Bullied to Blessed
How one kid heavily bullied growing up joined the military and became blessed through it all
When I was four years old, I was excited for school, ready to meet new people, make new friends, the whole social thing. Sadly, things took a very unexpected turn: I was constantly bullied by the kids there because I was different. I wasn’t very smart and was even suggested to go to special ed because the teachers said there was something wrong with me. Talk about a confidence killer. There I was, sitting in special ed all that time in elementary school on the shores of Hawaii. As a military brat, you can never adjust to one spot as you are constantly on the move, so Hawaii lasted for only seven years of my life.
I then moved to Illinois where the bullying only got worse, and I was having family struggles because I wasn’t that smart when it came to school, which only added fuel to the fire. The fire stayed lit until I moved to Georgia during my pre-teen years, where hazing was eventually included into the bullying. I was the skinniest kid in my classroom, so I was always the target for the bigger kids. I then moved to Alaska a year later, from middle school to high school, where negative influences really kicked in due to the people I met and then bullied me because they believed I was weird and retarded.
At that time, I only had a few friends who actually understood me, those few I missed when I left Alaska three years later to move down to Oklahoma, but had I stayed in Alaska longer, I probably would’ve committed suicide as it was just too much. Journeying through Oklahoma and Georgia, the bullying was still heavy, but lessened over time; I didn’t know how to act properly to get a good jumpstart. It wasn’t until senior year that things slowly looked up.
After I graduated high school, the military came into my life, and with it also came very negative people who came from different walks of life, so I was really on my own. When I deployed for Europe and Asia in 2012, the people I was around were the only people I knew and hated/loved. Stress levels were really high, as we were in combat and suicide was only one trigger away, as we were always loaded. Luckily, I persisted. As time passed by, I got out of the military, and here in this period of 2019 at 27, if none of that stuff happened, I would never have been this resilient, courageous, or willing to inspire others. The moral of the story here is don’t let the past affect your future; if I can get through all of this, you can too.
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