Pain I felt.

Before I was in 5th grade I was confident and happy, I was me.

Starting in 5th grade I had to go to a different school district than the one I been going to for most my life at that point, so I was desperate for friends. I had a friend that knew that, his name was Eddy, he treated me like garbage pretty much every single day and he even stole most of my lunch every single day. I never told an adult at all, I just thought in order to make friends I would have to put up with it.

That went on until 6th grade, except that year I didn't bring lunch or buy lunch at school. My reasoning is that if I don't have lunch it won't be stolen from me. I kept hanging out with the same group of friends that I did back then and I even told Eddy that I am his slave. I felt like a slave, like I had to do every single thing he wanted me to do. Eventually he started to do more than just say things to hurt me. Eddy started to do sexual things to me during class and 1 time after school he wanted me to show him what was under my underwear. I felt super embarrassed and hated it, again I never told anyone that could do anything. I forgot about this for the longest time, I guess I repressed all of it.

7th grade Eddy had moved away and I felt I could finally be free. For awhile things were good to be honest, 8th grade I started to feel bullied again, but this time it was a different person named Devin. Devin always called me stupid and I felt I could never say anything that would make me seem smarter.

However 8th grade also had another person, a person named Daniel Pope, he sexually abused me a lot in the locker room and I was scared to bend over, because he would grab you and push himself upon people. I wasn't the only victim, but since I was small and he was a lot bigger than me, I couldn't fight him off.

Starting 9th grade I hung out with different people and I kept hearing people call me stupid and at this point I was a shell. I basically went day by day and pretty much got used to it.

10th grade is when the first time people started to make fun of my sexual orientation and I just dealt with it.

11th and 12th grade is when I started to write and draw in a journal how I felt, it was nice. Whenever I was with my family I was a different person, basically I pretended I was happy and everything was great at school, (This has been going on since 5th grade tbh) The only time I was truly able to be my full self was when I was alone in my room. I started to talk to myself at this time, like I had full on conversations with myself and I created my own best friend. I didn't really have a name for the friend, I just knew that they were internally in me and externally around me at the same time. I started to have black outs at this time, where apparently I said some really nasty things to people at school, but I have no recollection of it.

When high school was over, I stayed being the same person I was in high school and never felt able to open up and be honest with anyone except myself.

This was until I had a friend named Alex and I started to open up more and that didn't last too long tbh, though I thought it would be forever.

College started out as a easier high school for a little bit, however I didn't fully start to allow myself to be completely vulnerable until I met Brandi in a business class I had. She was openly bisexual and when it was just the 2 of us I was able to open up and I finally felt safe to be completely myself around her. She got me to get out of my shell, she also noticed something that I didn't grasp at the time. She noticed that when I was around men I tended to be a lot more shy and quiet, but when I am around just girls I was able to open up and be more social.

I didn't really know that and that really opened my eyes, which I should have been able to understand since I was on Tumblr at the time and most of the people I chatted with were girls.

I still did talk to myself when I was at home in my room by myself, I started to learn more and more about myself, like Brandi opened me up to the point where I could finally learn about myself.

This was all prior to 2016, which 2016 is the year that I came out as transgender.

I never really knew that basically from 2000 until 2015 or so that I was dealing with a lot of pain.

So, I guess high school was when I made up a personality and best friend that is still with me to this day, Erika which she wasn't named Erika until 2016 though.

She has been with me for many years and she was the only person to stand up for me for the longest time