Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by __fall__out__girl__

My name is Zoe, and I'm almost thirteen years old, and this is my story. My life was amazing, up until fourth grade. I had a huge crush on one of the boys in my class. (Let's just call him Evan). It affected my choices all throughout the 4th and 5th grade, and then in 6th grade everything changed.

I began Skyping him, and we became what I thought at the time was friends. He told me he liked me, and I became sneaky and went out of my parents' way to "date" him over Skype.

I later learned that every message I ever sent to him, from a simple "hi" to me pouring out my guts, was forwarded to all his friends and they got together and laughed about it. This made me mad, and it was sort of humiliating.

Then the cyber-bullying started.

Everyday I would be notified that I was a whore, a hoe, a bitch, a slut, a cunt, a loser, that I was worthless, and so on all throughout December 2013, and January and February 2014. One day I couldn't take it anymore and held a bottle of pills and almost swallowed them.

But then I realized if I did that, they'd all be winning. Because this is what they want.

So I stood strong and made new friends, one of them by the name of Melody. I won't go into full detail on this, but we became super close and had a fall out in the middle of May 2014. I got so depressed I still can't remember the summer. It's just a fast haze of Santa Cruz, camping, and swimming. I can't remember any specific details, though.

Starting on the first day of school, in the middle of August, I had 6th period P.E. with two of the cyberbullies. Every day I had to sit in roll call line with them for ten minutes while the teacher made sure we were present.

Right in my ear, the words were whispered, said, sometimes even yelled. "Waste of space" "Loser" "Freak" "Slut" "I hope you die" "Bitch" "Crazy" "Worthless" "Stupid" "Mistake". I didn't tell anyone in fear. Of what, I don't know.

In late October, early November, I had finally had enough and when we went to go get changed out of our P.E. uniforms, I grabbed my backpack out of the locker and slammed it in fury and desperation. A quarter of the locker room, half of the seventh grader's side, became silent as I stood there, shaking.

I felt the tears well up inside and then I screamed. I heard the other half of the girl's locker room go silent too; they wondered why our side got quiet. I remember tears running down my face, and some of my friends soothed me while others went to go get the teachers.

They left me alone after a while, and I began to be happy again.

And then the sexual harassment started this month.

Small touches, the "Andrew wants to be inside you", the threats of murder and rape if I didn't agree to have sex with Andrew, and the frightening "We know where you live!" added with a picture of my house.

They stopped two days ago.

All this, the cyber-bullying, the fall out with Melody, the bullying, the sexual harassment, has left me with slight anxiety and the demons inside my head persisting to win. In other words, depression. However slight, I won't stretch it out or draw attention to myself and be called an attention whore. But I can't totally ignore it either.

Thank you to anyone who read this whole thing, and I thank you for listening to my story.