Mine is nowhere near severe, but it has stood as a very important emblem of strength in my life for me.

For the final four years of my school 9 - 12 grades, I endured hell on earth. I was consistently left out, I got called terrible stuff which I will mention later on, I got used, I had terrible luck, and I was always left out in group projects. People always looked at me with that “WTF” look.

Sometimes it got so bad that I came home crying. My father always tried to help give me a good reason to believe it wasn't personal. “Maybe because you're born of mixed cultures, that's why they leave you out. Mentality-wise, you are not like your classmates. You have different interests and etc”. I get that having parents from two different countries is difficult, but that was never the case. My class had even a more exotic set of people, and they got along well with my class. Maybe I wasn't interested in taking smoking sessions like them and talking bad stuff about good teachers. My mentality was different however. Sometimes even a few teachers left me out.

So here comes the sweet part. I decided to give back to my class what they gave to me. I've decided to do their way and it worked for a while. Everybody gave me the respect I wanted, but I didn’t want to earn that respect in such a way, so I stopped being mean. They used me, treated me like dirt, and whenever I stood up for myself, all hell broke loose. Even today they still take me for granted, but I'm leaving them soon. I had a beautiful friend inside and out who left at the end of 10th grade, meaning I would be alone for a while, until a new girl showed up. It was a miracle saver. At first she was hesitant of me and went with my nasty class I mentioned. She got treated the same way I was. She came to me one day and we just clicked like I had with my previous friend. This was all 11th grade, one of the nastiest years for me. She helped me get through. Cool thing is, I worked harder and I beat most of the people who treated me like crap in the science fair.

12th grade comes up and to be honest it hit the roof with them, but this time I was prepared. I gained so many great friends. In less than a year I became friends with 10 incredible people. I became a sensation for younger classes. All the 9th, 10th, and 11th graders would swarm around me and we would start roasting each other. We had great laughs and even the teachers just joined in during break time. I was so happy because not only were people happy, but also people just like me, who had the same problems, joined in and felt like they were worth something. I truly did accomplish something that day and it wasn't about me, and because of that I began to change my perspective. I've realized that day who are the people I should be spending my time with. During the 12th grade science fair, my friend and I got first place.

While my class was calling me weird, anti-social, creepy, geek, nerd, putting their evil doings in my name, and etc, I was out there trying to prove I wasn't, but the best revenge was when I realized that none of that mattered because those weren't the type of people I should be mingling with anyways. I stopped caring and in the end I may have lost a few battles, but I truly did win the war.

My class mates cussed at me, embarrassed me, and etc, but in the end, my revenge was walking away and finding a crowd that suited me best.