There came a time during my life when I had to stop and ask myself if I had friends or if I was just kidding myself. 

It all really started when I was in year 3, and my best friend became controlling, a bit like an abusive relationship. She'd argue with me non stop and make me feel rubbish, and wrong and as if I was the one at fault and she would go off with her new friends. I had no one, so as soon as I started to make friends she'd come sprinting back and do it all over again. When I really tried to break free from her in year 5, she got half of our year involved in bullying me, taking things about my appearance (the darks hairs that cover my body due to PCOS, my weight even though she was of similar build and so much more). The teachers noticed and did everything in their possible strength to sort it, but it started happening in class, at home, out on the playground and I still fooled myself into thinking she was my friend. 

When I started high school it got a lottle better at first, my form tutor tried to stamp it out with this same girl but all of the people she had encouraged to bully me at primary school, continued to do so into high school which landed me a detention for belting two of them round the head when I had a break down in the dinner hall. My bullying got so bad I physcially isolated myself, I hid away at lunch times in certain teachers classrooms or in the safety of a room I went in due to my illnesses, I refused to go to several of my lessons and if I did I spent most of it unable to concentrate due to these girls being so close and saying things across the room. This was when the girl I had been dealing with from day one encourage all of my supposed current friends to do it, all through my last two years of high school. Part of me was lucky as in my last year I fell ill and was homeschool for the last 5 months, but I shouldn't have had to feel that way at all. The bullying became extreme, to the point I was having things posted through my door which I tried to hide from my mom but she found some first and I even got as low as considering the extremes of self harming but had the strength in me because of, and I know this sounds sad, but because of my horse, not to do that. But the school I attended did nothing for the bullying, didn't, haven't and I know people still there now they aren't helping, so I try to help them myself. 

A turning point for me came when I chose to cut ties with all of those horrible people and memories from my past. All of the people who had been part of that horrific 9/10 years of my life, and I went to college, a college I knew no one else was attending to do something that made me happy. And I'll be damned but appart from my ill health, this is the happiest I've been in 10 years. I'm in a working and learning environment where bullying is not tolerated, but that doesn't even matter because every single person I have met at that college is unique, they have had a story to tell, they have been nice and friendly and I cannot have asked to meet a better group of people. 

I want to be able to help others out there to change their lives for the better, to have a focus, a drive, to get them through, because I know just how difficult it is, I have been there, but I am so glad that I am the one that came out on top.