My Life, My Story, My World: Part One

I was blessed with the chance of having a friend that I considered to be perfect. 4

I have always been kind of shy. Not around people I know, just around strangers… and mostly the opposite sex. I had a lot of guy friends back in elementary school, but our relationship consisted of playing soccer and football at recesses and aiming muddy soccer balls at the annoying girls who stood in the net trying to act cute. We never really had a regular friendship. 5

The girls that went to my school were… ok. I was good friends with some of them. But I still didn’t have enough trust towards anyone to tell them everything… I had so many things bottled up inside me. My trust level was low, and I had my own reasons for that. I was hurting so much that I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. I was scared and I didn’t know why. So I started to cut.6

I don’t exactly remember when I started. If I’m correct it was sometime at the beginning of grade 8. I guess all the teasing finally made me snap. I knew something was the matter with me, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone. And I made sure no one found out about my horrible secret. I was good at hiding it. 7

When high school came, I was scared, worried, and terrified of what was coming. Most of my close friends went to another high school, so I was basically alone. Everyone I did know had split off into their own little ‘popular’ groups. So there I was, in a high school full of over 1400 people, and I was all by myself. 8

It continued like that for about 2 weeks. I met some people, but they all turned out bad. Overall I was innocent. I had gotten drunk a few times before, but I had never smoked, done drugs, or slept around. And the people that I had decided to start hanging out with did all of that. A lot. So common sense kicked in, and I left that little group and began to hang out with some girls I had met in my gym class.9

Finally I had found a group that excepted me. They were just the kind of people I was looking for. We all seemed to have the same likes and dislikes, and were the type of friends that I thought I would end up staying with forever. 10

The 4 of us went through a lot. A large fight during a gym class got me pinned against a wall and punched in the back, two girls suspended for a week, and having to get a restraining order so I wouldn’t get hurt again. That wasn’t to much fun, but my friends were there with me the whole time, and were completely over protective of me. 11

Looking back on those days in gym, I always get that warm fuzzy feeling; the feeling of knowing that people actually care about you, and want to be friends with you. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days of sitting on the rowing machines plotting how we were going to get to Toronto to see the Rancid concert we knew our parents wouldn’t let us go to. It seemed so peaceful. And I was finally happy. 12

Convincing myself that I was no longer alone, I stopped cutting. Thanks to my new friends, everything seemed ok. They were like my new family, since I was having so much trouble with my own at the time. The fights seemed to never end between my dad and I. 13