You've won. I'm sure you noticed every time you saw me walking through the corridors with my eyes down, hell-bent on getting to my next class before anyone saw me, and every time I averted my eyes when you walked past and whenever you finally noticed I'd left those hallways for good. But in case you haven't congratulated yourselves quite enough already for turning me into yet another teenage female stereotype, let me assure you that all those years of mindless hatred and mockery didn't go to waste.

I was a happy kid. I was smart, and I was proud, and I loved everybody and assumed everyone loved me. Maybe I was a bit spoiled and full of myself, but what young only child isn't? I guess there aren't any excuses for being the least bit socially unacceptable, even when you're twelve. Especially when you're twelve.

You picked on my every fault, my every misspoken word or misguided action. My clothes didn't match well enough for you. Hell, my glasses even clashed. And yet when I took them off out of sheer frustration, you told me I should wear them because I didn't look good without them. Nothing I ever had to say was worth your consideration, yet you laughed hysterically at every word I pronounced differently from you. You picked and prodded and harassed until I didn't even feel safe in my own skin anymore.

And as the years went by and I stopped hanging around people who hung around you, I discovered that I'd learned to pick myself apart just as well as you had. I made myself painfully aware of every fault I had that you hadn't pointed out already. But when I tried to correct those faults myself, I only fucked things up more. I became more and more unacceptable to myself - and if even a subhuman like myself could tell that, imagine what everyone else thought. I hated every word that came out of my mouth, and in my desperate attempts to sound like a "normal human being" developed a nasty stutter that made whatever few words I spoke at a time pretty much unintelligible. So I basically stopped speaking unless spoken to. I had little human interaction, and thus that much more time to flay myself to ribbons from the inside out. It became my only real talent. And to this day, it still is.

Now I'm far away from you all, and I guess I still have enough resentment left into me to write this, to vent these old grievances even though, in all likelihood, I will never see any of you again. But I don't hate you anymore. I can't. You're not my greatest fears or my worst enemies anymore.

I am.

So, congratulations. I sincerely hope you're happy it's ended like this.

Mandy