Words can hurt.

"Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me"

FALSE.

Words always seems to affect me the worst. When I was younger and used to get picked on, there was this "feeling" I would always get. I'm not sure how to describe it, other then painful. I would feel hurt/betrayed/unwanted/uncool/helpless, and basically just felt like a loser. I would go into this "stage" where all the hurtful words would come shooting in my ears, thats all I could hear, and that's all I could think about...Years of this "bullying"/"verbal abuse" went on until l I finally removed myself from it all.  The Summer when I lost weight, gained confidence, and tried to get closure from my "painful past" was a great summer. Since that Summer, yes people have said hurtful words to me. But, nothing compared to the amount and strength of the hurtful words I have heard before..

This is the crazy part...About a week or 2 ago, by accident I clicked on a picture. It was of me, I couldn't believe why on earth this girl who I didn't know had a picture of me? Underneath the picture was comments and comments of mean,hatred,degrading,awful, and hateful words. I honestly was in shock. I could not stop scrolling farther and farther down reading these nasty comments. At that very moment, as I was bawling like a baby...I felt that same feeling as I did years ago. It was devastating.

What bothered me the most was that these girls didn't even know me. They didn't know"my story". They don't know what I deal with. They don't know all the trials that I have been through. All they knew was my name is Ashley. Those girls didn't know I have spent years working my butt off to be healthy and fit. Instead they decided to just call me "fat". As I saw other pictures getting uploaded, of when I had surgery.. and reading their comments about the surgery "they thought I had", when the truth was I was scared out of my mind praying that the results would not show up cancerous.

What I am trying to say is this: Girls have a strong tendency to judge others. That is the way we make friends. We put others down, so we can look better. We lie about others, so we can seem to be better. We agree to comments about others we may not believe, so others will like us. We all want to be liked, so possibly putting others down will help our dreams come true? No. I know what it feels like to be bullied by vicious girls. 19 years of hearing comments, it does not get easier or better. You can't get used to the mean comments, you just can't. I hope and pray with all my heart those girls who made fun of me last week, just stop. I hope karma doesn't turn around on them. No one deserves to feel the pain and insecurities bullying causes on a person. If you make fun of others to make yourself look better, I have pity on you. What kind of person are you trying to gain friends, while shattering other innocent girls' hearts? Next time, you think about making fun of someone, think about how much you know about them. Think about the reasons why that girl may look/act/ or do the things she does.