I Rise From the Ashes

“Watch where you are going, nerd. Are you that blind?”

“She probably can’t see behind those hideous hair of hers.”

“Did you wipe your shirt off? Watch out for her stink.. Might be contagious.”

“It won’t hurt you to take a shower, weirdo!”

HA..HA..HA..HA..

Those were my bullies.. Same day, but different mockeries. They always find a way to be
creative, because when they don’t, then where’s the thrill?

They call me names, I call myself a survivor.

For many years, I was the anguished target of bullying
The taunts, the teasing, the exclusion - they were daggers plunged mercilessly into my heart.

I remember walking those hallways, a screamed warning in my mind with every step to
disappear before your sharp gazes found me.
The sheer panic when I heard your footsteps stalking behind, knowing more poisonous words
were coming to peel back my skin. Endless nights spent wrapped around my pillow, choking on
sobs and screams of

“Why me, what had I done to earn this relentless torment?”

My confidence, my self-worth, my very spirit hacked to pieces under the grinding ax of your
vitriol. I felt fragile, exposed, utterly powerless.

But I stand before you to shout that your words and violence did not define me! There came a
day when I realized the only one who could shape my self-image was myself.
That true resilience flows not from standing untouched by bullying, but from stitching my torn
seams back together after every attack. That character forms not by avoiding pain, but by
wading through rivers of it without losing sight of the other side.

In the depths of that darkness, I began to dig.

When you mocked my looks, I tended the fledgling self-love that let me embrace exactly who I
was. My appearance, my style - they make me, me.
When you ridiculed my passions, I dove recklessly into them until I found others who accepted
all my weirdness.

I chose to let your cruelty write only the prologue to my story, not craft the whole tale.
You may have tried to make me the victim, small and crushed under your hands.
But my story is one of growth. Healing. Owning my worth after you tried to steal it.
I wrote my story myself, verse by verse, even embracing the painful past that watered the seeds
of who I am now.

Today I can finally love the confident woman staring back from the mirror,
so far from that frightened ghost of a girl.
My tears fertilized the soil where my unbreakable soul grew strong.
Each time you stripped my petals, I saturated my roots with self-love so I could bloom again.
When you kept tearing me down I taught myself to get back up, to persist and survive anything.
You shaped me alright - into a warrior, assured of her own radiance.
A phoenix rising powerful from the ashes of her past.

And for that, though it pained me, I thank you. Thank you for the resilience born of facing the
dragon’s fire. For the character seared into my skin that made me unflinching, unashamed,
unbroken. You tried to shrink me down but instead stoked my voice and strength.
This heat tempered the steel of my spirit.

The choice is yours, but mine is already made. I will take the ashes and plant flowers, write
poetry from old pains, shape broken pieces into a magnificent mosaic.
What will your hands create from the fragments of the past?

Will you let the past push you over until you are cornered in the darkest room of your soul?
Or shape the dark past into something strong which will help you build yourself into a stronger
version, where no words will shatter your soul?
Find the beauty within you by helping yourself, by building yourself, by trusting yourself.

HA..HA..HA..

“Look at her, daydreaming again.”

“Wow, she really is that weird huh.”

“She does it every time she is being teased, what a pity.”

“Makes it more entertaining when she does that.”

HA..HA..HA..HA..

I’m standing for myself, I’m stronger than you will ever think!
I am the better version of myself. I am helping myself..
I trust myself..

HA...HA..HA..HA..