21st december , 2009, Meera 13 yrs

I had completed half a year in the new school now. I was no longer a new student. It just took time and persistence from my side for my classmates to accept me. Though not many, I at-least had friends now. All of them pretty interesting . Earlier When I was still new in this school , no one gave me any consideration. I was treated as an outcast. Born out of that blatant rejection was a fierce determination to survive. I give the credit of waking up the warrior in me to that school . I was convinced that this new world that I had entered had no space for me , that I had to make a space for myself. So , I started to socialize, the little extrovert part of my personality took over my being . The first people I interacted with were the endemic outcasts of that class, the people who were not considered important in that class soon became my alley. Slowly but steadily, I was learning to fight , to survive ,to make the most out of my current circumstances . All the while, the boy sitting next to me relentlessly made my life hell. It started out with him ignoring me, which was totally fine with me . But as the time passed, his ignorance turned into harassing, be it hiding my things, messing up my notes or making jokes about the way I looked which just hit the nerve. It wasn't really helping boast my self-image at all .It was like a crab pulling me back into the shell where I had lived most of my life. I started dreading going to school everyday. Even the thoughts of seeing him would make me depressed. For the first time in my life I struggled to gather enough motivation to go through each day smoothly. The bullying became worse . The classmates who were actually decent people, never even tried to stop his bullying. It was Apparent to me that I was the only one bearing the brunt of his bullying. Didn't know why . According to my fellow classmates, my nemesis was a very nice, kind-hearted person who never bothered anyone. His harassment was ignored in the name of joke . Gradually the boy who I thought would be my support , became the bane of my existence. Before I knew it, he was occupying the major chunk of my everyday thoughts. He became the center of my world and my life had suddenly started revolving around him. I wanted to ignore him , but couldn't. I wanted to ridicule him, swear at him, but couldn't. I started looking for loopholes in his personality to bully him back . But It looked like he had everything going on for him. He was in school's basketball team, was really good-looking, came from an influential family, and was very popular , especially among girls. Even the teachers were charmed by him .His only flaw was his studies. He was a below-average student especially in social-science and languages , but did strangely well in mathematics. It was just before the half-yearly exams that I noticed him looking fazed. The Mr. cool had lost his calm and though his bullying reached its peak, I could easily read that beneath the surface swam the dark clouds of worry and self-doubt. For the first time I could empathize with him. For the first time I felt an emotion other than hatred for him. I felt sympathy. For the first time I could clear my head of the negative thoughts and focus on the positive things in my life. For the first time in six months I could focus on anything other than him. I could finally focus on studying. Life had become much easier and I was feeling very forgiving all of a sudden . Maybe that was the reason why I showed him my answer sheet during exam, helped him copy a few answers. I scored the highest marks in that exam , and luckily he was able to pass his weak subjects. Two things changed after that mid-term- I was finally aware of my own capabilities and he was no longer my bully.