"Hey, are you alright?"

Throughout my entire elementary/middle/high school experience, I was bullied. If it wasn't my weight, it was my scars; if it wasn't those, it was something I said. The way I walked. Anything.

In grades 6 & 7, there was a specific group of kids that bullied me, and they had a ringleader. He was always the worst - he tried to start real, physical fights with my boyfriend at the time - and I was pretty tired of it, so I reported him.

Of course it only got worse. But the weird thing - the odd, wonderful thing - was that, a year after these incidents, he apologized. He sent me a message asking my forgiveness for all the things he'd said to me. 

And then, years later, in our junior year of high school, he really floored me: I was tired one day, and I decided to lie on the floor during lunch. He and his friends (the same group that had bullied me for so long) were standing across the hallway, talking amongst themselves. I was lying on the floor, my eyes closed, wondering if skipping class was worth my parents' anger, when someone touched my arm.

I looked up, and there he was. The kid who'd spent a good portion of our middle school years making my life miserable.

"Hey, are you alright?" He asked. He looked sincere. His friend, another big bully, stood behind him, nodding. "Yeah, you okay?" He added.

It's stuck with me ever since, that a kid who was so awful to me and so many others could have such a huge change of heart.

"You're not that pretty, but you're still great."

When I was in eighth grade, I became friends with someone for the first time. I've always been a socially awkward person, but we clicked right away. She was my best friend. 

I struggled greatly with depression. I had breakdowns often and cried a lot. I specifically remember one time she was trying to calm me down. We had been friends for almost a year. 

She said, "People are always assholes to you, and I don't really get why. I mean sure, you're fat and not that pretty, but you're still great." 

I will never forget the time my best friend called me fat to my face.
 

Panda Ears

One day when I was 15, I was walking to school wearing my awesome panda ear headphones. It was very early, the sun was just barely rising, and a guy who was walking towards me stopped me and said, "I have something for you." Confused, I asked what. 

Out if his pocket, he pulled out a panda pin and said, "I just found this. I'm guessing it either belongs to you, or that I am meant to give it to you." 

I'm not sure why, but this made my entire day. I graciously took it and pinned it on my sweater. 

Years later, I still think about that morning, and it still makes me smile. :)
 

"I don't have time for your depression."

"I have enough going on in my life. I don't have time for your depression."

- A very good friend who I'm no longer friends with.

Surprise Lisp.

Freshman year of high school, I was super nervous about meeting new friends.

At lunchtime, I introduced myself to a cute boy.

I said "Hey I'm Kristen" and, instead of introducing himself to me, he mocked me by saying, "You're Krithten?"

I didn't even know I had a lisp until that moment.

Now I am acutely aware of and very self conscious of the way I sound when I talk.

Maybe that's why I don't talk often.

"You should be over it by now"

I was raped last year by someone I trusted with my life.

After almost a year, we spoke again and decided to be on semi-decent terms since we had to see each other at college. 

He expected us to go back to being close and talking and hanging out all the time. That wasn't happening. 

We had a phone conversation once where I told him I had no trust regarding him. He got upset and said that I was wrong for not trusting him. 

After arguing for a long time, he told me that since it has almost been over a year, "You should be over it by now." 

That I should be over the fact that he raped me.

I will never be over my rape. It will always affect me. How dare he say that.

"You should never wear sweatpants. Like, ever."

One summer in my early teens, I attended a co-ed sleep-away camp for the first time. I didn't have a ton of friends at home, so I was thrilled when the coolest kids at camp somehow deemed me worthy enough to be in their elite inner circle. 

It was the early 2000s, and midriff-bearing tops with Juicy Couture sweatpants were super popular. Protected by a cluster of popular friends, I strutted around camp like I owned the place, shrouding my long, gangly legs in sweatpants and mini tank tops. I felt free and beautiful and cool. 

There was one guy at camp who I had a crush on, but I was too shy to do anything. At that point, I had never had a boyfriend or kissed anyone. I got his AIM screen name, and once camp was over I started talking to him online. Maybe it was my newfound confidence that came with my brief stint as a popular girl, or maybe it was the safety of my computer screen, but I got up the courage to ask him what he thought about me. 

It took him a while to get it out, but eventually he told me, "You should never wear sweatpants. Like, ever." 

Apparently he and the rest of the guys all decided that I should not be allowed to wear sweatpants because they looked wrong on me with my long legs. 

I wish I could say that after that moment, I realized what a loser this guy was, and how dare he have the audacity to think he had the authority to tell me what I could and couldn't wear. 

But as a shy kid who just wanted to fit in, I felt like I had done something wrong, like I had failed. I felt ashamed. I stopped wearing sweatpants.

"The ugliest face I've ever seen."

I'm sitting in history and these two guys who I consider my friends sit behind me.

While we're all doing our classwork, the two guys start talking, and eventually I start listening. Then they start talking about me. One of them says, "You know, she has an okay body, but the ugliest face I've seen. " His friend agrees, and the bell rings for lunch.

I slowly pack my things up and go to the bathroom for lunch and just sit in a stall because I can't face anyone.

This happened in 7th grade. I'm now a senior in college, and I will never forget this day.

"You're not going to contribute to the conversation anyway because you're so quiet."

My group of best friends in elementary school consisted of three of us. Once we got to middle school, our friend circle expanded, but I remained a very shy person. My "best friend" would always sit next to me at the long lunch table, turning her back completely to me, while she faced the rest of the group and I sat on the end alone with her back in my face.

She would do this any time we were in a big group. Even at my own 13th birthday party. I had invited a bunch of kids I was too shy to actually talk to. Everyone sat in a cluster with their chairs to talk, and she stuck her chair right in front of mine to block me from the group.

One day, I finally got up the courage to tell her to stop doing this. I guess a tiny piece of me still believed that she wasn't aware of what she was doing, that my best friend couldn't be that unnecessarily cruel on purpose. 

After I confronted her, she said, "I could stop doing it, but you're not going to contribute to the conversation anyway because you're so quiet, so it's pointless."

She never stopped. 

We are grown up now and haven't seen or spoken to each other in decades. I am much stronger now, and have acknowledged that I never deserved to be a victim of her sadistic acts of micro-cruelty. And that she was a completely miserable human being.

But nevertheless, the way she made me feel during adolescence will always stick with me.

"You sound like an evil witch."

My friends and everyone else always loved my laugh. They would tell me that it was unique and that it made them want to laugh, too. 

I remember sitting in the classroom with my friends, doing our work. We had a substitute teacher that day, so it was just fun stuff.

At one point I was laughing so hard that my friends were laughing with me. Then the substitute teacher interrupted and said, "That's your real laugh? You sound like an evil witch. Don't laugh."

The rest of the day I was completely quiet. She was the first person to hate my laugh.