I was born 15 days earlier than the expected date. Maybe if I came out on the due date, I would have normal eyes.

I was born with a lazy eye. My left eye is noticeably lower than my right. My family did not point it out to me, but others did.

“What happened to your eye?”

That’s the question of my life.

When I got to middle school, that is where it started. I have always been a social person. It would seem like a mission to make new friends everywhere that I went. My dad still laughs at the fact that I tried to make everyone my friend, even if I didn’t know their names. I was never good with names.

In middle school, I transferred into a charter school by my granny’s house. The kids were so mean there. There was always someone trying to make fun of me.

When I got to the fifth grade, I built up my confidence. I wrote a poem for my first-ever poetry slam. “Poetry hides in me!” I got a standing ovation, and I won the poetry slam. It gave me a new outlet to help me get over the mean comments from the bullies.

In the eighth grade, I kept a journal that I wrote in whenever I was feeling low. My journal was my escape place and my writing helped me get through it.

The bullies noticed me walking around with my journal and I guess they got curious. One day in the school staircase, I was walking to the guidance counselor’s office, and some girls tripped me and stole my journal. They read my journal to everyone.

I could not take the bullying anymore, so I fought back with my words. Anytime someone tried to say something hurtful to me, I had something to say right back at them. I stopped letting the bullies get to me.

When I got to high school, there were a few comments here and there, but there were not that many. In my freshman year of high school, a few girls tried to get to me, but I did not let them break me down.

During a theater improv exercise, I was pretending to jump rope, and my tummy was jiggling. One girl said, “Look at Rick Ross.” Another girl called me Fetty Wap, because of my lazy eye.

Instead of getting hurt, I laughed at the comments. Looking back at the people that tried to hurt me with insults, I see that these people thought they could break me, but I just sat back and enjoyed the comedy show.

I let none of their words stop me from being great. Their words could not hurt me anymore. The more I grow in this judgmental world, the more I see how much I have grown as a person.

I love my insecurities and I am proud of who I have become. Words cannot and will not hurt me.