When I was young I had a pretty bad experience in my early elementary years. First day of Kindergarten I made my first friend at school, and that’s the beginning of everything, my earliest memories of school. She was a girl in my class, who would severely bully me. She wouldn’t let me speak to other people and if I did she would scream and swear in my face. She would say really terrible things about my family that I probably should not repeat, my mom even called her a stalker. It got so bad to the point where at the age of 8 I would have panic attacks every morning before school. Back then I was really young and I didn’t know how to stand up for myself so I would just let it happen. This went on for 5 years (K-5). After that experience I had not really had a bad friend until grade 10, I became friends with this one boy, I am just going to call him Carter. Carter and I became close very quickly to the point that we would talk everyday, all day and he knew every little detail about me. He was my biggest supporter especially when I went through my first heartbreak, he always managed to cheer me up and boost my confidence. He was always there for me to talk about anything. It honestly was great for a while, I even became close with his other friends and he became close with some of mine and we were a big friend group. We all went out together many times to different places, hung out at eachothers houses and it was super fun honestly. Unfortunately that didn’t last for long, Carter started to change. His ego grew very large to the point it was insufferable to be around. He also started to put us girls down so much and so often, for example “as a joke” he would literally tell me to kill myself so frequent that it would make me cry every night. He would make comments on my appearance, my interests, my personality. It was quite damaging to my self esteem, especially for a friend to say that everyday. He overall just acted like him and the other boys were just more important and above us girls and it really pissed me off. The other boys too would just sit there and do nothing to help us. They knew what was going on but they would just support Carter. When I started dating my boyfriend, I was still friends with them and they genuinely bullied him, calling him physically abusive to his face (which was a lie they literally just made up), making fun of the way he looks, calling him mean nicknames. To the point it made me so angry I hung out with them less, it mainly really was just Carter that was the meanest but they all supported him as usual. They all just worshiped him like he was this god or something and then all the boys just ghosted all the girls. I must say I do miss Carter from time to time but without him in my life it was as if this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Soon after that they found some new editions to their friend group and what other people would tell me is that they told their new friends that we girls did something so unforgivable and so awful to the point that they couldn’t be around us anymore. The thing is though, he never said why, never said what we allegedly did. Those boys are still friends currently, they will laugh at me on the bus, give me death stares in the halls, two of them even sent me a lovely candy cane gram saying “I miss you” on it:) and they all just refuse to talk to make amends, it's just silence. The worst thing though, one of the boys did something so gross and everyone knew it was wrong and they still supported him, said gross things about women in support of him and just made me lose any tiny amount of respect I had left. To some, this may all just be petty drama, which it is but honestly it has taught me so much about the kind of people I choose to be around, before I would let people walk all over me and I would give chance after chance until it would completely drain me. Even if you have been friends with someone for a while isn’t a good enough reason to stay their friend if they treat you badly. No one deserves to be treated badly by a friend or a significant other especially if all you did was care for them. I have learned from my mistakes and I hope in the future I will not encounter something like that again.
Sarah.S
13 Comments
The world is heating up and we all know it. Climate change is being driven by natural causes but more predominantly by human impact. It is said that the world will have an irreversible state of damage to the climate in 11 years. The question is how are we affecting it and what can we do to fix it? Climate change has been happening for decades but it has been ramping up due to population growths with more demand for goods and high consumerism rates. Climate change is a spike of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere and getting trapped causing heating of the planet. The planet's surface temperature has changed 1.18 degrees celsius since the late 19th century according to NASA, which is a crazy amount of heating in so little time. We are seeing these impacts by huge weather swings and rising water levels. Global Warming is especially dangerous to the ocean and its creatures. One of the biggest problems is coral bleaching, which is when the algae leave the coral reefs causing them to die because it is one of their main sources of food. Why is this bad? Coral is home to more than 25% of the ocean's species and if coral is dying there will be no home for those species. Another issue is the ice melting and splitting in the Arctic, causing polar bears to fall into the water and potentially die because they can’t make it back to solid ice. How are we affecting this? The main way we human beings have been contributing to this massive problem is our huge carbon footprint due to our reliance on machines since the industrial revolution. We have used fuel as a main source of energy for a long time and burning it causes a mass release of carbon dioxide into the air. Factories, cars, airplanes, and boats are just a few of the things that we use fossil fuels for. Some cities even use fuels such as natural gas to generate power for their entire population and their homes. What can we do to prevent this? The obvious ways to end this problem are by getting solar panels on your house or buying an electric car, which yes is amazing but isn’t always a viable option for everyone. One of the best ways to reduce our carbon footprint and lowering global warming is by buying locally and products with less packaging. Buying locally means that your goods don’t have to travel halfway across the world to get to you and don’t require to be transported by boat or plane. When we buy products with less packaging less plastic gets produced, which means a factory isn’t polluting the environment by making unnecessary plastics. With all of this considered it is quite obvious that our planet is in a state of crisis and there is not enough attention being brought to it. Our world is at risk and we don’t have a ton of time before it is too late to reverse. I urge you to start making small changes in your life and think before you just say yes to that plastic bag or order a single item off Amazon because your one decision can help protect this beautiful planet.
Cole H |
Categories
|