School Trauma

My life was at its worst when I realized that my feelings initiate towards the same sex. I had fallen for my best-friend and I didn’t really care. I was only really worried about my future love-life and family life. She moved away and I told her about everything my life has suffered including my sexuality. She took it well and said she’ll always be there. It wasn’t until my first year of High School that I began to see the fate of gay youths, well different youngsters. People took me as a lesbian at sight.

My appearance was and still is very masculine. I wore strange things and acted very different. I’m a shy person and really quite unique. I didn’t have friends. I would get called a ‘dyke’ and a ‘women muncher’, I only heard it when they were near me and I could lip read or they used sign language. Then a girl came up to me and tried to comfort me, it worked, I fell into her pit and she saw my scars and rainbow pride bracelet. She let the secret lose. I got people hitting me, fooling around, and signing rude remarks but also just hating on me and reading the stereotypical shell of me.

I hated it, I had bullied before at my first school for being, different. But despite all the hatred, even some of my teachers hated it. I found an adult I could trust, my science teacher. She saw all my bruises and scars but she also recognized the kid’s remarks and jokes about me. She told me to stand strong. She saw that beneath my depressed, sad and shy shell, I have everything. Instead of walking round school scared, she told me to come to her room every day between breaks and she’d teach me and help me.

Behind my back she had set up a campaign in school she wanted me to run. The ‘We Do Give a Damn’ campaign, she introduced this place to the school and to me to make a difference. Ever since I have helped my school to be accepting of those around us and see the discrimination. Now I’m known in school as ‘Angel’s Apprentice’ and all because I found someone who gives a damn.

Being different in any way at school is so hard but being a homosexual or transsexual is by far the toughest experience of youth. If you are one of these bullies or someone who hates against our kind, don’t think about it. I cut and I tried suicide. You could have caused the death of a twelve year old girl. If you are one who is experiencing what I went through, find someone to trust and create awareness within your life. Thank you. I give a damn. Do you?