It had first started freshmen year…the bullying…when I came out about what I was…Bisexual…people bullied me because I had a different preference in people…how childish is that? I ask myself this but yet I did nothing to stop it. I coward in fear in the back of the crowd and avoided peoples burning stares because I was scared of what they might say to me. To top it off I was atheist so people thought I was a devil worshiper, because of their ignorance of other religious beliefs. So what was I suppose to do?

After months of their constant torment, I came to trust no one and even stopped talking to my family. I thought that the only way to escape was to kill myself. But I didn't have the guts or willpower to go through with any scenario I made in my mind. As time went on my family started to notice that I was avoiding them. They noticed that when I got home I went straight upstairs to my room and locked myself in, they noticed my failing grades, and my sudden weight loss. At first they thought it was because of the people that I hung out with, but they couldn't have been more wrong.

More time went by and I tried to get over the constant whispers of being called a freak and a Satanist. But I just couldn't seem to get out of the rut that I was in. Like a writer with writers block. I soon found myself going to the library everyday to escape the torment. I distracted myself by reading tons of books and rapidly started filling my own room with works of literature, ranging from Dan Brown to Edgar Allen Poe, with genres such as love and romance to horror and mystery, action and even some graphic novels.

Whenever I read a new book I would imagine myself as the main character, a new place and people to envision with every turn of a page. I found myself wishing I could take the place of one of them and live out my days in a book for someone else to read my story. At nights I would cry myself to sleep thinking that if only I was somewhere else, my life would be so much better then it is now.

School had turned into a daze, and I gradually stop listening and waiting for people to talk about me. I had found what I needed most, something that wouldn't judge me for who I am and for what I believed in. The books that I read everyday had turned into an obsession and I was never caught without one in my hand or in one of my bags.

But this didn't stop the malicious rumors that still spread throughout the school it only made them worse. By ignoring the bullies it only made them angrier and want to hurt me more. My temporary false reality that I had created shattered in a mater of seconds. I started to return to my old ways of hiding in my room and ended up stopping reading all together. I began to hate who I was and think that who I was, was not what I should be. I could no longer accept myself for who I was.

My life had gone from hectic to semi- peaceful to terrible all over again. This time I didn't have an escape I was stuck in reality with these people that I hated. Because of all the stress I was going through I started a diary and wrote personal thing down everyday. Unconsciously doing what I had wanted…making my own story for someone else to read. I wrote about the nightmares that haunted my nights and the bullies who haunted my days. About crying myself to sleep, about my ideas of killing my self, and about the one thing that I loved the most…reading, and how I had given it up because of other people. Weeks went by and I read over what I had written and realized what I had done.

I had given them what they wanted; I had given the bullies cause to keep bulling me. As I read the last of my diary I thought of all the things that I could have done to stop their evil glares and tormenting whispers. I thought that I had almost given them the time of day by thinking about killing myself. I had almost given up my love of books and my new love of writing. I thought about my family who I had been avoiding and about what they would think if I had gone through with it.

So right when I was reading the last of the words in my diary and wiping of the tears that had rolled down my cheeks, I decided that I wouldn't put up with what they had caused me and probably numerous other kids my age to go through. I decided to stand up for my self and to carry on with life, to keep doing the things that I loved and being with those that I love and love me.

The next day when I went into school I rolled up my sleeves so to speak, and readied myself for the enemy fire to start. I held my head high and looked those who had bullied me the day before straight in the eye. They noticed this and instantly started to whisper between one another; I froze and thought that I couldn't go through with my plan to stand up for myself. I immediately brushed this feeling aside, looked at them and told them if they had something to say to say it to my face and stop using childish tactic to try and hurt me, to stop trying to hurt me to make themselves feel a little bit better about who they were, and that no matter what they said it couldn't change who I was and what I believed in so they should just grow-up.

After that the bulling stopped and some of them even apologize about the things that they said, and blamed it on someone else who had started the bulling. But I didn't care what they thought let alone care who started it now that it was over with. I had gained my confidence and I had started reading again along with writing. I learned to accept who I was. Even though there are always going to be rumors and nasty side comments I brush them aside and remember all the characters in my books who made it through the tough times.

Like Helen Keller once said, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”