Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by @MuddyRoseSara

My story started when I was a little girl, from grade school to middle school. You would think adults would be the ones to look out for you and stop the children from being mean to you; but that never happened in my case. The ones I tried to look to for help were the ones who would spit on me.

When I was in middle school, I only followed a trend for a one summer but that trend I followed for that one summer would haunt me even now in my adulthood. I had a friend who had an older sister who would dress "sexy." She used to get attention from guys all the time.

And I wanted it, too, from the boys in my school. I was called "ugly" "gross" "disgusting" "a loser" "pathetic" "crusty" by almost every boy in the school. It didn't help that when the new cute boy would come to my school, even he would start to call me names, seeing the other boys make fun of me.

I never felt pretty or like a girl, so when I started to ask my sister to buy teen mags so I could read up on makeup and clothes, I started to copy what I saw. Teachers looked at me different, boys treated me different, I started hanging out with the pretty girls and for once I didn't feel dead inside.

My mother had passed away during my transformation in middle school, so it was like a wake up call for me. I just didn't know the price I would pay for wanting to feel alive.

The first adult told me "I wasn't all that," the second adult said, "All you need is a pole and a corner," the next said, "I could make change out of your $5 behind because that's what you're worth." I didn't tell my older sister who was now my only mother figure, until I couldn't take it.

She didn't know what to do, but she tried. She was only 26 years old after all, watching over a 13 year old girl. There were times when the pretty girls I would hang out with started blaming me whenever they were caught with a boy. They'd say, "I wasn't the only one there. She was, too, and it was her that dared me to do it."

I would get in trouble, not the other girl. The teachers' harassment got worse, it always got worse. I remember my last day in middle school, a male teacher didn't want to hug me because he thought I had STDs and that I was "disgusting." I was always being told I was disgusting. 

The rumors in middle school were that I sucked boys off after school, I loved sex, I would perform oral, anal, and vaginal sexual favors on weekends, and that I was going to end up a teen mom once I got to high school. The teachers laughed when my sister confirmed that I was in fact still a virgin.

Let's skip over to high school. It was a repeat of middle school, just with harassment from the students, which was in my opinion better than being harassed and being called a "slut" by adults/teachers. But my cutting problem became worse.

I started cutting a little before my last year of middle school. I loathed myself, I just wanted to die. I was abused badly by the people I loved the most, but I had trusted the teachers; with them even knowing about my abusive mother's recent death, it only made things feel worse for me.

In high school, I was beaten up by a girl who didn't like me. I had invited her over to my house to hang for Halloween because I thought she was my friend. Then I was being called a slut once again.

That word "slut" never left me, I don't know why. Grade school felt like the teachers would judge me, like they were expecting me to grow up how they all saw me, or what they saw me becoming.

In reality I didn't become anything. My household had gotten worse. Abuse from my grandmother was still happening. Her husband, who wasn't my grandfather, tried to make sexual advances towards me. My sister's depression was worsening, and there was no one there for me.

Every friend I had ever made left without warning, cut me off. I always wanted to know how I could've fixed things. I just never should've been born is what I felt like. I remember my mother telling me when I was in grade school, "I should've used protection," and I asked her, "You mean you didn't want me, mommy?" and she repeated, "Yes, I should've used protection."

I now suffer from social anxiety, manic depression, and bipolar moods. I am almost always paranoid. But my mind has become a place for me to escape to. I like to pretend when things are bad, that they're good. I'll make up a different scene in my mind. This is one of the ways I cope since I now gave up cutting. I am NOT a "slut."