I hate school.

The toxicity, the need for social acceptance and the stress obtained from my classes.

Ever since my first steps into elementary I had hated school. I can still remember the tears. I shed as my mother would walk away, leaving me in the threatening hands of an unknown being. I would cry as my mother never returned for hours, inflicting the pain of neglection upon my young adolescent mind. As the sorrow continued to linger, it would change my emotional pain to physical as the regurgitation of my breakfast would sting and burn my throat.

Over many years of the same routine, I finally found friends that I could lean on. Through similar hobbies and stories. I found people who could provide me with comfort from the sorrow.

However, 6 years went by in a blink of an eye, and I was again stranded on new land: Lanier Middle School. Far from the origin of my joy, I had no one, not a single person I could depend on. I was surrounded by new people, new faces, and it hurt. I had returned to my original state of fear and loneliness.

Unlike before, there was now a new obstacle: social acceptance. Everyone around me varied from my ethnic and economic background: many had phones, and the majority had already settled cliques from elementary school. As I stumbled through my first year of middle school, I had been teased, hit and yelled at. I was on the edge of isolating myself at home.

But then I figured it out. If no one would befriend me because of my background, then why not be more like them? So in my 2nd year of middle school, I began to act like the people around me. I changed my sense of style, from shorts to joggers, to conform with that of my peers, decreased the amount I spoke, and finally changed the way I interacted with others by adopting their ways of physical interactions such as handshakes or speech patterns. I became part of many cliques and groups, no longer feeling the sharp pain of loneliness. This method allowed me to breeze through the rest of my time in middle school, but as quickly as the happiness came, it left.

Although I overcame the obstacle of being different, I ran into a new wall. This wall, called toxicity, was bigger and much harder than the first. Entering high school, I quickly found cliques to fit in with and people accepted me for who I was. But despite fitting in well with the majority of my new friend groups, there were a few who did not see eye to eye with me. In my second semester, I began to hear rumors that rose up from things I had never done. I was being hurt severely, but I knew to reveal my feelings would encourage haters and give them satisfaction. So instead of acting on my feelings, which would result in a scene, I ignored them.

Words are just words. They will only get to you if you believe they are true, and there was no way I believed anything that I had not said or done.

I hate school just like many of my peers do, but I have an incentive to attend every day and a darn good one at that. My incentive was my friends. The friends that I knew would always support me and stand by my side, even when the whole school is against them. The ones who make me laugh and enjoy the days even when I hear words that target my wellbeing. Those few who gave me that energy to keep pushing on, through the stresses of schoolwork, tests, and drama. They are the friends that give me hope, and who should give you hope too. School sucks, but with the right people, you will learn, just like I have, to hate it a little less.