I honestly can't believe that I am writing about this, because it was such a difficult topic for me to talk about for years, but here I am. Kids are mean, plain and simple. Getting bullied is not a joke, and it can really mess up a child's self esteem. How I look at it is that you can either let it break you or you can learn from it.

Throughout middle school and parts of high school, I was never the person to stand up for myself. I always thought that by standing up for myself, I would be acting out in the same way the bully was. Unfortunately, having that mentality caused me to be an easy target and the butt of jokes. At the time, when I was getting bullied, everything seemed hopeless and it really brought down my self-esteem. Looking back now, I know that those kids who were bullying me didn't mean anything by it and that they probably had a lot more life-issues than I did.

Although my self-esteem is still a work in progress, I surprisingly have more sympathy for the bullies than I do for myself. You see, many children don't have a great family life or don't know how to express their emotions, so they take their aggressions out on other people. When we are kids, we don't notice the fact that our bully doesn't have anything to eat for lunch that day or that the bully has worn the same clothes for the past three days, we only notice their actions because those are the things that hurt us.

The truth is, those painful days made me who I am today. While those experiences have shaped me to be a sensitive person now, I can also say that I am very strong and independent because of those bullies in middle school. When I look back at my middle school days, I don't think of the time I ate lunch by myself in the bathroom or the time a girl purposefully tripped me in the hallway; I think about how awkward I was and how I cannot pull off a middle part to save my life.

So, to all of my bullies back in 2006(ish), thank you. You have helped shape me into the person I was meant to be, and I am so much stronger because of you.