A/N: For AP Language. Enjoy

Thank You

Tears blurred my vision as I raced from the classroom, making my way to the bathroom. I looked around, ensuring that there was no one else around. Heaven knew what those kids would say if they caught me crying. Through my tears, I caught a glimpse of myself through the grimy mirror.

Why didn’t they like me, my ten-year-old brain questioned over and over again. This was a question that I would ask myself many more times.

“Horsey girl!”

“Neigh!”

Their cruel taunts echoed in my mind. Looking back, it was admittedly partially my fault that this was all happening to me. I was the new girl, my fifth grade year being my first in Florida. I had wanted so badly to make an impression on my new classmates.

And I did.

I had talked, incessantly, about the only thing that I was truly passionate about: horses. Every conversation for me was an opportunity to prove my vast knowledge on the subject, to show off my first hand experience with horses.

I remember watching Black Beauty in class, and quite rudely commenting on how it should be Bay Beauty, as the horse wasn’t really black. I feel that it goes without saying that this was not something people really wanted to hear.

That year, my confidence went way down. I endured teasing and abuse of every sort. Yet I clung onto hope, onto the idea that all I needed was my friends, and I would make it through anything. It would be a few more years before I realized that sometimes, it is your friends that cause the most pain.

I went into sixth grade with a confident front. I thought myself to be all that and more at the time. My confidence, brought down by my fifth grade classmates, slowly started to build back up. Still, in the dark recesses of my mind I was worried, I still felt that I was worthless. And it was that lack of confidence that I still possessed that drew her to me in the seventh grade.

Her name was Jane. In the start of seventh grade, she had immediately attached herself to me. I didn’t really know why, but who was I to argue? The girl was nice, funny, and popular. And she liked me! She treated me as though I was the coolest person in the world, and I never questioned her motives. I was young and silly, or at least that is my excuse. I wasn’t about to give up a friend, especially since those that I had hung out with the previous year had started to drift away from me.

It was in the middle of the year that she started showing her true colors. Not much, mind you. A sly comment here and there about all that she could do. I could sing? Oh, she was an amazing singer, when she tried, that is.

Now, it was in my nature to want to be good at something. I needed to know that I had some purpose, that I wasn’t saw this in me, I suppose. She knew exactly how to play me. She would bring me down with harsh words, making me run crying. And then she would be the greatest friend ever, treating me once again like a queen. She knew that I needed a friend, even if it was a bad one, and she knew that as long as she allowed me to, I would follow her like a lost puppy.

The pattern continued in eighth became worse. She would never allow me to be better than her. When I got a better grade, which was more often than not, she would tell me that she could have gotten a perfect score, but she didn’t want to. Every little accomplishment of mine she tore down, stamped on. She would turn my elation into melancholy, never allowing me to forget that she was far superior to me.

In English, we had ‘vocabulary groups’. I always was in her group. One day, she wouldn’t allow me to be with her group, even though her group could have had one more person. She left me alone, without any friends, forced to go through the humiliation one feels when they are the only one in the class without a partner. I went to the nurse, under the guise of having a stomachache. I went home crying, telling my mother all that had occurred.

“She’s my best friend, but I don’t really like her.” I thought to myself.

It was with this thought that I realized just how stupid I was being. Was this friendship? Was crying over your best friend’s actions what I wanted? Weren’t friends supposed to be there for one another, not bringing each other down?

This, I decided, was not friendship.

A few weeks later,Jane sent me a note during class. It told me that she didn’t really want to be my friend anymore, sorry.

With a start, I realized that I simply didn’t care anymore. Since the fifth grade, I had slowly been developing a tolerance for metal pain. I had slowly built up walls around me, bringing confidence with it. Those walls were finally in place. I no longer cared what others thought. I had cared for far to long and it had brought me only was the straw that broke the camels back, giving me that final push to cross that line to indifference.

It is odd that those events helped build my confidence in the long run. They helped teach me that sometimes, it just doesn’t matter whether anyone else likes you. Words from teasing students no longer hurt me. They merely make me laugh at the stupidity of the person.

So thank you fifth grade bullies, thank you Jane. For you all contributed into turning me into the confident, more tolerant, and better person that I am today.

A/N: Names have been changed to protect the bitchy and stupid.