With time, I started spending more time with the entire group, and with that, kept cheering Saksham up so he could get over his half-situtationship and we actually became friends within all these.
Often when he was down, I would crack silly jokes to make him smile, like jokingly saying that the girl was not good enough for him and that he would get someone better. Once he replied with "Wish I could get someone like you."
But that was totally normal for me, I was used to hearing such things and it would hardly affect me. Yeah, I was an introvert and the kind of girl they would call a nerd, but that was only until high school. Soon after, things changed. I was more confident in my own skin and loved myself.
But there was a reason behind all the high school and college bullying- my eyes. I had a condition called squint that I was affected with since I was around 7 years old. Oh what a little girl I was, and what child would understand how eyes are supposed to be? And I would rarely look in the mirror.
The disorder was first noticed by a few of my class bullies and they would tease me with that. But I was confident, a girl who did not care what people said about her. I was also that girl who would bully someone back if they picked at her, an eye for an eye. Soon after, my family noticed the issue. They asked me if I have noticed something strange in my eyes or if I had any trouble seeing. How could a girl as young as such answer that? For around 10 years since then, until I completed my schooling, I was bullied, for the very same reason, and all that planted insecurities in me. To make it worse, some relatives started adding fuel to it, calling me names about the disorder. All this pain and insecurity started feeding on my confidence, and soon, the happy little girl turned into a bullied, severely depressed teenager. Every time I thought I made a friend, I would see them shaming me just like all the others. I was not selected in school events due to my looks, and constantly shamed about my eyes, and my weight. All I wanted was to be on stage and to prove that I had a lot more within me, and the outer was just a skin that would shed someday.
Fine, just call it chores of the kids, but even the elders did that. The looks and names of sympathy, suggest impractical things to cure the disorder and gain weight. Telling a 10-year-old that she would have trouble getting married with such eyes.
No child deserves to go through all that- the bullying, the shaming, and the catcalling. It was a painful truth I would wish to get over every night but would wake up to every morning. 10 years passed, and so did my schooling. I wished the days would be better now, moving to a new school would hopefully make things better.
But a few kids from my old school were there at the new place as well, and they continued what I tried leaving behind. They would randomly get in my way, call me names, and would continue that until I could feel my knees falling weak. But in some terms, life actually got better. I made some friends, who would stand for me. There was a girl, a good friend, who once almost hit those who bullied me, she stood up for me and I would forever be grateful to her for the new chapter.
Soon, I made a few more friends and they actually saw me for who I was, and did not judge on anything. So this was what having friends was like, standing up for each other, having each other's back, people who you could be yourself with.
This was what I wanted since I was a kid, and lost my entire childhood searching for it. People have tales of childhood to tell, but mine is filled with sorrows, a burden I have been carrying for 15 years now. I wish a few things never happened and I did not have to go through such pain. It hurts, it had been such since I could remember.