Everchanging Misery

ECA

Whoever thought that a Christian private school could be so cruel? I certainly did not. When I was around four years old, a year after my Pawpaw had died and my mother went off the deep end in drugs, my Mawmaw decided that she would take me in and move away from Soso, from our home. She moved us to Moselle where we stayed with a man named Jerry in the woods, and I had to change schools.

Mawmaw transferred me to a private Christian school in Ellisville where you had to wear uniforms and go to chapel every Wednesday. It was alright at first- I could play with other children to say the least, but I had to work in books secluded away in separate desks. The teacher would not write on a board and explain things to us. We had to figure things out on our own. They would just sit in their own desks and play on their phones while we struggled to pass our own tests. I always had failing grades because of this, and had to go to the office many times for how I was grading my booklets wrong. Wasn't that the teachers job? They certainly did not think so.

I had two best friends in that school that I will never forget, sisters Brittney and Kristian. Kristian was the eldest and was three years our senior, but she still always played with us. They stayed by my side while everyone else found me odd and strange. Brittney was the one who taught me that 1 times 100 was still, in fact, 100. And that you could have cousins no matter the age difference. She also informed me that her father was allergic to peanuts and they even let me discover my favorite bookstore, BooksAMillion, even though I wouldn't go back there for many years. However, they soon had to move away- and I was left alone once again.

The other children started to make fun of and bully me everyday, even beat me. I had to learn to run and hide from them, and sometimes I hid in the old chapel room on the church section of the school. Once, I was reading a book in the lunch room, and I left it on the table to go to the restroom. But when I came back, it was gone and the other children were snickering and laughing. I told the teachers, but they only laughed it off and shooed me away. Another time, I was walking to chapel with the other students, when I was shoved into the girls' bathroom and pushed into the wall and severely beaten.. There were no visible bruises though, they made sure not to hit my face, only my stomach, back, thighs, and the back of my legs and arms.

I had no problem hiding my injuries.

I got used to running and avoiding my beatings for years, but they soon stopped once my friend Raven came to the school. She was two years older than me, but she had no problem being my friend. The beatings stopped from the other children, probably because they wanted to win her over to their side before they continued. But she never left my company, and I'm grateful that I had a friend once again, and that friendship also protected me. I even stayed at her house sometimes, my favorite memory being New Years Eve. We shot so many fireworks and it was the first time I had ever seen so many colors in one place. However, she soon had to leave as well, and the beatings continued once the children realized no one would tell. Abandonment is a common thing, isn't it?

Soon, however, I turned 12 years old, and I got to move schools once my Mawmaw realized I was finally old enough to get off of a school bus by myself. So I moved to South Jones, a rival school to West Jones, which was the school I went to before Ellisville Christian Academy.