What Really Matters

As my last year of middle school was wrapping up, I began to worry greatly about how I would survive my first year of high school. I did not have many friends and I was the constant victim of a bully. I did not think it would get any better from here on.

I was wrong. Things would get a lot better for me during my Freshman year of high school.

Shortly during my first year of high school, I surprisingly made a lot of friends who were both in my grade and upperclassmen. I started to find a place where I had a lot of people I liked. I found a place where I felt that I fit in. However, this boy seemed to find his own place in our school. While I was an Arts kid, he was more of the sporty type. I found that I was sitting with a medium sized group of close friends and he was sitting with almost no one. When we would have classes together, he would try the same old tactics on me. (Calling me stupid, ugly, homophobic slurs, e.c.t.) He would also resume bullying me physically. Since I now had so many new friends, what he said did not really matter to me anymore. I did not need validation from him or approval. I did not have to listen to the insults he would try to tear me down with. I, by no means, consider myself popular or better than anyone else, but when I think back to when he would tell me that no one cares about me and that no one likes me, and I think of all of the new friends that genuinely except me for who I am, I think otherwise. As my self-esteem increased, his seemed to lower greatly because he would desperately try to insult me with the usual insults I had became immune to. I continue to have this self-esteem to this day.
The only thing that really matters is how you view yourself. It does not matter what anyone else thinks about you. Even if you do not see it, there is something very special about you. Your bullies see it too, and they are threatened by it. That is why they need to tear you and other people like you down. Once you recognize why you are special and why you are worth more than you could ever conceive, people like this boy will not be relevant to your life.

It will happen. This story is my proof.