I was bullied.
It was 2010, and I was just starting to get the hang of
being a high schooler. Having red hair made me stand out more than I already
did. What they said, what they thought was funny bounced around in my head. The
girls, blonde and brunette, were gathered around by the bathroom located in the
main hallway, laughing and having a good ole time. Being vulnerable and
self-conscious, I fixed my hair, pushing my newly cut bangs out of my face,
straightened my gray “I’m Not Short, I’m Fun Sized” shirt, and put on the best
fake smile I could muster up. I pushed my way through the crowd, that’s when I
heard the names for the first time.
“Fire crotch!”
“Tampon
head!”
“Satan!”
“Is it natural?”
“Or did you do stuff for men to get the money to get that color?”
The taunts were relentless.
One day, I walked in the kitchen as my mother was hiding an
envelope in the pile of bills, letters, notes, and cards that sat on our
kitchen counter. “What is that?” I asked her.
“Oh, it’s nothing Caroline. Grammy and Grampy just sent me
something.” She said.
I waited until my mother went upstairs and then opened the
envelope. Newspaper clippings came fluttering out and on to the granite
countertop. In big, bold letters, the headline read “DIABETES AND YOUTH.” In
the margin of the article, my grandfather wrote “Show this to Caroline.”
I didn’t think I could reach a lower point in my life. The
girls at school thought I was a whore and my own grandparents thought I was
fat. Not knowing how to react, I did something I never thought I would have
done in a million years.
Walking into my underwater themed bathroom, with the dark
blue walls, I felt like I was drowning. My breathing grew heavy as I closed the
door quietly. I searched every drawer in the bathroom, looking for the relief I
needed. Once I found my brother’s extra razor blade, I let out the breath I
didn’t know I was holding in.
Placing the blade on my wrist, I knew it would bring up too
many questions if my parents or siblings found out. Pushing my capris down to
my kneecaps, I had the perfect view of someplace no one would see. I placed the
cold piece on my left thigh and drug it across the skin.
There was blood, there was pain, but there was no relief.
I thought that maybe if I did it one more time, there would
be more of an affect. I drug the blade once more across my thigh, but nothing
happened. I stopped the bleeding and went back to my room, not knowing what was
to come months later.
It was July of 2010 when One Direction was put as a band on
the British version of the television show The X Factor. Being an American, and
living in Indiana, I wasn’t able to actually watch the show. That was, until I
used Twitter to tweet out my love of Prince William and England. Using the
hashtag “#British,” I followed the trend which led me to a Twitter page
dedicated to One Direction. My interest was sparked and I clicked on the first
link that I saw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm4iwnFAt0Q).
May of 2012, my brother, while at Wabash College, got a
girl pregnant. She hated my family. She threw eggs and Chinese food at our
cars, would call non-stop at crazy hours of the day, and sent me death threats.
It got to the point where my brother didn’t feel safe and moved to Ohio without
telling anyone, leaving my family, and me, to deal with the backlash. The name
calling started again, worse, and I didn’t have anyone to turn to. Except for
One Direction. Their music transported me to a happier place, a place where I
wasn’t labelled for the color of my hair, my weight, or my looks.
To this day, five years later, they are still my saviors.
No matter where I am or what I’m doing, they’re with me. Not just in my heart,
or sappy stuff like that, but physical items: a phone case, bracelets, t-shirt,
and so on. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t have to listen to their music
to make me happy, just one look and a smile is plastered on my face for the
rest of the day.
Five guys, Harry Styles,
Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson, became my best
friends, the ones I trusted with the outcome of my life. The way I feel about
them makes me believe that nothing could bring me down like I was before. I’m
afraid to think about what might have happened to me if I never created a
Twitter profile or tweeted about my love of the Royal Family. I think about it
often, however, but when I do, the only thing I remember are the five faces that
saved me from the hole I was falling into.
