Let's just start out with my name, Aaron. I'm a girl, and was named after my mom's best friend that died of knee-cancer. I've always loved how my name is different than most, and really it didn't even matter till I was in third grade.

You see, the school I went to was (not trying to be racist here, just describing how I stuck out like a freaking sore-thumb) basically an all-black school. My brother, younger sister, and I were one of the only white people. There was only one other, which was Friend. I didn't think she bullied me until I talked to a middle-schooler during recess. Looking back, I find that weird. But then again, she was being bullied at her middle school.

Anyways, I told her about all the cool things my 'friend' did that day- which was me doing both of our work sheets and her throwing things at me. Friend 2 told me that she wasn't a real friend, but I didn't listen. They were the only.two that talked to me, and Friend 2 didn't even go to my school. But as months passed on, I stopped talking to friend one. She kept pushing me down when I played with her on the playground, so I stopped playing with her for the first fifeteen minutes. Friend 2 got yelled at by my teacher and couldn't come and talk to me anymore. So then I spent my recess either walking the wood around the playground or over by the fence and I made an imaginary friend I called Mary.

When some other kids heard me talking to Mary, they called me a crazy fat marshmallow and threw rocks at me.

This went on through third grade till around the end of fifth grade. The teachers didn't care, they just liked that I got honor-roll all the time. That is, until I had a sub for math and she saw me over in a corner singing while the other kids were calling me urine. She notified my mom about the bullying, and after fifth grade ended, we moved.

Now this part isn't about bullying, but I believe it's important to share. Why? Because I made four best friends in middle school. Middle school was the best years of my life, even though sad things did happen. I won't get into full details, but everything good thing came to an end near the end of eighth grade. My grandpa, who had 13 different types of cancer (don't even try to say that's not possible, it is and it's one of the saddest things.in the world. It hurt to look at him, you could see the cancers killing him.) died. The only reason I put this is because when I try to tell my new friends (Im now a senior in high school) they like to tell me Im lying and just want attention. And that hurts. That hurts worse than anything that has happened to me, because he was everything to me. I can't tell you how much he meant to me, i can't put it in words. And now everone thinks I lie about his cancers! That I just use his death as an excuse for people to feel sorry for me! And I hate that, because if anything he's the reason why I DONT use any of this stuff as a crutch.

Ever since he died, my moms been less happy. She still yells everyday over pointless stuff. Whenever I try to put on cute clothes, she tells me to change cause I look like a whore. She tells me that I'm stupid and I have no brain. But I understand that she's hurt. I also understand that she just doesn't want what's happened to her to happen to me. But it's too late. Me and my mom, we've both had sad lives. My grandpa, the one I love so much, used to beat my mom senseless when she was a kid. He realized his mistakes when he was older, he had to too see us, his grand-kids. She was mugged when she was 16 and was tossed down a 50 foot cliff (which was slanted, thank the Lord or I wouldn't be here to share my story) but miraculously lived. She had to re-learn how to walk, write, talk, everything. She was almost raped by her friends uncle, I was raped by my older brother. We have broken souls that we are trying to mend. We've both been left by people we thought were friends. We both helped out people we thought were friends, only to have them ditch us when we needed them most. But we never give up hope. And I hope that no one else gives up hope either. As my grandpa always said, "With great pain, comes great happiness. You go through the pain to learn whom to trust and whom to get away from. In your darkest moments, you'll find your greatest friends. Don't give up because you never know how close you are to the end of one thing, and the beginning of another.

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I hope this wasn't too long and boring. I would have written more, but I found bits and pieces to be irrelevant to what I was trying to get across. Thank you for reading.

-Aaron