Sorry

Hello, my name is Dana and here is my story.

Before I start talking about myself, I thought that I should talk about my family’s story first, which is quite interesting to me:

My mom is half Algerian half French and my dad is Armenian. They both have met in Ivory Coast, then they got married and lived 15 years there. They were having a peaceful life in this beautiful country, (especially with the birth of my big sister) until there was a coup d’état; this event made them come in France.

And here I come! I was born in the north of France, in Lens. We lived around Lens for a year and then we moved to Marseille. So basically, I grew up in Marseille and I had a happy childhood!

Like other children, I entered secondary school and I was very excited about discovering a new school and meet new friends but my first year was quite “hard” for me because I was a victim of something that happens all around the world which is bullying. Indeed, I know that my case is not the worst one but still, it was a hurtful experience.

So, the beginning of the year was normal, I had few friends but at a moment, some  kids of my class started to “reject” me because I was different: I didn’t like the same kind of music as them, I had better grades, and probably other stupid reasons.

Basically, I was insulted every day for nothing, they would laugh at me and even throw things at me. Anyway, my friends weren’t defending me so, I knew that I had to count on someone else. Luckily, I’m close to my family so I didn’t hide the fact that I was persecuted at school and my family did everything to help me. Finally, this issue ended after six months and the next two years were okay: I was quite happy, I got new friends and didn’t have any problem with anyone, but since I became reserved because of what happened the first year, I’ve been playing to online video games a lot as I knew that at least they wouldn’t judge me there.

Then it was my last year at the secondary school, I had all of my best friends with me it was really great but the more the time flied, the more I felt judged and hated by some girls of my class. At the last trimester, one of them started to laugh at me daily (it reminds me the first year aha) but this time, I knew that I couldn’t count on anyone but myself, so I’ve decided to defend myself by acting the same as her, since it was apparently the only solution and the worse is that it worked.

As I said, this experience made me reserved and unconfident but I moved on and when I see these girls who used to bully me now, I’m the one who’s laughing.

Beside that awful part of my life, I have to say that I feel lucky now because I’ve integrated an international section (OIB) in which I feel comfortable and people are open-minded so it’s really great and it has changed me: indeed, before my “bully issue”, I was happy and lively; after what happened I was always scared of being bullied again, I was not really sociable and I was only feeling better thanks to K-pop, video games, anime and my family, whereas now I’m as happy as before thanks to a lot of people. I truly hope that it will stay the same for a longtime!

This was my story and my experience taught me that we all have our bad days, and even though my case wasn’t the worst one, it was hard but despite that I did my best to move on and become a better person and I can tell you that today I’m a happy and lively young girl!