Perhaps the most difficult thing I’ve had to fight off in recent years have been the lies burdening me since childhood. Whether names inflicted by former classmates, online trolls — or even Satan himself — these terms have been haunting me all my life: retarded, fat, ugly, weird, crazy, loser, klutz, talentless, purposeless, pointless and so on.
As children we are often mistreated. Maybe a jab was never intended by bullies to seriously hurt their victim. But it usually doesn’t turn out that way. As a child grows, the taunting and teasing often becomes the seed providing lasting damage to his self-esteem.
I knew I wasn’t the names these bullies called me. But those words clung to me like leeches to my skin.
That’s exactly what happened to me for a long time. Kids laughed at me, called me names and chased me all over the schoolyard. They tried to provoke me to tears or rage, laughing the whole time.
