From Bullied to Blessed

Treating others the way, you would want to be treated seems like a simple concept, right? One of my personal favorites, *clears throat* "Be good to people and in turn they will be good to you." (ha!)

As a kid, I was terribly bullied. Being first generation Nigerian-American in the 90's, you can only imagine the things kids then, decided to pick on me for; for their own entertainment. (because it definitely wasn't for mine.) My name, my looks, my height, and even the way I smelled. The 8th and 7th graders (I kid you not!) made an entire song about my body odor [inserts laugh] and would sing it when I was in the hallways, the worst part (yes, there's more) was the songwriter, was my then secret school crush. Being tormented and humiliated by little sh*ts, I couldn't avoid 5 days a week, was an on-going, never-ending battle for my 11-year-old self.

I found myself, tip-toeing into my parent's room and using my mother's Avon deodorant and heavily scented perfumes and pouring (I mean pouringgg...)  them onto my school uniforms. What could I do? I was eleven years old, with no education on puberty, the changes in my body, or that three spritz was all I really needed to be well perfumed. I remember crying in the bathrooms or trying to sit away from classmates because I thought if I was far away, they couldn't get close.

Where was the good then? Had they never heard of the saying: "Treat others the way, you would want to be treated" ? Or was that just the lousy line given to "the bully" in those 90's TV family sitcoms?

Whatever the reason, I decided, the torment, the ridicule, and the song (which was really bad, by the way, I mean if you want to insult someone with a song, at least make it a good one, right? Okay back to what I was saying..) would end with me.

Growing up, I realized I couldn't control how people were or even how they treated me. What I could control was who I am, and that is a good person. In a weird, kind of twisted way, I appreciate the fact I was bullied, when I see it happening around me now, I am the first to advocate against it. It made me stronger, more in-tuned with my emotions and created a  philosophy which I live by everyday, which is to never treat someone the way I was treated because I knew how it felt and more importantly, how much it hurt.

If I wasn't bullied, I don't know who I could have been, what personality traits I could have inherited. Whether I could have ate lunches with the cooler kids, had weekend slumber parties, or had a date for the school dance.

Being bullied is/was never okay, but in my particular case, it was my blessing. My blessing to see the wrong and secondly, do the good.

Because treating others the way, you would want to be treated is a simple concept.