Shadow

Shadow [shad•oh]

Noun | an area where a direct light cannot reach due to an obstruction by an object.

‘In life there are things that block people from getting what they want. Sometimes it’s natural and changeable yet others, it’s by the oppression of others. That’s what bullying is. It’s a shadow that looms over your life and tries to engulf it so that you’ll never be in the light and be who you truly are. What is truly terrifying is that childhood bullying, like a shadow, also follows you to your adult life and looms over once again.’- I stop typing for a second. What else could I condense into my portfolio? This is a subject that could be ranted on for hours, but possibly a 4 page spread? I pause and take a sip of my ice water before standing up and making my way across my dimly lit bedroom. I pick up my portfolio, a midnight blue folder with a black silhouette of a person with my name written in silver at the bottom, and slowly walk back to my desk thinking. I slowly open the folder and slid out the photos. Most of them were in black and white with the exception of a couple photos in colour. I remember following people around to take these photos, hiding the shadows. Of course, I spoken to them about it afterwards, with my intentions, but I thought that the way it happened was representative.

       

I pull out the photo on top, it was a photo of 2 papers, the first with an A scrawled cover it in red and the next a F. It represented my story.

       “God, you’re such a nerd.” Someone yelled at me, when I was just 15. I was about to leave the classroom. I stop immediately in my tracks.

       “Me?” I asked quietly.

       “Yeah, I saw your grade. You just suck up to the teacher. Teacher’s pet,” He repeated to me. My lip quivered, but I did not want to cry.

       “Teacher’s pet, teacher’s pet” the class chanted as the tears started flowing from my eyes. I looked down and thought about my paper. It was its fault I was being bullied. The next day, things just got worse. When I nervously got to school, my locker was covered in marker writing out “Teacher’s pet” and “nerd”. I took one look at it and ran to the bathroom and cried, nearly missing first period.

       After that, I didn’t get another A for the rest of the year. I stayed away from social interaction, refused to answer any questions and just locked myself up in my room, hiding in the shadows. But in the summer I was just vacationing with my family, happiness and time away from school and more importantly these people. I had picked up my phone and taken photos of things around me, amazed by its serenity and how beautiful and undisturbed it was. It was then I realized that I needed to be myself, not who “society” forces me to be and more important to be happy. After that, I started taking photos. It calmed me in a way, photos are perfect. They showed something that would always be there and moreover, were thought provoking and impactful. I was saved by photos, damage had already been done of course, I’d never get back my year 9 grades and now they will forever follow me, as well as the fact that I succumbed to the pressure and let myself fall into a shadow. I wish I could have stood up for myself, or someone else could have. But that’s because people just followed, because bullying was such a terrifying monster. I think, although I’m presenting this project as something to help others, truly it’s to help myself; to finish this inner battle that I have with not doing anything about the bullying that happened to me, that happened to others.  

       

I start to flip through some of the other photos I took, all representing different problems and elements of bullying, and furthermore showed the impacts it had. The ‘reasons’ that people were picked on spanned forever, ranging from financial status to fashion to religion to sexual orientation. I had a photo of a bathroom stall, with a girl kneeling on it, throwing up; just because someone thought that she was fat and should be punished for it. Her, I remember hearing that she was anorexic and moved away. Was that true? Possibly, but it may just as well been just another rumor made to destroy her. The next was a photo of a girl with her head down and arms out, covered in cuts to represent the impact that it had on some people. Kids are cruel. I remember the victims were never themselves again. Some became bullies and the others, well; they just fell into the shadow and may never crawl out. Stayed away from people, hid and cowered with fear.

I sigh and put the folder away. I start typing again. “Because of the impact that bullying had on them, they will hide in the shadows and never get a chance to be in the light, never get a chance to be themselves. I was once bullied, and photos and photography saved my life, they’ve helped me become me again and now I hope with these photos, they might save someone else’s. I hope you will all see the influence of bullying in a school setting and the implications it had for these young people’s lives.” I re-read my captions and hit print before tucking it into my folder. Tomorrow, I’ll bring it to the magazine. Maybe it will be published, and the world would see what I see. And just perhaps, I might make a change. Even if I don’t, at least I’ll know I tried, and that I’ve stood up to my inner bullies.

~~~

Hey guys!
I'm sorry that I haven't really been writing recently. I have some stuff that I've been working on and honestly I'm just very unhappy with it as well as my time management. I have exams all this week, and I'm freaking out a tad. 2 weeks after exams, I'm going to be going to Spain for a volunteering program and would not get to write. HOWEVER. After that I'm going to edit my works and repost//finish them. I do intend on finishing my works. I'm sorry for being terrible about updating. This story is just the short story I wrote for english class, and thought I'd share.
See you guys in 3 weeks!
Ange<3