I am a shy girl, an introvert if you will. In a world surrounded by loud, and words, and hurt, it is hard for me to find a voice sometimes in difficult situations. My biggest fear is that my quietness will come between me and what I know is right. I recall one time where I was a bystander and I regret it to this day. It was the first day of eighth grade and I was hoping to finally have a year where I was not the timid shy girl that I was known as. I was hoping to become the girl everyone wanted to be friends with and talk to. That dream would soon become an unreal thought in my mind.
I had a best friend in fifth grade, Lilia, but we grew apart. We told each other everything. Our hopes and dreams, our passions and our loves. Our fears. I knew her fears and this is why I am still seeking forgiveness for what I did, or what I did not do to be more precise. Like me, Lilia was shy, cautious and soft-spoken. We were close friends for these reasons. She was the only one I was loud with and the only one who did not mind when I had nothing to say. She respected me and I wish I could have had the same respect for her. One secret she had told me was that she was bullied. In our school, you are considered bizarre or different if you are not a partygoer and extrovert. I wish I would have not been so frightened and kept our friendship strong before it was too late.
On the first day of eighth grade, I was walking back from lunch with a group of girls I had finally had the courage to talk to. My locker was in the back of the locker room near the bathrooms and away from the others’. As I shut my locker door I heard a little yelp coming from the other corner. I saw Lilia in the corner surrounded by some ninth grade girls. The girls had taken her backpack and were going through it. If Lilia had not changed since the sixth grade, I knew she would have her beloved teddy bear in her bag to give her some strength during the day when we were separate. Sure enough, they found the bear and threw it violently in the trashcan laughing as they did so. Worst of all, they started to get in her face and call her names like ugly, little baby and fat. She pushed through them, crying, straight into the bathroom. What I did next I still regret now, this very instance.
I watched her go. I watched her. My mouth opened but no sound came out. I walked back to my new friends and left Lilia alone and isolated in the world. I chose my new, popular friends over my one true friend who had done nothing but care for me, who had always watched over me. No matter when it was, if she was there or not, she had a piece of her heart dedicated to me, and so did I. I just wish I had realized it that day. The thing I should have done, the only, single action I should have pursued was knocking down my own walls and standing up for Lilia. I should have ran into that bathroom, grabbed her bear, and been there for her. But I did not. I saw the evil, but I did nothing. I realize now that I was just as worse as those bullies, standing there with nothing to say. I should have been the light on that girl’s dark path.
That was not the worst part, this is. It was the second day of school, a brisk September morning, when we got called to a school assembly, just us eighth and ninth graders.
“Girls and boys, as some of you may have found out, a student of ours, Lilia Berry, took her own life last night...”
I looked over at those girls, the ones who took her life. It wasn’t Lilia, it was those girls. Their faces had barely changed when they heard the news for themselves. That was when I lost it. I ran out of the auditorium because I could not take the pain. I knew it was not all my fault, but it was me who could have made the change that would have kept her with us. I contemplated joining her, just so I could say I was sorry but then I decided to stay and share a message for everyone to know. This is to all of the shy girls out there who are afraid to have a voice; have you ever witnessed something that you wanted to stand up for, but you just didn’t have the words to say it? If the answer is yes than you absolutely need to be stronger. You need to stand up and make that voice. It only takes one, one that I was not. Be that one. You can be the change, and the strength in a person, and this, I truly believe.