My name is Mimi, and I am a thirteen year old girl who was born in Malaga, Spain. This is an introduction of my life:

Throughout the course of my life, I have had the advantage of being able to have experienced multitudinous different occurrences, some of which would even take me out of my comfort zone, teaching me how to thrive as a person. Such as: being bullied, both by my acquaintances as well as by my teachers, have been lucky enough to have gone out into a private jet and flown to Tangier, Morocco, followed by an absolutely breath taking, glorious, five star hotel with my family, and overall, having being blessed with a beautiful new baby brother a few weeks ago.

I find that bullying has had a very large impact on my life, due to the fact that because of all the bullying that I had gone through, I had become the person I was at the beginning of the last academic year; a person with very low self esteem and self confidence. The sort of bullying that I went through was abhorrent. I did not only go through physical bullying (which is one of the most common ways of being bullied from where i'm from), but I also went through verbal bullying.

As far as I can remember, all of this mistreatment started when I was about nine years old, in year 5. The story goes as follows:

When I was nine years old I only had two friends. These two friends of mine never behaved like proper friends, as they used to slap, punch and pinch me very often,as well as insulting me, and making me feel terrible about myself. I always stuck with these two 'friends' of mine as I did not have anybody else to hang around with. This was the first of the many mistakes that I had made throughout the time I was bullied.

It was about two weeks after the new academical year had started, and I was, as usual being made fun of because of my size and features. When suddenly, one of the most popular girls in the school came up to my 'group' and told my two 'friends' that they shouldn't bother hanging out with me, they should go with her instead, and of course, as she was the most popular girl in school, therefore more influential that anyone in school, she got those two 'friends' of mine to go and hang out with her for the rest of the year so that she could make fun of me all she wanted, and I wouldn't have anybody to defend me (not that they were any good at defending me).

After I had a whole year without those two people, they came crawling back to me because that girl had ill-treated them and they 'regretted' having left me. For some stupid reason, I let them be my friends again-I will never forgive myself for doing that due to the fact that because I did that, I let them be nasty to me again, and give me a harder time than I was already having.

After a year had passed, two new girls had joined our class. They were some of the biggest bullies I had ever faced. They were rude, ignorant, violent and loved seeing people suffer, therefore did whatever they could to make my life a misery. There was one incident which happened concerning them two and I which I will never forget:

There was a leek in our classroom, therefore we were forced to go down into an extremely stuffy room, with no space. In that room there were fourteen people-six boys and eight girls. During the middle of the lesson, the teacher had to leave the classroom to go get some papers that she had printed, leaving us by ourselves.

As soon as the teacher left the classroom, those two girls started whispering to a boy that they knew I liked and then gave him some money. As soon as they had done so, the whole class, followed by the boy that I liked, turned on me and started calling me horrible names and telling me things such as 'you're the fattest girl in school' or 'you will never get anywhere in life'. One of the boys was about to open his mouth when the teacher walked back in, and everything was quiet again-or so it seemed to the teacher. My classmates were sending notes around the class under the table.

After this occurrence had happened, things just got from bad to worse; I got 'prank' calls almost everyday, the name calling got intolerable and the physical force that my 'friends' used on me was getting stronger and stronger.

After a few years, I started high school, and as i live in a very small place, we all went to the same high school. This school was by far the worst one I have ever been to due to the fact that the teachers mistreated me and my acquaintances where worse than ever (by now i had more or less gotten used to everybody in my class). I once had a particularly bad teacher. She taught me Spanish and Arts. She was such a horrible person that not only did she shout at me and embarrass me because i can't draw, but she sent me to the headmaster for it. Another time she made me stay a whole hour after school had ended (until 6:30) because she claimed that hadn't handed in my homework, even though i had handed it to her myself! After a whole hour of disputing on the subject she had the initiative to check her file, only to find out that my homework was there the whole time. The worst thing of all was that she then proceeded to shout at me for no particular reason and told me to leave, without apologizing for wasting a whole hour of my life!

After a few months at this horrible school, my father invited me to go with him to Tangier, Morocco, and it was thanks to that trip that i'm out of that school and now in my current one. That trip completely saved my life. It was only because we were at a restaurant, having lunch, when I started talking about school and how badly I was treated there, when suddenly my dad decided he had to get me out of that beastly school.

A while after i had left the school, i was bullied more so by my two 'friends', until one day i decided to give them the 'silent treatment'. I didn't talk to them for about a whole month, until one Saturday afternoon, when i was in the park, sitting down on the grass, doing nothing, as i didn't have any friends anymore, when they came up to me and demanded i tell them why i was ignoring them. As soon as they had said that i immediately stood up, gave them a piece of my mind-told them what i thought of them until they looked as if they were about to cry. After about a minute or so, the pair of big bullies came up to me and started shouting at me, so i immediately started shouting at them, as if there was no tomorrow, and they also slowly backed away, looking as if they were about to cry.

Ever since then things have gotten a lot better than they were before. They don't punch, hit or pinch me any longer (or at least most of them don't) and now that i'm in a different school they can't hurt me emotionally and physically as much as they used to.

1) Moral of the story-if somebody is being nasty to you in any way, always inform somebody trustworthy who you know can help, such as a parent, guardian or even a friend.

2) Moral of the story-You are all amazing! Have faith in yourself and never let anyone push you down!