As much as I admire them, when I said I wanted to be home schooled, it was not because I wanted to be like my cousins from Alaska, such as my father had thought. When I said I wanted to be home schooled, it was not because I didn't want to get up early or because I thought it would be an "easy way out" of school and it was not because I was work-shy. The reason I said I wanted to be home schooled, when I was eleven years old, was because like many other spirited youth, I had been bullied, teased, and taunted for years and did not want to deal with those angry children any longer.
Kids are mean, it's just in their nature. But some kids take it too far and when someone becomes the target of a sharp, speeding dart that hits the bullseye every single time, every single day, it begins to get personally offensive. It is almost unimaginable being a vulnerable kid, who is continuously picked on, day after day for the nine school months of the year. Ridiculed for "looking strange." Tormented for "sounding different." Those were my school years from grades Three to Eight. Being provoked, mostly by other boys, caused me to fear other guys my own age and set me back socially because I thought I could never communicate with them. I was afraid to. Besides the point, I had always been sensitive anyway. Additionally, most all my family is female and for some strange reason, most of my classmates in my first and second grades, were girls. Ninety percent of my small group of friends were of the other gender as well, which left me feeling teamless. I did not know how to interact with guys. I didn't know how for a long time. I stopped trying, yet I was still faced with them each day. Through the years I only occasionally had a few close friends who happened to be other boys but as time passed, I evolved, thankfully, into the more socially adapted person I am today.
I was born in the midst of a blizzard. At the end of April. It was the end of the 1980's and I was just in time for the demise of big hair, bad music and blizzards in the middle of Spring. What was I getting myself into? The the hospital I was born at is on a steep hill, which of course was coated with black ice at the time of the storm. I got no visitors on my first night in town due to the storm, however, "a night in with my parents is always nice," I'm sure is what I envisioned.
"I am successful, I am talented and I am strong." It wasn't until I was out of high school when I started thinking that I could possibly carry these traits. I didn't start to actually believe them until long after I started repeating them to myself every morning and each night. To this day, I still have a hard time finding self confidence and self love. The first step to self love is acknowledging and accepting each of our own unique and individual attributes. I've always been able to accept others and love thy neighbor as thy friend but loving myself has always been the challenge. I had been worn down early on in my life with negative accusations about my body and what would eventually become my lifestyle. Of course I had my friends and of course I had my best friends but being that young age, the negative emotions always outweigh whatever positivity the day graciously donates. Never knowing what to say, fighting for a lousy reputation… school was confusing and vicious and my insecurities got the best of me. This is my story.
A Journey To Self Love
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