A rant and a note to my ex-classmates in Chennai.

It's been 3 years since 7th grade ended and my life took a turn for the worst. If you've ever bullied someone or just called them names for that matter, please think like three times before going along with it. It might just destroy someone's life. Some people have thick skin, so name calling doesn't bother them as much as others. Sadly, in my case, I wasn't actually expecting it to happen to me. I was always the happy and bright girl when I was younger. I used to love making friends and it was very easy for me to make friends. After I moved to Chennai, almost everyone at that school was cold to me because apparently I was an alien from Mars. I soon did find a friend which brought me to talking to everyone in the class. I don't know what happened but one day, one phone call to ask my ex-close friend what happened at school got me crying the whole night. I was absent that day and all I wanted to know was, what happened that day at school and if there were any tests coming up. She told me that everyone hated me now. I swear I still get goosebumps when I think about my exact reaction when she told me that through the phone. I had absolutely no words. I've always been a bossy kind of person but that kind of faded away once I came to Chennai. There was some disgusting rumor spread about me by this guy. He supposedly did it because I didn't reciprocate the "feelings" he had for me. After a while, when 8th grade started and my ex-close friend and that guy had left that school, two girls who found a friend in me, told me the girl I was close to actually helped that guy in spreading those rumors. I think that's when I realized that trusting someone was probably never going to come easy for me anymore. The two girls always stuck with me and talked to me and called me their best friend but I found myself pushing them away mentally and not even trying to see them as my friends. To me, just the idea of moving from Hyderabad after staying there for 8 years was a daunting thought, but I didn't even think that I would ever be the victim to incidents of emotional and some physical bullying. To this day, this thought of what happened there scars me. I've not been able to move on because in my head, this unfortunate incident will be something that shall be highlighted for ever. My mother used to call me her 'Little Miss Sunshine' when I was younger because I used to be a fun-loving child and I probably never stopped smiling,  but now me smiling has become a milestone. She says that I always had this light when I was younger, and after this incident, she saw that light slowly dimming and becoming darker and darker. Now I just want to tell those classmates in Chennai that, yes you did make me feel weaker emotionally and yes, you did bring me down a whole lot, but from today onward, I make a promise to myself that I WILL try to let this stay in the past, and not let it destroy my present and my future. To anyone who has ever bullied someone, if that was 5 years ago or 5 weeks ago, please just apologize. Mean it when you say sorry. All you get from this is the pleasure of hurting someone, but what goes around, comes around. To anyone who has been the victim of bullying, realize that you ARE special and that the obvious reason people do this is to somehow prove to themselves that they are better than you in aspects. They do it because they think of you as competition or just a threat. They think, seeing you succumb to your emotional problems will make you weaker. It actually does, but getting up when you lost your balance is how we learned to cycle, and that theory applies to this as well. If they see that this affected you a little, but not enough to bring you down entirely then the immense pleasure they thought they would get from this is all going to come crashing down. You ARE strong enough to walk away from this and be in a zone of happiness.