TRANSFORM EVERYDAY

When I was in elementary school I went to a place called the center after school with my sister and a few of my friends. We walked from the school to the center in a long double line from short to tallest. There was a girl named Yanique, I was obsessed with her because she had light skin and long almost blond hair. I would have done almost anything for her. One day I didn’t and she got her older sister to smack and push me. Fine, I thought, I’ll get my older sister to fight her older sister, we can have an older sister war. I went to my sister and told her, expecting flames and anger, instead she shrugged and said, ‘Hit her back.’ 

I hit her back, after taking a moment too long to gain my courage because when I finally decided to hit her back, the teacher was there and I got in trouble. 

A while later, maybe a few months later a girl named Lola came to the center, me and Yanique were friends again and Yanique didn’t like Lola. She told me to fight her. I didn’t fight her at her command, but after I declared that I didn’t like Lola either, Lola decided that she was going to force me to tell her why I didn’t like her. She stood in my face repeatedly asking, ‘why?’ even though she hadn’t done this to Yanique. I asked her to stop several times, ‘stop talking to me before I punch you in your face’ She kept going and I punched her in her face. Actually I slapped her a few times and scratched her face. My older, older sister came to pick me up and saw what I had done and beat me in front of everyone.

Was the moment that I went to cry on what was supposed to be my best friends shoulder after learning that someone I knew had died. So many times had I comforted her as she cried about her childhood, I just knew that I could depend on her to comfort me. Instead she laughed at me. My other friend laughed at me the next day too. So did my bus driver. LMAO. 

That same friend later shamed me for wanting to report a bus driver who wouldn’t allow me on the bus after I had to go back to get my coat, even though he allowed a boy to get on the bus after I got back and stood banging on the doors for a good 2 minutes. She said, ‘What if he has a family to feed?’ as if making me literally walk a mile and a half in the snow, by myself was no big thing.