I'm a bullying victim just because of my fandom - Twilight. I loved it and many people made fun of me by calling me a "slut" and a "whore" just because I like to read a good romance novel. They say that Twilight is for "desperate girls who need a boyfriend" and that the author of Twilight should "die and jump off a cliff like Bella did".

I once found a dent in my car after school because of a rock that was thrown at it. I've been attacked by boys and my bedroom window (I have a one-story house) was painted saying "I'm a bitch". That person got expelled - thank god - but that phrase stuck with me for a while. If people went so far to get expelled to tell that to me, maybe it was true. Maybe Twilight was for sluts, whore, et cetera.

So guess what? I did the unimaginable. I burned the entire Twilight Saga, and I think it hit too close to home. See, my dead mother loved the books so in her memory, I loved them too. I felt like I was burning away parts of my mother that were still in me. I didn't cut because I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I overdosed in my allergy pills that I had to take every morning. I hoped that I would maybe die from it, so that I could join my mother, wherever she was. My father was never around, because after my mother's death, he threw himself into work. I became very self reliant on myself and a little too much. When something hit too close to home, my bases to my structure would collapse. I would collapse.

I almost died in January of 2014. I was driving out late at night and a couple of my bullies caught me. They asked for a ride and they were so nice and gave me such nice complements that I let them. I never had anybody else treat me so nicely, and they even apologized endlessly about how they treated me.

But that all changed within 10 minutes. Then they hijacked the car. While I was driving, one of the bullies grabbed my steering wheel and veered everybody to the right, the side of the car in which I was in. We crashed into a pole and everybody else had some injuries, but I had serious concussions and layers of stitches. I was injured by far worse than my bullies. My cerebellum was damaged so a lot of my coordination had been very off. Here's a flashback on what happened [why it is so accurate is that I wrote them down in my diary]:

"Where you driving drunk, miss?" the officer asked me. I shook my head, and my bullies/killers were sitting behind him, with looks threatening that if I snitched on them, they'd do something worse than get me into a car crash.

"Did your brakes feel greasy?" the officer asked another question, while he wrote down my response to the previous question. I shook my head again. The bullies were still sending me murderous glares.

"Do you know what happened?" the officer asked. I bit my bottom lip.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" the officer asked, recognizing the fear that dawned upon me. I was torn - I badly wanted to tell the officer that it was the bullies that nearly got me killed. But even though they might get expelled from school, they know where I live (thanks to the directory) and would cyberbully me endlessly.

Minutes passed, and everything was silent except for the glares and steamy looks being sent towards me. My brain was screaming at me to tell the officer the truth, while my heart was trying to mute my brain. That my life was more valuable than a couple of names to give to a man wearing a golden, shiny badge and a blue uniform with a black walkie-talkie strapped onto his left breast pocket. My fingers were more knotted than my knitting skills. I was scared, honestly. What would come of this? What would be the result? Is it really worth it?

"Miss?" the officer looked at me concerned. "Are you alright? Do you not want to talk about it?"

And what I did nearly sent my life in a haywire. "No," I said hoarsely through dry lips, a beating heart, and that word knocked the air out of my lungs.

"Okay," the officer nodded. "I'll go ask your accompaniments." My head shot up. Surely, they would make something up, but I saw one of the bullies – BULLY1.

"BULLY1," the officer asked gently to the girl with cornsilk blonde hair stained with dried blood in a few places. "Would you mind telling me what happened during the accident?"

BULLY1's cold and blue eyes seemed to crack and leak a few pearl-clear tears. "Y-yes," she choked. What a kiss-up. "It was so scary."

BULLY1 flashed me a look and for a split second, her broken demeanor changed into an evil one, and my heart dropped into the deepest pits of my stomach. She wouldn't dare...

"It was all Sadie's fault," BULLY1 accused as she raised a trembling finger at me with chipped nail polish. Oh my gosh...she did not... The officer raised an eyebrow and glanced at me.

"Sadie? How was it Sadie's fault?" the officer asked. BULLY1 sniffled.

"We were going for a ride," BULLY1 began. "And she started out so nice..."

"Yes," BULLY2 added, her face looking just as broken as my heart was. "It was Sadie's fault. She...she...she wanted to take us for a little ride. She added some sharp turns and twists here and there and at first, it was really fun."

"But then we got all scared and tried to get her to stop," BULLY1 rambled on. "But she wouldn't and called us all wimps and stuff like that."

BULLY3 caught on. "But she took a wrong turn on black ice that was on the road [people, it was winter] and we skidded into the pole."

"That's not true." I found my voice. My heart was pounding dangerously close to my rib cage - it was going to burst any minute out. All eyes turned to me. BULLY3, BULLY2. and BULLY1 looked at me, daring for me to stay another word.

"Excuse me, Sadie?" the officer asked. "From what the witnesses were saying, you were the one that is being found guilty."

"They're lying." Two words never felt so good in my entire life. Like the sky was lifted off of my shoulders. The bullies' expressions told me that I was looking at my funeral notice right now, but I didn't care. It seems as if I already looked at it half and hour ago.

"Explain yourself, Sadie," the officer demanded. And so I explained myself, about how BULLY4 veered the car off course by force, and how they have always bullied me. I even showed the officer texts they've sent me. The four bullies didn't look ashamed - just their faces were scarier than Freddy Krueger. I didn't stop, though. I explained everything they've done to me. From name-calling to physical abuse. It was like I could finally float in the lake of memories and lies that I've carried around. I wasn't drowning anymore. I wasn't struggling to swim away, because I couldn't. They were always there. But I was floating. And it felt like heaven.

Eventually, BULLY1, BULLY2, BULLY3, and BULLY4 were all sent to a month of prison (or jail. It seems as if I didn't write that information down), but they were out of my lives. I moved school, where I was accepted and not pushed away. I made it out of the lake, in which I was stuck in for so long.

My point is, I know how to tread the memories that will try and drag you down into a pit in which you maybe mentally cannot escape. But if you yourself can't, others can. Three years later, I will wake up from a nightmare every other month, thinking that those four people would come back. And maybe they will. But in reality, I've become a much stronger person, more stable, and I've built up to what I truly am. For you, we all start swimming with a teacher, and we can only get a teacher if we talk. If you can't talk, you're not going to get anywhere. The reason you have friends and adults is because they will help you peek over that wall to see the obstacles that lie ahead of you.

Don't take this as like a verse from the Bible or something, but as something that can change your tracks in life. Bullying is a serious thing that goes up, and makes lives go down. High school was a living hell for me, and today, I still am a Twihard, and I still cry over my mother and my father and I have built a stronger connection that isn't made out of string, but cables.

Find yourself in that lake, and get out of it. Don't be afraid to talk, or to cry, otherwise, tears wouldn't exist. If you know someone or you are someone that is being bullied, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO SPEAK OUT. No one is more or less significant that you because we were all babies in the beginning, and we all came from the same place.

If you want to break something down, it should NOT be a person. Maybe a tower of Legos or something, but NEVER A PERSON. It is thanks to God that I'm here today, writing and studying in medical school.

Thank you J.B. Knatt for giving others this opportunity to share their personal experiences.

"Don't open a door, knock it down so that I can't close on you again." ~ Me ;)