Nerd.

Useless.

Fat.

Ugly.

Outcast.

Not good enough.

All these words I read with anguish every morning when I woke up. They had been written on post-it notes, taped to the wall in which my bed faced. I would open my heavy eyes, which had been sore from crying, and the first thing they would see would be these horrid words.

Horrid, but true.

I got dressed, caring not what I wore, nor how I looked. Nothing could hide the truth. I didn't even bother to wear my hood up. Why hide my face from the world, when I couldn't even hide it from myself?

I ran out the door, past my mother, hoping she wouldn't notice me. Despite her words of affection towards me, I knew they meant nothing. It was clear to me what everyone's thoughts were. Crystal clear.

When I arrived at school, I stalked through the hallway to my locker, avoiding the sneers and stares everyone was throwing at me. I let them. I knew what I was. I knew I had zero friends. There was no denying it. Why not embrace it? I heard that giving in to the truth helped you move on.

But there was no moving on.

Each day, I added a new post-it note to my wall. With a new word scrawled on it that I had learned that day. Now my wall was covered it pale yellow stickies with black, spidery letters swarming the paper. Letters that reminded me of how useless I was.

Why did I even go to school if I was useless? To distract myself. I didn't want to sit at home lest I begin thinking wretched thoughts of ceasing. Ceasing to exist. I needed to distract myself. For even though I felt that I was wasting precious air, I knew that suicide was wrong. Suicide was the most evil act a human could ever commit. Murder killed a man. Suicide killed everything. It was a rejection of life. It was a "screw you" to one's family, to the good green earth, and to the sacred heavens above.

Suicide was worse than rape. Rape scarred a woman and brought unnecessary shame to her heart. Suicide scarred all who witnessed the body, the loss of a soul. Suicide brought unnecessary shame to those who wondered what they did wrong. Why had this poor soul ended his or her life, and was it my fault?

No, I could never commit suicide. I could not even harm myself. Schools was enough of a distraction. There were the loud and bubbly kids, the sweet-hearted girls, and the interesting enough classes.

And there were the bullies.

That day when I went to my locker and gathered my books for the first class, I saw a group of them nearby. These were boys. Despite their horrible insults given in person, they were somehow less hurtful than the ones given by the girls behind one's back. I despised the fake kindness girls showed right before they rushed to the bathroom to complain about the way so-and-so talked so much, or the way so-and-so wouldn't stop talking about his or her problems. And the fact was, these types of girls didn't really mean to do this. They just lived off of gossip. They couldn't go a day without talking bad about someone because their own lives and ideas were not worth talking about.

Boys didn't care to gossip. But when feeling insecure, they would cover it up by hurling an insult or two at someone who didn't bother to hide his insecurity.

Someone like me.

The first period bell chimed. I was staring at my desk in the science room, waiting for the teacher to arrive. He was always late for first period.

Someone called my name. I chose not to ignore them. I had told myself countless times that the only way to survive the bullies was to pretend they weren't there. I was deaf and blind to them. Oblivious to their words and snickers. But I had not yet learned my lesson. So I turned around when they called my name.

"Why the long face?" a tan, blue-eyed boy shouted, beaming with mischief.

"Awww. Did you not get any sleep last niiiiight?" a short blonde surfer boy asked with a whiny voice and a smirk.

I sighed and turned back around. I hadn't slept last night. I was busy crying and trying to figure out why I was here on this earth.

A useless, dead weight on the good green earth.

That was from Homer's Odyssey.

But a voice broke my thoughts. Usually, I would miss 90% of the bullies' harmful words. The rest I would write But never will I forget these.

"Hey, you know we're joking right?" the blonde boy, Kaleb, called to me.

I raised my head from the desk and looked back at him.

At that point, the teacher entered the classroom and hurriedly started class with huge smile on his face, as always. His smile was so quirky and happy, and I was thrown off by the bully's words, that the teacher's beaming face almost caused me to smile.

Almost.

But as he began to lecture, I got lost in my thoughts. Though I often hated my thoughts, these suddenly seemed important. His words echoed in my head:

You know we're joking, right?

And then I remembered what they had said before, which I had taken so offensively:

Why the long face?

Did you not get enough sleep last night?

Were they...concerned for me? Asking why I looked depressed and sleep-deprived. But why had they asked in such a mocking tone of voice?

Because...because they're insecure.

And I finally understood.

They weren't brave enough to become all soft-hearted in front of their friends. They were so insecure, that they tried to expose others' insecurities to make their own less visible. But they were...human. They had hearts. They had souls and brains and feelings like I did. And when they threw these so-called "insults" at me, they didn't actually intend to offend. They intended to make others, and possibly me, laugh. They were trying to be funny. They were...joking. And all this time, they had been unaware of the fact that I was hurt by their jokes. Not amused. They were unaware.

They had had no idea. How were they supposed to know? I didn't tell them. I didn't give any visible signs, and plus, boys were oblivious to those kinds of things. Did I expect them to read my mind? I did. I thought that they knew. I thought that they were purposely killing me inside. But I was ignorant. I was ignorant of their ignorance. They were ignorant of my hurt.

And even if they were trying to hurt me...even if they WANTED me to feel useless, not good enough, and wasteful...which mind interpreted their words. Who was the one to take the insults instead of throwing them to the side? Who was the person who took each one of their words for gospel and posted them on the bedroom wall to be read every morning?

Who was the cause of all this pain?

For the first time in a lifetime, I realized who the real bully was.

The gold moon loomed in the violet eastern sky. The trees were fading to a dark forest green color. The spring breeze danced over the waves of the gleaming sea. And I was hurrying home after a day of enlightenment.

I rushed up to my dimly lit bedroom as the moon cast a shadow of the tree branches onto my bed.

And as I glanced at the hate notes one last time, a I recollected something strange.

There wasn't a wall behind here. But it had been so long, I had forgotten.

My heart raced as I tore each and every paper from its place and thrust it into the garbage. The thing that I wasn't.

Slowly, what had been obscured by these notes was clear again. Crystal clear.

It was me.

A crystal mirror.

I had covered my tall mirror in these wicked - these false words. And I could again see my human face. My tired body over a tired soul.

My eye caught the stack of stickies on my desk. But before I could throw it away, I quickly snatched one and decided to start a new wall of letters to myself.

But I wasn't going to write "Beautiful" or "Special" on this first slip of paper. I had not quite yet convinced myself that I was beautiful, because of how long I had mistreated myself. I had bullied my poor soul and called it everything but beautiful.

Instead, I wrote a more fitting phrase on the bright gold post-it note:

Has potential.

I stepped back in the yellow moonlight and processed these words. Then I gazed at my reflection in the mirror.

And making peace with it, I smiled.