Bullying: The Plague of Youth

I’ve been a victim of bullying, but I have also been a bully.

My bullying days were from the 1st grade to the 5th grade. However, the way I bullied is in no way comparable to how people do so in Mean Girls. It was through rap battles, and may I say I was a very good rapper. The ability to think about words you were going to say to someone that would have the biggest impact on them fascinated me. Yes, it is in some way poetry, but it has a hip beat ,and I was able to diss people because they had invited themselves to it. It was something I did with my gang outside on the black top. While teachers thought we were huddled around to chat and jump around in joy, I was actually roasting mike* on his chicken legs. This was fun until my life had changed drastically in the 5th grade due to education. But I’ll get into that in another chapter.

So I have been bullied. While I can attribute some of it to my skin color and my appearance, I find I can follow the source to the bully itself with internal fear and intimidation of me. The general population I would hang out with daily switched from blacks whose parents were already born in the US and ADOS ( American Descendant of Slaves) to a more Asian and Caucasian American population who embodied the gifted children population. I had to prove my worth as an intelligent being in order to prevent myself from being swept under the rug. My bullies were usually the popular gifted kids. They were smart but sociable. They were beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside. I was the opposite XD. Now whether that is true today I am not so sure anymore. Kinda had a glow-up ish… Don’t judge XD. Anyways, I do remember the things they would say to me. At the time my hair was relaxed in middle school, it was reasonably short. They would call it “rat tail” and tug at it. It still hurts to this day when someone has to use an food or animal to name hair. At this time, my natural hair friends were being called broccoli head. I also had an uprising acne problem. I was developing acne and people would be scared to look me directly in the face due to the gravity of the situation. I would always go home each night and try to scrub it away, but it never did went away. It never did… ( well as of now, it is almost 100% clear). I also didn’t have that much of a taste in fashion. My daily outfit was made up of a huge jacket, jeans/yoga flare pants, and a t-shirt that was crowded in logos. I wore my hair in braids or in a hair bow if I could pull my hair that close and went to school in lightly scuffed glasses.

And if I had the choice I would relive the worst moment ( 6–8th grade) of my life over and over again. I didn’t have my friend group anymore, I was just getting into higher learning and the gravity of it, and I was an pariah of society. But it taught me so much. It taught me that surviving that stage meant that the harder stages would be easier to get by. It taught me how to develop tough skin for future bullying. It taught me that I needed to build and maintain a higher self-esteem for myself. It lastly taught me that I only get one life to make the most of it and if these years were wasted, there were others I could make it up with.

• I don’t really know a mike lol

— Gabriela Nguena Jones