Chapter 7. Things Get Worse

I kept my head down, and tried to avoid and ignore what was happening to me. I was targeted. I was the person to pick on, the person to make fun of and the person to bully. I began finding it hard to go to school and I started to resent everyone and close myself in. Walking down the cold school hallways alone was not only difficult but life draining. I started to feel alone. I began to feel unwanted and I knew that people were avoiding me at school because they didn’t want to fall victim either.

I knew two other people at school they were bullied by Leah’s friend Beatrice at another school and had to move schools. For a few days I hadn’t heard from Leah and when I walked past her window, she was sitting on her bed laughing with Beatrice. They saw me and began calling me fat and ugly and then told Leah’s 3-year-old brother who I babysat to call me the same things. The bullying went on and on and I felt like it would never stop. Leah and her friend’s graffitied on the footpath in front of my house, calling me names and drawing fat sketched of me. They threw eggs at my window and yelled names at me at night and in early hours of the morning.

Soon later Beatrice started abusing me over text.

“I’m gunna slit your throat.”

“You don’t deserve to live because you’re a fat bitch.”

“You’re so skinny, I could snap you over my leg… you should be a model.. you obese hippo.”

I decided to stay at my mum’s permanently. I secluded myself to the walls in my room and locked the door. Day’s and day’s went by and I didn’t have the energy to go to school anymore. All the colours in my room were taken down and I sat in my room everyday wondering what I had done to deserve it all. I began counting calories and eating small amounts, I started bingeing and vomiting and then was nauseous all the time. I could tell I was losing weight and I began to feel proud of myself. I continued to do this and made every excuse possible not to go to school. It was later recorded that in my year12 year I had missed more days in that year than I had attended. I went back and forth from the doctors and councilors and was said to have ‘ENDOS’ which basically means ‘eating disorder not otherwise specified’ meaning I was too fat to be diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia. I then lead on the self-harm in places that wouldn’t be seen by others and are still to this day hidden on my body scarred. I felt my mentality becoming poisoned with so many thoughts about suicide. I started eating vitamins, laxatives and purging on a daily basis. I went to school one day to get the work I needed to catch up on the months I had been away. I ran into a Korean guy who was in my form class and he was waiting for his older sister. I met Sherry who was in the year above us and we became great friends. I began to feel the want to go to school and I was excited to have a friend, someone to talk with. However as she was the year above me we weren’t in many of the same classes, I tried to change into a few of hers but I was only able to move into one. So this meant I had to face the bullies and all the other people who were hassling me once again. I was scared and decided not to go to school, I went to my dads café to help them at work and told them I had the day off school. After work, I was walking home and walked past a Korean church and that’s when everything changed.