High School isn’t like the  stereotypical place people see in movies or read in books, but it sure isn’t a fun place to be. The saying “Once you enter Freshman year, all your friends will disappear” is in fact, the truth. My big friend group ended up splitting into four different friend groups, and I refused to choose sides. I began to learn the majority of my friends were fake and talked badly about each other behind their backs. I started becoming paranoid, crying myself to sleep wondering if they talk badly about me because if they can say things about their supposed friends, then what would stop them about saying things about me. It was just my best friend and I, we were both separated from the world of our different friend groups, and it was just us, until she became involved in the world of boys. She ended up dating someone and I was alone because she was so infatuated with her boyfriend that she forgot about everyone and everything for eleven months. For those eleven months, I had no one. I’d complain to my parents, try to make friends even with my social phobia, and cry endlessly because it was the only thing I knew how to do. I couldn’t control myself and how I worked. It was if I was dependent on others, to tell me what to do, when to laugh, when to smile, and when to breathe. The only thing I was independent on, was knowing how to make myself more miserable than I already was. I finally sorted everything out when I left my last tie to all my past friends: lunch. Lunch is where majority of the drama would happen and I was kicked out because of some person who wanted to sit there, so I left to the music wing and ended up making new friendships that would last for a long time.

When someone’s getting bullied, they don’t know how to process it, they don’t want to be that guy who gets someone in trouble, but at the same time they just want everything to stop. It can become so bad to the point where one has to take their own life. About 6,078 people kill themselves in a year in the age group of 15-24 because of bullying. There was this group of guys that one day decided, “Hey, that girl looks like a good target.” Ever since then I would get food thrown at me and insults thrown at me constantly. They’d call me things like a “Fat b***h,” and other repulsive names.  It was horrible, they made me so mad to the point where I’d go up to them and scream at them until they left me alone. I took boxing classes as a method of coping with the pain and anger they were causing me. I’d hit the bag as hard as I could, pretending that it was whoever that had hurt me. Funny thing is, once the group of boys decided I was no longer fun to insult, they finally stopped. A person that I thought was a friend of mine started bullying me in place of them. What this person had said was way worse than anything, anyone has ever said to me. They would say things like, “You should kill yourself,” or “Nobody likes you or ever will,” or “You’re ugly, I hate you.”, and etc.. This went on for months until my mother called the Vice Principal because she noticed a difference in me, a more saddened version of my previous . Fake smiles are really easy to make and freshman year, fake smiles and empty laughs became my best friend. I’m proud to say that Sophomore year is way better.

Freshman year may have been the worst year of my life, but I have learned to ignore the bad thing’s life throws in my way. Sophomore year is a new year for new beginnings and new friendships. School is now no longer a prison to me and a classroom is no longer a prison cell, but a new experience to learn and prosper and to make new friendships.