I've Been Changed | Teen Ink

I've Been Changed

July 25, 2013
By Anonymous

It used to be fun, until the day it happened to me. It all started in the sixth grade, it was the first day of school and I was with a group of friends and we noticed a girl walking along the sidewalk towards the school so we approached her, my friends started pushing me towards her. My heart was racing, my face got red and warm, and my palms started to sweat, I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t want to do it. Finally, I got close enough to touch her, I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I tapped the girl on the shoulder and she turned around, I started up a conversation and towards the end I started calling her names and making fun of her, at last it got to the point where I got so mad because she just stopped talking to me, so I brought my fist back and hit her. I knew right then and there that everyone was waiting for more, so I hit her again, and again, and again until I felt like everyone was satisfied. After I had calmed down, I knew that I had just made the biggest mistake of my life. The next day I tried to find her and apologize, but she was no where to be found, I finally found her two weeks after the incident and I apologized and tried to explain, but she told me she understood why it happened and she wasn’t upset. I was glad that she understood. A few weeks later everything was going good, I still felt bad for what I had done to her, but everyone seemed to have forgotten that it happened and one day I was walking home from school with the same group of people that insisted that I hit her, and out of nowhere the girl and a group of people walked up to us. Instantly I had a bad feeling about it, the girl advanced on me, closing the distance between us and then she swung at me. I didn’t like the way I felt after getting hit a few more times, I felt embarrassed, and upset that everyone was letting this happen to me. After the girl and her friends left, I abandoned my group of friends and walked home alone, soon after I got home I realized why she did that, she wanted me to feel the same way I had made her feel in front of everyone. After that day I stopped hanging out with my original crowd and I found another group to hangout with and they treated me better and kept me out of trouble. Ever since that day, I stopped picking on people, and fighting for no reason. In the end, I realized that I only did it to make my friends happy, not myself. Later that year, I saw a group of outcasts, people who didn’t fit in with the social classes formed by kids at school, they were being picked on for the way they dressed, looked, talked, walked, and the way they did their hair. I was sick of seeing those same kids being bullied and harassed almost everyday so I walked over to them and told the group of kids that were making fun of them to stop, they just laughed at me for defending the kids and I stepped closer and told them if they didn’t stop they would regret it, they stepped away and left the kids alone. For the first time that year I felt amazing. Proud that I did something good and helped a group of kids. From that day on, every time I see kids who cant defend themselves against bullies, I stand up for them. I made a difference.



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