It really did all start in 7th grade.
I always wished I had a better body. What made me not to sad, mad, or anything of that sort of feeling was that I knew that there were people with worse issues in the world and I meet one of them.
On the first day of 7th grade I remember posting a picture in the morning on snapchat of me in my favorite t-shirt I was going to wear that day. The shirt read "donut make me mad" it letters made of of donuts. And the caption read "ready for the first day of school!"I don't remember much of that day.
A couple weeks into the school year in P.E. We were playing kickball or basebalI (I can't remember... one of those 2). My team was sitting in our dugout and I was at the end of the line sitting next to a girl I didn't know existed.
I feel so bad know that I didn't even know she went to our school in 6th grade, but I never had any classes with her. Her name was Arem.
We were all in our P.E. Clothes and Arem was wearing shorts. We started talking and I grew to like her. She was so nice and seemed like she would be a great friend. I asked her one little question and I bet if I had never asked her that question my life would be different.
"What are those lines on your legs?" I asked curiously.
"Oh well when I was shaving I accidentally cut myself" Arem said with no expression.
"Oh that sucks" I said feeling bad.
See, if she was never wearing shorts or we never sat next to each other that would never have happened. I dunno what I was thinking, I knew nothing about shaving so I didn't bother asking again.
About a week to two weeks later we were texting on Snapchat. We were talking about random things. Then she said...
"Remember when we were in P.E. and you asked me what those scars were?" She typed.
"Yesss...." I responded wondering why she was saying that.
"Well... I cut" she typed.
"What?" I typed back.
I had no clue what she meant, I was in 7th grade I didn't know what that meant
"I cut myself" she typed.
"What's that?" I typed back
She explained to me what all of it was and why she did it. I felt like someone dropped me on the ground like a raw egg. I started hanging out with her way more and later discovered she hung out with some of the people I knew. So I slowly started to hang out with them, not exactly becoming a part of their group, but became getting to be friends with them.
Once I started becoming better friends with them, I started to find out more thing about the girls in the group. They had this group chat called the sisterhood...they included me in that much later. All of the girls in the group are so nice and I've never meet people like them before. They are always there when you need them and they are just amazing.
When I heard about all the things that were going on my head was spinning with questions.
Arem was saying she wanted to be 95 pounds at a certain date or else she would kill herself.
The next day at school I tried to stay calm but it was all too much. We fought through it and I opened up to that group more. I'm not sure if they know this but I have self esteem issues too but I try and hide it.
The whole year we wanted to find help for Arem but we didn't know how. Until one day.
It was lunch time and we had so much weight on our shoulders it felt like someone was putting bags of sand on me.
We all felt like it needed to end so I said we need to go to the principle.
Dehlia, Gigi, and I basically fell with tears into the principal's office, we were sobbing and we confessed we begged and begged the principle to not tell Arem's parents.
"Their awful to her please don't call them!" We all said crying.
She said she wouldn't, but she did. She called her parents and took Arem to a mental hospital.
We got permission to walk around the school before we went back to class and then we all went back to our 5 period classes. I tumbled into my history class everybody was asking questions, I didn't and couldn't tell them.
We got a awful text from Arem basically saying she hated us forever. That just made us cry even more. We all meet up after school GiGi, Dehlia, LuLu, And Kai. We didn't want to be alone so we all went to my house, except for Kai, she couldn't come. The mental hospital forced her to eat disgusting foods. Once she got back she didn't show her angry one bit she was perfectly fine.
Last day of school hit and we all went to a pool near our school, with 2 other girls Emma and Vicky. Kai had a breakdown in the bathroom she was sobbing, saying how she looked awful and she didn't like her body. We finally got her out of the bathroom stall and we went and had fun in the pool. Vicky later got out and went and started crying. Me and GiGi got out and we asked her what happened. All the girls came and she said she tried to drown herself. That made us all kind of not in the mood.
That's the story of my 7th grade year.
