Sky's Life

Now, let's have Sky, a 21-year-old bullying activist, who is also an influencer, to talk about the story of her life. She was just nominated as one of the most successful activists who have changed and saved a million lives. Welcome, Sky, to "Today's Story". Applause filled the silence. Sky walked in, stood there trembling, never before has she ever spoken in front of an audience, which consists of hundreds of thousands of people about her real life story. She might have told bits and pieces of her life story in an interview, but never a summarized version of her full story. Feeling faint due to her anxiety, she calmed herself down by practicing breathing therapy like she was told to every time her heart rate starts shooting up when she's in a stressful situation. Applause died down and Sky started her story with the aftermath of getting bullied as a child and teenager. 

  "This is happening again. I can't move my body. I can't breathe. Stop suffocating me. I want this to be over."   

  I was there, lying on my bed, couldn't move an inch nor could I breathe. Likewise, I was there, completely paralyzed in my sleep. I couldn't cry, and I couldn't shout for help. I could only do both of these in my sleep. It was as if I was held underwater for a lifetime. Desperate to catch for breath, I forced myself to move. After an eternity of attempts, I freed myself. I woke up, opened my eyes and started breathing like someone having a panic attack. I looked at the time next to my bed, it was 3am. It was a Sunday. I couldn't go back to sleep. I lied down on my bed again, afraid to go back to sleep, afraid that all this would happen once again before sun rise. Staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, boredom invaded me, and slowly, drowsiness engulfed me. Still too afraid to go back to sleep, I rolled over to my side and faced the window, hoping it would at least keep me awake. It was indeed a beautiful night, I was looking at the full moon, and I considered myself beyond lucky to have survived another sleep paralysis episode. Was I being overdramatic over a few minutes of sleep paralysis, which felt like a few hours during that episode? No. I never thought so. There were reported fatalities due to sleep paralysis. 

  Was I worried?- I was. 

  I looked at the moon, slowly thinking about my past, thinking of the events that may have triggered sleep paralysis which, from my research, could be contributed by severe anxiety. 

  All these years, I have been socially and verbally bullied. It happened every day, sometimes, at least a few times a week. Being a person with the least attractive facial features and not as tall as everybody else, standing in the hall with everyone at least one head taller than me was what contributed to all of these. I still remember the feeling of being left out, picked on, ostracized, teased and being verbally abused. It was not something everyone would feel or understand at all. 

  I was seven when all these started happening at school. I thought, maybe one day all these will eventually be over. I guess I was wrong. When I was nine, one of my classmates had forgotten her textbook at home. Our teacher told us to share mine. At that time, we were assigned to do some drawing and colouring with a given topic. She took a look at my finished art, stood up and threw my textbook away to the floor a few feet from where I sat and walked away. I stood up with tears burning my eyes and I walked patiently to where the book was, picked it up like a dog picking up a stuff toy its owner had just thrown to the ground. Just moments before that, I was with another classmate, fighting over one seat, whereby she and her friends were telling me how that seat belonged to them, and I was forbidden to have that seat which was then unoccupied. This left me with other unoccupied seats to choose from, front row, back row, middle row. Before I managed to have a seat on one of the unoccupied chairs, they came and did the same thing again, claiming how it belonged to them and that they've booked it beforehand. 

  Day by day, I felt my presence to be blocking their way as a barrier.

  (From the most terrible insults to hiding my pencil case on the cupboard to "shooing" me like I was a cat in the class were some of the things I had to go through as a child.)

  Someone even claimed to me in front of the whole class when I was twelve that my mom didn't feed me enough, which made me look like a dwarf. Yes - I was tiny, I was a premature baby, I didn't grow up as fast as everybody else, but that didn't mean I could be insulted like that in front of everyone else. I had a dignity.   

  Not long after, I felt my dignity, freshly cut and boiled when my librarian teacher did something unexpected. She told me to come to the front of the class along with the tallest kid in class and took a side-by-side picture. At first, I told her I didn't want to do it, I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, but she told me she'd take my position away as a librarian if I didn't listen to her. I was forced to take a picture with the tallest kid in class just so she could post it on social media to let her followers see how tiny I was as a 12-year-old girl.

  I thought I was doing mentally fine until one day when I was thirteen, I've had enough. I had to beg them to have my things back. End of term holiday started, and it was a fine day, or I thought so when all of a sudden, I got this strong urge to wash my hands. I was fine the day before, the hour before, the minute before, and the second before. That moment came, I couldn't resist the urge to wash my hands. Coincidentally, I finished an art work with colours and glitters on my hands. I washed them a few times until I was really exhausted, but I was convinced by my head that they were still dirty. So, I washed them until they were as sore, dry and red as tomatoes. As a curious thirteen-year-old, I couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with me. This has never happened in my life. I ran upstairs, grabbed my phone and started searching. I still remember typing in the search space, "I can't stop washing my hands." 

  Bingo! 

  I got the answers to my question. It was one of the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD.  

  My grades started dropping. I couldn't stop washing my hands. They were really sore. All I ever wanted to do was to cry aloud without anyone knowing. I wanted to have a germ scanner at home just so I don't have to wash my hands unnecessarily. I convinced myself to stop washing, but my head was telling me that if I didn't, I would die. That was what's in my head. My head couldn't stop spinning with negative thoughts blended together. I was at the end of the road. I have been strong my whole life. I was desperate for help. 

  Days passed. Nothing's changed. Things got worse, never better. Mean insults drowned me the moment I stepped into the class to the moment the dismissal school bell rang. 

  My last year of high school, I was enjoying my last school year with a really lovely friend who came a year ago. I wanted to spend some time with her, but was told that I stole her from her friends. I soon realized that maybe in life I was destined to be alone. Graduating from high school and going into sixth form was probably the scariest experience of my life. Going to a completely new school for sixth form and having to adapt to the new school with new people was something I never thought I would find myself in. I was in an incredibly uncomfortable situation during orientation week and not being able to introduce myself to my new classmates. I was a failure. I was bad at socializing with people and even engaging in a conversation as I was left out all these years, reading in school and having no one to talk to most of the time. However, my new classmates were better than I expected. They were far better than the ones I've had in my previous school.

  Days passed, a year passed, two years passed. I graduated. I was home all day, waiting for my overalls grades, at the same time thinking about my life. Soon, I started having flashbacks and began regretting not being able to properly stand up for myself when I was being bullied. Curious as to why I kept having flashbacks about my school life, I went online and started taking psychological quizzes. From there, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which can be normally linked with OCD. Both of these contributed to my almost consistent sleep paralysis episodes. The day I started going to school till the day I graduated, I never had a day which I wouldn't be insulted, whether it's explicitly or non explicitly.   

  That's the reason I started writing stories and turning my real life story into a fictional story, which subconsciously turned myself into a bullying activist. I wanted to let others know that anyone who is in my position right now, they're not alone, and we are in this together. Thank you.

  Sky was done with her speech. Tears were burning her eyes. It's true, she's had a really traumatic childhood. No one reacted to her speech. No one moved an inch of their body. Ten seconds passed. Sky wondered, "Did I say something offensive?" Before she said something into her microphone, the crowd stood up. She just got a wonderful standing ovation. She has never, in life, felt any better talking to an audience.