My Story: Being The Minority

A Story by hannah_writes

This is my story about the many years of abuse I encountered from my classmates. In this piece I wrote, you will read through my experiences, the lesson, and the result of everything.

I grew up in a world where fat was gross, and skinny was gorgeous. My family always had weight issues, ate junk food, and dealt with addiction problems. Consequently, these weight issues passed on to me and it has been something that I have struggled with since I was young. Starting in first grade, I experienced severe bullying that started with verbal abuse and later escalated into physical abuse. The abuse I suffered started out less extreme, for instance when kids would make fun of my moles and freckles. They would call me diseased and run away from me and call me a monster. In the third grade, I made a friend. She was what you could call popular but she wasn’t like the rest of them. I thought she didn’t care how I looked, but I was wrong. She let herself remain a bystander as her friends said things like, “Fat people aren’t allowed to sit here” and threw my food all over me; she and her friends laughed as I ran away crying. Another time, the abuse escalated into assault when the same people threw me to the ground after inviting me over, and pinned my face next to a red ant hole. I tried many times to explain and show the evidence of what those kids had done to me but the principal said there was nothing he could do. As a result, I started to find comfort and confidence in food. As close as I was to my parents, I never spoke to them about what I was going through. I felt they would think that the things I would go through to stay away from my tormentors were ridiculous, like when I would drink hot water and make myself throw up just to stay home.

Time went on and as soon as I knew it, I was gaining 40 pounds every 6 months. By the time I was 11-years-old, I weighed in at nearly 200 pounds. I couldn’t stop; junk food became my only escape. The bullying just continued to worsen, I would be left with bruises after being sucker-punched into my stomach and be told to “Just go do the world a favor and kill yourself,” or my favorite, “You can’t sit here, you’ll take up two seats.” I made another friend and we were close for years, but then she became friends with the other girls who bullied me. One day, out of the blue, she said, “Hannah, we can’t be friends anymore, I don’t like to hang out with fat people”. This caused me to start to feel alone and become depressed.

In middle school, this one girl had the same name as me and she loved seeing me cry. Whether I was absent or present when a substitute would call for my name she would say, “Which one? The cool one or the fat one?” Another time during the movie Big Hero 6, she and her friend threw spitballs at me saying, “Hey Baymax!” as the whole class laughed at me throughout the whole movie. In Spanish class, I remember the guys in the class sexually harassed me by grabbing me and tapping me, and I heard one of their friends say, “I would never tap that,” and the whole class would laugh at me. I remember the few friends I had witnessed what had happened and helped me tell the dean. He didn’t believe me at first until he investigated more and found out I was telling the truth. The small punishment they received was detention at lunch for a week. Later on, in high school, another girl would threaten to have me jumped after someone spread rumors, saying I was calling her names. I lost many friends from this incident; including the next friend I had, who stopped hanging out with me because I stopped eating and became depressed. From then on, I chose not to trust people. Although it has been extremely difficult, I have come to realize the lessons that this experience has taught me.

Feeling out of place has brought me challenges and obstacles of pain and diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. All the years of being left out and rejected over my weight have taught me things that were oblivious to me until just recently. With those lessons learned, needed to come optimism and self-acceptance. I now know the bullying has made me more acceptant of minorities, and it has allowed me to relate to their stories. I find different people inspiring, and have realized that people are more than this idea we have of “beautiful”. Everyone should realize that you do not need to conform to society's standards. Now I see that this nine-year experience has taught me to know my real friends, to have a motivation for my education, and to understand family is above everything. It has allowed me to become closer to my faith and has given me a chance to not be a bystander and make a change. I may be different now but that is okay because the tyrannizing behavior of others has opened my eyes to see it is okay to be different. This hatred may have been used as a weapon to knock me down but it has shaped me into who I am today and I am proud of the person I’ve become.