Essays

Moving To America

 Moving to America was a difficult situation. Life had always been... complicated, but America was a chance for a new start, a better life. So far my life had consisted of struggling to get to school, getting bullied all day, and then coming home to stay up until three AM because all I could focus on was the way that the bullies had treated me that day. I spent months trying to convince my mom to let us move to America, where I was certain everything would be much better, living the American Dream.

My mom's solution, however was to switch the school that I was in. We ended up having me switch schools either four or five times, her solution didn't seem to help.

I would walk into class, set my stuff down, and when I looked over at a different desk where I would see a few girls who would whisper, point, and laugh at me. Also I had a piece of paper that was titled "I'm Not Afraid" that I had written for one of my classes and some kid had seen the title while I was in the bathroom and they wrote "Yeah right!" on my work in pen.

Break time should have been a period that was free from the worry of people taunting me, but it wasn't. I would sit in one area of the playground, usually somewhere under a tree, and read a book. That should be perfectly normal, but for some reason kids would decide that I was a weird, unsociable, and dorky, and they would feel obliged to let me know as often as possible.

My only friends would be books. I would engulf myself in them so deeply, attempting to drown out the terrible thoughts that others had planted in my head, all the name calling, and the threatening, and the laughing, the books made them disappear.

Once, I was just sitting on the swings, minding my own business when this kid came up to me, I remember his name was Toby. Toby was a real jerk, always using foul language to make his hatred of you obvious, and he hated everyone. That day, Toby walked up to me and started threatening me, threatening to punch me. Of course, being at our age it was all just talk, but I didn't know that then and I was genuinely scared. I tried running away, but he just chased after me, attempting to keep his promise. Soon I had to stop to catch my breath, thankfully he did too. Without giving myself nearly enough time to breathe after twenty straight minutes of running away, I turned around and punched him in the face. Even after that whole thing, my mom still wasn't ready to move me to America.

After a while a revolution started in Egypt; and it was honestly a little scary. Of course, it didn't slow down the never-ending harassment that my school mates so charitably bestowed upon me. It scared the crap (pardon my French) out of all of us though, especially because a lot of the riots were going on right around my dad's house. The riots were serious, people got shot and a couple buildings burned down, (one of them I saw while it was on fire but that's another story).

I was finally able to convince my mother to let us move to America, reasoning that it wasn't safe for us there anymore, and for once she listened to me. Pretty soon we had started packing and were in America before Christmas. Even though we have only been living here for less than three years, and so far it has been a pretty nice change.

- 5 May, 2015