Everyone knows that bullying is a horrible thing, but no one really gets how the person being bullied feels unless they were bullied too. I am 16 years and from 5th grade all the way through middle school, I was bullied and it left a huge impact on me. I felt completely alone and unwanted like the whole world was out to get me. The girl that bullied me used to be a good friend of mine and then she just did not like me. I was doing okay when I was in 5th grade but when middle school came things took a turn for the worst. I had a best friend named Sarah and we had been friends since I was three and she was two and we were inseparable. The girl that bullied me got my best friend to stop talking to me and it completely broke me I didn’t understand why she would not talk to me. I would say hi to her in the hall and she would barley even acknowledge I was even there. Never in my life had I been so sad. However, I pulled through losing my best friend, became closer to my other friends, and felt I was going to be okay. I was beyond wrong. Things just got worse and worse she would say things to me when no one was around, I became afraid to go into the bathroom alone. In 7th grade I developed this thing I called my “mask” every minute of every day I wore this “mask”, pretending to be happy. I started to feel like I had no one, I mean my friends were there for me but at times I felt like they were talking about me behind me back. I was on the verge of being depressed; I felt depressed but somewhere inside me, I told myself that if I gave in she would win. Therefore, I sucked it up and put on a happy face trying not to let her get to me. In 8th grade, things got better but she would still take any chance she could get to put me down in some way and I always seemed to take what she said to heart no matter how many times my friends told me not to. Things felt like they were getting better in 8th grade as well but there were still times when she would tease me and find ways to hurt me. When I entered high school, I felt freer because the school was bigger than my middle school and I didn’t feel like I had to worry about her every second of every day. Now at the age of 16 I still have problems with being insecure about everything and feel at times like nothing is going right. However, being bullied the way I was changed me, I wanted to be myself and not have to hide and now I could. I was free.