A Life of Valleys and Hills.

The Second Chapter: Primary school = Valley.

This one is really long!!

Sorry!!

My first year of school is when my story really starts.

I remember how excited I was to go to school, I could have so many friends!!! But unfortunately that didn't work out quite as planned. I very quickly became friends with a girl, lets call her flower. Flower and I stuck together as we both were bullied, in KINDERGARTEN, she was my first best friend; and she was smarter than me, she told her parents about the bullies and got to move, I however, didn't. I clearly remember how it started; my older cousin, we'll call him popular, didn't like me much. As we were family, I was naturally inclined to want to hang out and play with him; but he didn't like that. So in order to get me to go away, he started rumours about me, and started calling me names, which caused others to follow popular's lead and to copy him. In kindie it wasn't too bad, and I wasn't really phased. The day after Christmas my younger siblings were born, they're triplets, and I'll call them the trio.  

But in year one, it got worse.

My friend flower moved away and the rumours became teasing, and it was only during recess and lunch. I was left friendless and searching; searching to be accepted. Their favourite things to say to me were, "Worthless, useless, fat, ugly and dumb". They may not seem like the most harmful words, but they were drilled into my DNA. Year one was the year, when looking back, I can see myself developing my social anxiety. I would not speak in class and I wouldn't be as talkative at school, in the hopes that I could become invisible. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. A new girl whom I will name soap, (she had a thing where she would always wash her hands), moved to the school and I instantly befriended her. We both loved Looney tunes and our favourite character was Tweety bird, so we'd play a game together on the oval. But the rumours and teasing caught us and she no longer liked me; I was alone again, my happiness stolen away by words. I've had someone tell me that because my bullying happen in my younger years that it's not as important or as valid as it would be if it was high school teasing, she was wrong. When we're younger we are starting to lean who we are and we develop our self-worth in our younger years. My opinions of myself are still the things they said about me, even though I escaped their words 5 years ago.

Year two rolled around and I continued to develop my social anxiety and people continued to bully me, but now it wasn't just at recess and lunch now; now it was constant. It was before school, after school, before class, recess and lunch. Popular told the year below and the year above to tease me, and they did; It was my hell. Now I was very phased, and now I was hurting, intensely. But still my parents didn't know; and I didn't plan on telling them. I was constantly shaky from my rapidly developing social anxiety and I was way quieter than ever before, if you looked at me I would curl in on myself and feel nauseous. I didn't realise these thing until only recently when I was having a sleepless night and I revisited little Lexi.

But there was one good thing about that year, I met my best friend, lets call her flower. Through my trust issue giving aunt I ended up at our local community hall doing a thing called girl guides. Flower is 2 years younger than me, and when we met at guides, she was the ray of sunshine I needed to ease the storm that was my life, her outgoing, happy, cheerful personality drew me to her. We became friends almost instantly, and for that I'm immensely grateful. I would not have been able to cope if it wasn't for her presence in my life. I honestly don't know if I ever mentioned my bullying to her. But I know for a fact that I was embarrassed about it. 

Year three was the worst year of school for me.

The teasing had progressed to the point where it even happened in class as well as outside of class. This one particular boy other than popular, really had it out for me. I'll name him scout. Scout's mum and mine knew each other, and scout had met the trio, who were three now. One day I was sitting two silver seat rows away from him one afternoon while I was waiting to be picked up, and he started yelling at me to make me move away, I thought it was stupid, so I didn't move away; Instead I moved a row closer; he started calling me names over and over again trying to make me move, but when he saw that wasn't make me feel compelled to move, he decided to say that he would come to my house and kill the trio. You can say what you want to me, but don't bring my family into it; this is when I first notified my parents of the bullying, only that it started in year two, and that scout said he would kill the trio. Salt and pepper who was still in hospitality went to the school and spoke to the principal, (Who did next to nothing), scout denied it and it ended up being his word against mine. Everyone was on scout's side, even the teachers. For a solid two weeks I had people telling me I was lying, and they would shove me, scout would smirk at me and then tell the teachers I said something mean to him to get me in trouble. Eventually I started believing what they said; they made me believe I was lying, and so I 'Confessed" and got in serious trouble and scout got off free. Year three was the year I developed depression and starting hurting myself; in little ways I would hurt myself, I would bang my head against the wall I was leaning on repeatedly, I would pinch and give myself paper cuts, this was the start of some of the darkest years of my life.

Then came year four, it went basically the exact same way as year 3, without the threats of course. I was kicked and shoved almost constantly and I was internalising it even more, my parents never heard a word about it. Until the end of the summer holidays where I got invited to a party, and I only got teased. I broke and confessed to my parents that I was being bullied. I finally moved schools.

It seemed to me that things were going to be good, that they were going to be okay, boy was I wrong.