“It makes me feel really upset about myself. My anxiety and low self-esteem are things I’ve worked on over the years but I still take everything really personally.”

“When people don’t like what I do or think anything is different/peculiar, I instantly just want to go into a ball because now I feel like they’re judging everything else about me and I just feel like I’m now not living up to everyone’s expectations.”

“I had a girl tweet about me, calling me a slut and that made me angry because that’s extremely sexist and she claimed to be a feminist but yet she was slut shaming me for what I wore even though what you wear has nothing to do with your personality and I didn’t know her at all.”

Actual accounts of how hate and bullying have affected selected recipients with different personalities. Each were different from each other, and the rest of the world who is considered made up normal.

Do you see, haters? Your dedication to malevolent, idiotic harassment did this to us. Because of you, we’ve all felt small and felt like we had to change ourselves in order to fit in. Your homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, and many others have pushed us to the point where we feel like we don’t matter and we’re not regular humans.

But we are regular and we are human.

We do matter.

How could you hate on a girl who already has so much low self-esteem and anxiety to deal with? Or a boy who you label as gay when he’s actually not just because he likes theatre? Don’t you realize that we have feelings too?

If you don’t, then you are just sad and you need help.

But you know what, that’s okay. Cause right now, we were able to prove you wrong about every lie you said about us. The anxiety-ridden girl? She’s now declaring her path towards stem cell research and has a boyfriend who loves her for who she is. The girl with a face that looks like it’s been hit with a shovel? She became confident in her own skin with the help of true friends who see her as something special. People who identify as gay are becoming housing managers and orientation leaders because they had the potential to be a guiding resource and lead and be role models.

We are not wallflowers in the mist. We have a voice, and right now we’re shouting out to the world who we are. We know what we’re made of and we’re embracing it. Bet you thought your resident assistant had to be straight? Or the disfigured girl would never live long enough to see college because the hateful comments you posted to her Youtube would cause her to kill herself?

“I just let it (hate) get to me for three seconds and then remember what matters most is that I like myself and who I am and what I stand for and that is all that matters.”

“Every time I logged onto Youtube, I started hating myself more and more. Who would ever like a girl like me? I’m too ugly for the boys, too freakish to hang out with the girls, and too deformed to exist. But then I realized, I shouldn’t have to care. I’m me and only I can be me.”

This is our new now. And haters, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. We are strong. We are brave. We became more than you could ever dream to be. And we did it even with you pushing us down.

Beause with each storm, the sun will come out and smile. And with each fall, we rose back up and fought for our place.

And you know what?

We got it.