Musical Sanctuary

Music was a source of strength and healing for me. It was the only thing I discovered in my life that gave me any sort of constant peace or joy. I learned very early in my life that music was an outlet for me. Growing up during elementary school, we were assigned music class. I really enjoyed music class in school and when I reached higher grades when music was considered an elective class instead of a required class, I made sure I had music class. I never learned how to play an instrument, although still today that is one of the things on my "To Do" list is to be able to play the acoustic guitar. I did sign up for choir classes though. I have always loved music; since I was a very small child. I grew up listening to a lot of Country Music and 80's rock as my parents listed to that and that music was always streaming on our radio stations. This was in the years when Rap/R&B was not the most popular music and really was not streaming and dominating the radio stations. There were two female country artists that I was immediately drawn to growing up. Jo Dee Messina and LeAnn Rimes. These two women helped me fall in love with country music but I could also relate so much to their music that I was immediately drawn to listening to them. The musical background being shared is helping you, my readers to understand just how important this aspect of my life was to me and why my experience with bullying tied to music affected me so much...

I wanted to be involved with choir through my school years because I loved music and I loved singing along to songs. I would spend countless hours after school or at night sitting in my bedroom, with my window open, music playing (usually country at that time) and I would sing along to the songs on the radio or listen to my CD's. I would spend a huge amount of time doing this each day/night because it was the only time where I could set aside whatever was going on in my life and get completely consumed within the music. This is something I still do today and I need to have music playing no matter what I am doing whether it is driving in the car, doing homework, writing these blogs or cleaning. Music became my "Muse" and it's still extremely important to me today.

I spent my middle school years (7th and 8th grade) consumed with choir class. I enjoyed school for the learning purposes, but choir class was my favorite. My 7th grade year I had the opportunity to meet an amazing choir teacher. I believe it was her first year teaching at my middle school, but this lady took notice to my desire for music and in a small way fueled my desire for music by inviting me go to with some other students who were not all in my class to go sing at a High school event. I felt so special to be asked to go and it made me excited to know that someone noticed my desire for music in that sense. This lady does not know that she had that much of an impact on me when it came to music and funny thing is as an adult, she is now a friend of mine on the social network Facebook. To this lady who noticed this desire, I honestly thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea how much it meant to me for you to notice this and invite me to this event. I hope she knows it is her but if it helps for her to know if she is reading this...I still remember all the warm up exercises we did and my favorite was the "Pa-pa-pa"...I then spent all of my high school years making sure I was involved in choir, I also was a part of my church youth group worship team for a few years during those High school years as well. So thank you Mrs. "Middle school choir teacher from North Jr. High". :)

...The reason I shared all of this is because I had an experience with bullying having to do with music. Back when I was in 7th and 8th grade there were no such things as cell phones, Ipods, MP3 players. We had Walkmans and disc-mans. I had a Walkman that I listened to tapes of recorded songs that I would have to record off of the radio stations. I was given a Walkman from my dad one night when he got home from work. He also gave me a pair of headphones and told me "now you can listen to music on the bus or while waiting for the bus". He told me I had to take good care of it and then he would see about getting me a disc-man when he had some extra money. I was so excited that my dad gave me this and I brought it to school so I would have music to listen to while waiting for the bus and just ignore what people said about me...

I was standing outside the front of the school building and I had a couple girls approach me. They pretended to be interested in my Walkman and wanted to know what I was listening to. I told them I was listening to recorded country songs off of the radio station and they told me "Country music is dumb. You should not have a Walkman because you listen to stupid music". I didn't really care what they were saying because I could turn up the volume and essentially ignore them, which I did. A few minutes later one of the girls took my Walkman, yanked open the tape compartment and broke my tape in half, then proceeded to snap the door off the tape compartment and slam my Walkman on the ground which caused it to shatter into pieces. I was devastated and heart broken. I began to cry and immediately I was being teased for crying...

How could I go home and face my dad that day when he got home from work? I had to tell him that some girls were being mean to me, and broken my Walkman. I had to somehow tell him that I was not responsible enough to keep the Walkman safe. I was trying to show him that I could have something nice and take care of it...Now I had to face him and tell him that his special gift to me was broken. Surely, he would not buy me a disc-man after this...That night I told him what happened at school and to my surprise he was not angry with me but angry with the girls who did it and who were picking on me. I do believe at that point my mom called the school the next day and set up an appointment to speak to the principal about what had been going on with the bullying. The principal did little if nothing about it other than to talk to these girls who of course would not admit to any wrong doing or destruction of property.

Those same girls left me alone for a few days to let things settle down. I think those girls left me alone for about a week before they started in on me again. During the week of "sanity" my dad talked to me and told me that since it was not my fault that the Walkman got wrecked, he would get me a disc-man since I had begun buying CD's of my own now. This was during the time when CD's were just becoming the new wave of instant music from the cassette tapes. I still remember the color of that dis-man. It was a Colby, baby-blue in color. I do believe my dad also gave a me pair of new headphones to go with it...I had that disc-man for about two weeks as I was careful to hide it well from those girls and to only take it out on the bus after I was seated down and so were they. I began to also sit in the very front of the bus so I would be in the drivers viewing distance and hoping the bullying would calm down. It did for a few weeks on the bus, but it started back up when other kids, new kids began riding our bus and all the front seats were taken.

I once again was standing outside of the school waiting for my bus to get there. I had been very careful to conceal my disc-man around those girls. This particular day, I had bought a new CD a few days ago and I was anxious to listen to it; so without even thinking, I pulled out my new Colby disc-man and began to listen to it while I waited for the bus to get there. I didn't even get through  a whole song when one of the girls who helped break my Walkman, ran up and passed me, grabbed the disc-man from my hands and took off around the corner of the building. I didn't dare chase after her or tell a teacher because my fear was that it would only make things worse for me...So, I waited until she came back empty handed. I slowly began my walk around the building. I began to see little black pieces of plastic and I started to get teary-eyed. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw my brand new CD broken into pieces...I looked about 30ft in front of me and here I see my prized possession broken into 4 big pieces...I began to cry. I was so angry that I wanted to kick the crap out of this girl, but I knew it was not possible. I had wished so hard for someone to do to them what they were doing to me because I was being picked on so badly and for what? For who I was? What clothes I wore? What music I listened to? It didn't make any sense to me...

That day I did not get on the bus but I walked the mile home with the broken pieces of my disc-man in my backpack. I cried the whole way home. I was so distracted by my feelings and what happened, that I almost got hit by a car...I came right to my dad bawling my eyes out and had to again tell him that my prized possession that he got for me was now in pieces in my backpack...He tried to fix it for me, but it could not be fixed. It was at that moment that he told me that I was not allowed to bring those things to school anymore as it was not fair to have them wrecked by kids who were mean and didn't know the concept of respect for others.

This memory sticks out in my mind a lot because it happened over the one thing I felt no one could take away from me, my music...I began to listen to music even more, with almost everything I did because it was the only thing that brought me any glimmer of sanity from the bullying and I could just be me.

I think that this is also why music is so very dominant in my life today and has been for many years. My genera in music has expanded a lot as I listen to all types of music now and I have the strangest music collection. I still listen to a lot of country music, however, I have opened myself up to other forms of music that I once hated or could not stand such as Rap/R&B and Hip-Hop.

My hope is that no one would ever go through something like this as I did, however, if you have but in the place of the disc-man/Walkman, it was an Ipod, MP3 player or whatever new music technology is available then you know what I am talking about. I pray that no one ever has to deal with that, the humiliation, devastation, and sadness I felt at having those thing taken from me and wrecked for doing nothing to anyone but "being" there...I don't want my readers to think that everything I ever owned got wrecked from bullying because it didn't, however, a lot of those things did.

~Melissa

Childhood Fondation

 

This is the remodeled version of the house I grew up in. This remodel was done after my family moved out of our childhood home. The house originally had two-toned paneling. The top being a dirty gray color and the bottom being a scary version of the 70's dull yellow. Here is a photo of what the paneling looked like before it got completely remodeled...

 

This was the house that became our childhood home the summer of 1992 when we moved in. When we moved into this house Miranda was 8, I was 6 and Heather was 2. We literally walked into a 70's house. I kid you not old wood floored living room, ugly kitchen tile floors, old cabinets as our house was over 100 years old. Each of our bedrooms had different 70's color carpeting. Heather's room had some long, dark brown carpeting, my room had the orange citrus shag carpeting that reminded me of orange vomit. Miranda's room had like baby blue shag carpeting. Our hallway came complete with ugly, worn out green carpeting that reminded me of a hospital lobby carpet, only spinach green.

This house would not be the quote "ideal" house but for my parents it was an affordable 4 bedroom house that was big enough for our family. My sister's and I were happy with the house because before then we were living with my grandparents while my parents closed on this house and before then we were living in apartments with not nearly enough room to run and play; not to mention that we did not have our own space that we could just be alone or with friends if we chose to do so. When I had the incident of bullying on the school bus with Tommy, this was the house I ran home to which was two blocks from where my bus would drop me off...In the top photo of the house, the window on the top left (when looking at the photo) was my bedroom window. That was my small, yet personal sanctuary from the world around me. I spent many days in my bedroom and at times my family would even forget that I was home after I was old enough to drive and had a car...

The next memory of bullying came from kids at school who knew the house that we had lived in and knew that most of the time the house was not spotless but "messy". My mom was and still is a pack rat and the house was always cluttered with junk and things that should have been thrown away a long time ago. When any of us kids had friends come over, we usually brought them up to our rooms because it was quite embarrassing to have such a cluttered and messy house all of the time. My sisters and I did do chores but when they both started to not do theirs when they got older, it fell on me to do my chores as the girls didn't really care to do them or care to get grounded. It was far too much for my mom to do on her own or myself to do and not have my sisters helping. The only time they did house work on any sort of regular basis is when they wanted something whether it was money, a friend to stay the night or to go somewhere...Growing up we also had parents who smoked. As far as I know, my parents have smoked since before we were all born. I later in my teen years started smoking as my sisters did too, but growing up it was also kind of embarrassing having a house that reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Aside from my one childhood best friend that I met at Seberger Park which was a local park about 3 blocks from our house, I was quite embarrassed to have friends come over to our house...

As a result, I attempted to bring a few friends that I did manage to make from school over to play a few times but they were shocked at the messiness of the house as well as the stagnant smoke smell. It grossed me out too and made me feel so bad because I always smelled bad growing up. I would get teased by kids at school because I would always stink like smoke and they would tell me that I smelled of rotten food and that I needed to take a bath. No matter how much I bathed, I could not get the smell of smoke and mustiness out of my clothing. I began bathing each night and soon I was showering each morning instead of before I went to bed. Kids teased me a lot about those types of things, things like the smoke smell which was beyond my control. I would spend countless hours cleaning the house as much as I could as a kid when I had a new friend from school who was going to come over to play with me.

There was this one girl I met in the 5th grade. Her name was Abby. She was like me in a lot of ways and was not the most popular girl in school and some people teased her because she was an early developer. Her body hit puberty early and she developed breasts before most of the girls our age were out of our training bras. :) Those were the days of luxury and no bras... :)

Anyways, I invited Abby over to hang out after school one day of our 5th grade year and her mom finally said yes to her coming over after we had asked her for quite some time...We hung out and just played games, played outside and everything that 5th grade girls do...A few hours passed and Abby's mom came to pick her up. Abby's mom was shocked when she entered our house and saw that it was so cluttered with stuff but mainly she was disgusted at how stagnant the smell of smoke was. My parents smoked in their house, always had done that, so naturally, the house would smell of smoke...But anyways, Abby's mom made some comment about the smell of smoke and then Abby left with her mom. We continued to hang out at school and after a few weeks, Abby wanted to come over again to play. Her mom told both of us that she would not allow Abby to be friends with me anymore and that she could not come over anymore because she did not like her daughter coming home smelling of smoke...I did not understand why we could not be friends as growing up in that environment, I was far used to the smell of the smoke and really didn't notice it anymore other than when someone was actually smoking. I also didn't understand why we could not be friends because of something I had no control over...I was a kid, I didn't smoke, I was not a trouble maker, I was a good kid and really loved school...But because of a choice my parents made, I ended up losing a childhood friend. Abby and I still spoke at school but soon after her mom forbid us to see each other or be friends, we soon stopped speaking completely and I once again went back into my shell of a person with my one childhood friend who came over all the time. This friend's parents didn't mind or notice the smoke because they were smokers themselves...For years I was so bothered by what Abby's mom said and did to dissolve our friendship that I was even more scared to make friends and I never wanted to invite them over either...I also developed this issue of going to friends' houses or spending the night because I felt every one of my friends' parents would tell their kids they could not play with me or be friends with me because I smelled of smoke and because my parents smoked...This fear developed into this huge issue I had for years where I would refuse to spend the night anywhere away from home, not even stay over at my cousins house for the fear of being away from my family...The only place I would be willing to stay was at my grandparents house because I knew I would have fun there and they paid attention to me a lot which was also something I struggled with was finding my place within my family and feeling wanted and accepted by my family...That's a whole other issue not related to bullying at this time, however, I may share bits of that in the future if it ties into an experience of bullying I had went through...

I want parents and adults to know that each choice you make when you have kids not only affects their lives in the moment but also their lives in the future. Please do not ever try to get in the way of a good friendship that your child has with someone. If it is a good friendship and your child is happy and having fun, why would you want to take that away from them? It not only hurts your child but it can cause other issues of doubt and insecurity in the future. Try to preserve those friendships because they are so hard to find good friendships but when you do or your kids do, it can and does mean the world to them. Of course there has to be limits if you feel uncomfortable with something, but then there are alternate ways to ensure your child is not exposed to that...You can allow your child to play with their friend but only at your house and not at theirs so you can monitor what goes on...But please NEVER, EVER take a friendship away from your child if that friend is a good friend. You never know what kind of affects it could have on your child or the friend later on in life. Please also don't speak negatively about anyone in front of your children. Not only is it wrong to do that, but it does get repeated and can be very hurtful to the person hearing it about them. If you feel the need to speak about it, please do so after children go to bed or when children are no where around to hear your thoughts and opinions. Words are the most powerful weapon and they can hurt worse than the sharpest object you could harm someone with...Train your tongue to not speak hate/hostility; instead train your tongue to speak life, value and praise into the lives of the children around you. :)

Riding the Bus

The earliest memory of major bullying that I remember happened while I was riding the school bus home. I was in the 3rd grade and attended the local elementary school. I had been receptive to bullying in the form of name calling prior to this incident, however, this was the first time anyone had ever gotten physical with me and I with them. Back in the early 90's the bus was sectioned off into particular spots for particular groups of kids. The back of the bus when I was in school was considered where the "cool and popular" kids sat. If anyone who was not popular or cool sat in the back of the bus, they were told to move and if they refused, then the kids would pick on and beat up the kids who refused to move out of the seats. Riding the bus was terrifying for me for the most part because I was always picked on by both girls and boys. Throughout my years of being bullied, girls bullied me more, but on this particular day, there was a boy who had been picking on me for quite a while. This boy was a year or two older than I was and I will call him Tommy for identity purposes...

Tommy was one of the more popular or cool kids and he enjoyed picking on kids like me who were not popular and kind of kept to ourselves. Tommy had been saying things to me for quite some time but I had ignored him for the most part. I was taught to ignore people who were mean and not react to them as that's what they look for is a reaction to what they are saying or doing. Over the course of about two weeks that I can clearly recall even today, Tommy would call me names, make fun of how I dressed, what kind of backpack I had and anything of the sort. After those two weeks, I was so sick and tired of hearing the degrading things from Tommy that I finally lost it with him. We were about ten minutes into our bus ride home (which was a total of about 20 mins between all the stops), and Tommy was saying mean things about me and my family. He didn't know my family and just said things for the sake of saying them. I let him just run his mouth and I tried to ignore him until he started talking about my parents...He looked me straight in the eyes and told me that "Your parents don't love you because you are very ugly". He proceeded to tell me "Your mom must be ugly or was a whore and slept with a lot of different guys to make such an ugly baby"! At this point I was on the verge of tears but I was determined to not cry in front of him as that would show to him that he was right...I tried to get up and move to a different seat but Tommy stopped me as I stood up and he proceeded to take his backpack and hit me square in the mouth with his bag that was filled with hard cover text books. He broke one of my front teeth in half and I started to bleed as the chunk of tooth fell into my hand and I started feeling the nerve pain and instantly got a headache...At that moment, I lost my cool and had enough of his crap. Mind you that I am only in 3rd grade (8yrs old), so I looked at Tommy after the initial shock of losing my tooth and I clocked him with a closed fist right in the nose! He began to bleed and by this point there was a ton of commotion on the bus and the bus driver had to pull over and find out what happened. The driver wrote both of us up for fighting and said that our parents would be notified.

After I got off the bus at my bus stop, which Tommy's stop was 2 stops before mine, I ran the two blocks home and as I was crying I told my mom about what had happened and cried because my tooth hurt so bad and it needed to get fixed...About an hour after being home, we hear a knock on our door. It's Tommy's mom and she wants to speak with my mom and she is not in a good mood.

His mom was upset because Tommy came home with a broken nose! I did not know I hit him that hard, hard enough to break his nose until his mom had said so. His mom demanded that my parents pay for Tommy's broken nose to get fixed and all the doctor bills that came with it. My mom was so furious by this request after she and Tommy's mom discussed what happened on the bus (not in a friendly manner mind you) "If you want me to pay for Tommy's doctor bills for his nose that's fine, but then you have to pay for my daughter's dental bills to get her tooth fixed that your son broke"! Tommy's mom was completely appalled at this request and at my mom for suggesting it. Tommy's mom said that she refused to pay for my dental bill to fix my tooth. My mom responded by saying that if she refused to pay for my tooth then she refused to pay for Tommy's nose...In the end, my mom and Tommy's mom agreed to pay for their own kids' bills and that we are not to be near each other on the bus anymore...

Tommy, I feel learned an important lesson that in turn got us kicked off the bus I believe for 2 or 3 days...But Tommy learned to stop bullying me and to leave me alone completely if he wanted his nose to say intact. :)

...Now, I am not promoting fighting by any means but when you tell an adult as I did several times to the bus driver and he told me that he could not technically do anything until he saw Tommy doing something to me, I felt I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands...It should have never gotten to that point. We are supposed to feel safe and protected at school and on the bus...My experiences were never those of safety and protection but fear and tension.

Bullying can and does happen anywhere at any time even if an adult is monitoring children. Kids are sneaky and will find ways to do it and the threat of an adult potentially watching them does not do anything. I feel that each bus should have not only a driver but at least one bus monitor that can monitor what goes on while the students are on the bus. This will not eliminate bullying but it can cut down on how much and how often someone is bullied. But the most important thing to be learned from this experience is that if a child tells you something is being done to them or that something is wrong, PLEASE DO NOT take it lightly because by the time they are coming to you to make you aware of it, the bullying has gone on for awhile now and they do not know how to deal with it on their own without fighting back. PLEASE listen to the children and try to stop bullying before it gets to the physical level.

~Melissa

About Me

Hello,

My name is Melissa. I wanted to write a blog about the affects of Bullying. I know that this is still a huge issue today and most people overlook it or believe that children and teens will simply work it out and that it is normal, that all people go through the phase of being bullied at one point or another in their lives.

I am here to tell you that YES Bullying still happens today and what made me want to write this blog was seeing my 7yr old niece being bullied by the kids in her apartment building. I also recently talked to someone who had a teenage daughter who was getting bullied and asked for people to comment on Facebook about if he as her parent should get involved in the bullying and try to stop his daughter from being bullied. I hear about this topic at least once a day and I see more and more movies and documentaries popping up about this issue and feel that it needs to be addressed and people need to be aware that this is still going on very frequently.

I have dealt with a lot of my own personal bullying from other people through my grade school-high school years. Memories that I wish I could forget, erase and not have to think about any longer or have triggered when I hear about this topic but that is just not the case. I have taken the higher road and never tried to commit suicide from bullying as I did not want to actually die, however, it caused me to have very low self-esteem about myself growing up; I began to become very guarded and distant from people and it became extremely hard for me to make friends.

To give you a bit of background about my life so you can kind of follow along, here are some things to know about my life growing up...

I have five people in my immediate family. My parents are married and have been married for 26yrs. I am a middle child and did experience the classic "Middle Child Syndrome" growing up. I have two sisters; one older (Miranda) and one younger (Heather). When I was growing up, both of my parents worked full-time to provide for us. They both worked in the morning during the week. Miranda was very hard to get up in the mornings and Heather who was only 6yrs was far too young to get herself up in the mornings for school. At the age of 10, I became responsible for getting both of my sisters up for school because both of my parents worked at 7am and left our house around 6:30am to get to work on time. This left me to make sure that both of my sisters were up and getting ready for school after my parents did the initial round of waking everyone up. Most of the time, my older sister did not wake up and I had to use tactics like hitting her with a pillow to get her out of bed otherwise she would not get up. Not the best way to wake her up, but when nothing else works, a pillow will, then you have to run for your life as she chases you down the stairs yelling at you for hitting her with the pillow to get her up...Even though she was angry, she was still up and out of bed...Mission accomplished. :)

Miranda and I would constantly fight over who was going to shower first as I had managed to eat breakfast even before getting her up, so naturally I would want to shower afterwards...It was a losing battle, so I decided to shower in the mornings before I attempted my awesome pillow "alarm" system that seemed to work with her.

Heather was almost always awake during this time once my dad woke us up initially but most of the time I would have to feed her breakfast (if my parents had not done that before they left) and get her dressed and ready for the bus (on the days my parents worked-which for my mom she I believe had maybe one day off during the week if that). Hard to say for sure as I do not remember exactly what they got done as far as that stuff before they left; I just know that I had to make sure that Heather was dressed, fed and out to the bus on time most of the days for school. So essentially at the age of 10, I took on the responsibilities that a parent has for their children. I never felt bad about having to do it, or felt angry for having to do it at that time because it was just how it was, and that's what needed to be done. I was the daughter who loved school and hardly ever missed school. My parents knew that I would be the responsible one and I was...I think that's why I was given so much responsibility was because they knew that I could do it and that I would make sure Heather was on the bus at the right time and that my older sister was at least a wake and had time to shower if she chose to...At that time, it was hard to "make" Miranda do anything she did not want to do, and especially coming from her younger sister, it was so not happening. But at least I was able to get her out of bed every morning for school even if it meant flying down the stairs unsure if I was going to get whacked for whacking her with a pillow to get her out of bed...Lesson learned for her...Get out of bed to either your alarm going off or dad waking you up so you don't have to get whacked with a pillow... :) We joke about it now, but she wanted to "kill" me then...Oops, oh, well. :)

I never made friends easily in school because I was shy and I was also picked on a lot. I came from a family who could not buy my sister's and I name brand clothes or things. Those things were just too expensive and my parents could not afford them. I rarely got "new clothes" as most of my wardrobe consisted of Miranda's hand-me-downs. We did get new shoes each school year but they were not name brand ones, but they looked just as nice and were just as cool. We grew up accustomed to not having the latest "in thing" and we were so happy with the things we had and on occasion when we would get those things for either our Birthday or Christmas as gifts.

All three of us grew up learning the value of a dollar and were taught that if we really wanted something, then we needed to work for it because it's not as rewarding or fulfilling if we get everything we want handed to us. For me, I thought my parents were trying to tell us in a sentimental way that we could not have those things because they could not afford it; which in a sense I know now that they were but I think the valuable lesson is that when you want something bad enough and you work hard enough to get it, you not only learn of the value of that thing you desire but also the value of hard work and the satisfaction that comes when you are able to finally obtain that desired thing.

Growing up, it was hard to not be envious of Miranda because she has a different dad than Heather and I do. My dad has been Miranda's "Father" since the age of 1 when my dad met my mom and stepped in to take care of Miranda as his own daughter. But around Miranda's pre-teen and teen years, her biological dad began coming back into her life a lot. Miranda's dad's family was well off and could buy her all these cool and fancy things. They bought her cool clothes, jewelry and took her on trips(something our family has never been able to do). So when she would come home from a week with her dad and her grandparents on her dad's side, it was hard not to get envious of all the cool and exciting things she came home with. I knew at some point the clothes she got would eventually be mine once she out-grew them, but by then they would probably be worn out or stained and not as cool. Growing up I was envious and wondered why Heather and I could not have those things too. I did not understand the concept of having money, I just thought that everyone got cool stuff and every family took family vacations, but not our family; not because my parents did not want to, it's because we could not afford to do things such as family vacations. A family "vacation" to us consisted of spending the weekend at my grandparents who live about an hour from us or the couple times we managed to make it up North to my Uncle Jimmy's Cabin...

Middle school marked the most horrid years of my life...I will get into that later as I will post each experience of bullying as a separate post unless if they go together, then they will go in the same blog post. During high school, teens are so anxious to grow up and move away from their parents, I was too. I moved out when I was 17yrs old (the summer of my 18th birthday but not yet 18). I did not have the opportunity to take Driver's Ed classes when I got into High school as I was a year behind Miranda and my freshmen year, the district took out Driver's Ed classes. This meant that I would have to pay for driving classes which costs roughly $250 at that time. I did not have that money and neither did my parents, so I had to wait until I got a job at the age of 16 so I could pay for the classes myself. I chose not to pay for the classes as you learn how to drive when you are behind the wheel, so I waited until I was 18 to get my license. My neighbor and dad were kind enough to teach me how to drive at 16-17 so I could get my permit. I bought and paid for my first car and each car I have ever owned.  I had learned very early on that I would have to work my tail off for whatever I wanted in my life. I began my first job at the age of 15 aside from babysitting jobs where I worked the concession stand at a race track during the summer months. My first paycheck job was when I was 16yrs old. I worked my first retail job after school. I have been working ever since.

Since I was so "dependable" and responsible, I was always asked a lot if my parents could borrow money from me. At the age of 17, my parents owed me 1k of their tax return money for money they had borrowed from me to make ends meet during that year...This had been something I could never grasp why they had to borrow money from me and could not manage their finances and because I was more of a push over and a people pleaser, I maintained the peace and gave them the money that they asked for...Something that as an adult today I know how to say no about that and no longer feel bad about saying no to people. I never understood why I had to borrow my parents money as don't get me wrong, they have helped me out financially through my college years; but back then when I had no bills and wanted to save my money, I was angry that I had to borrow them money and at times even today I still struggle with this anger. I did what needed to be done to help them get by as I felt that's what families do and did...

There are things in my life even at 28yrs old, that I still cannot grasp or understand about my past, but the experiences I went through with Bullying and being a push over are two of the things that I have learned a lot about and want to speak up about them and share my experiences as well as bring awareness to this huge issue that is affecting the lives of many people, young, old, all alike. Please feel free to comment and/or share your stories and I will respond back as well as you can read other's responses and respond back and I will post the comments in the comment section. Please no negative comments as they will be deleted and not posted. Please be respectful and know that you are not alone in this. These are my experiences with Bullying...