Day After Day.

• Teresa Nguyen, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2013

The pain in your eyes, the way you carried yourself
Swimming between waves of depression and loneliness
The aching in your heart
The names you got called, labeled, judged.
Day after day you used to cry yourself to sleep
Day after day you felt you were nothing, worthless
Believing no one could possibly love you
Your sanity was so deteriorated
Sometimes, your silence was your last cry for help
You tried to fix yourself
But depression isn't something you can easily escape from
But still, you fought the names, you fought the sadness
You tried, so hard, but the passing days got worse
You sunk in your grief, falling deeper and deeper
You couldn't talk about it
It built up, getting larger and larger
You could feel your defenses breaking, slowly, surely.
You were a freak, trying to escape from what you were
Thinking you really were meant to be 6 foot deep
They would never understand
They thought it was funny
Cornering you, poking mean jokes
It was all just fun and games to them
And yet, you was shattering, falling, by simple words
How you were dying, mentally
They had been such a negative impact on you
"Loser" "Pathetic" "Ugly" "Useless"
The cruelty was unimaginable
They would never truly grasp how broken you were
How much you were hurting inside, how your soul was decaying
They would never understand why you were the way you were
Why you were a wedge between conversations with another person
You were suffering so
Afraid of talking, afraid of even opening your mouth
Because everything you did or said
They would just become more reasons to make fun of you about
Would just be used against you in an unfair fight
The names spun in your head, rewound, played, rewound, played
While others slept, unaware of the damaged they had caused
How much havoc and chaos they had caused in your mind
You would look at yourself in the mirror
Were you that ugly? That pathetic? That useless?
That much of a waste of space?
You erased yourself
Void of emotion, an empty lifeless shell
But even so, you didn't give up
You wondered why you didn't quit when everyone forced you to
You wanted to prove to them
That they were WRONG
That none of it was true
Why you were still standing, barely, but standing
In a landmine of hateful comments and spiteful rumors
You wanted to believe
That you were not what they called you to be
That you were a lost cause
That you were never going to make it in life
It ISN'T TRUE
Why else would you still have your life intact?
Why else would you still be here?
Because you fought, you fought for the right to your life
And guess what?
You won that battle, you aren't nothing
You are a someone, a someone who survived.
Bullying.
And after all that, that person was me.