• The other girls in Grade Eight thought it would be fun to place two fingers on each side of their face and pull back at the skin to mimic my almond shaped eyes.

    I thought it would be fun to punch them right in the face while they did this.

    The teachers pulled me into the councillor’s office, explained to me that violence wasn’t the answer to deal with bullies. They spoke slowly, as if my heavily accented English was an indicator of my intellect.

    In Grade Nine, I decided that I was going to have to change. Skirts got shorter, eyes were rimmed with dark pencils. I stopped hanging around the other ESL kids, and they learned not to mess with me through kicks in the stomach.

    Grade Ten was when I got accepted as one of the other girls. They saw I was not one of the other timid kids who didn’t speak a word of decent English. I laughed at their accents as they stammered out weak defenses. At least I had reduced mine.

    The parties started in the middle of Grade Eleven. We blasted loud music when no adults were around, snatched cigarettes off nightstands and lit up. Boys danced with me, and more than once had I let it go further than they were expecting.

    I got arrested for underage drinking during my final year of high school. The cops busted us and were confused when they could only find my “Eastern name” in the records and not the one I gave them by default that was “Western.” My parents screamed at me in a language I hated to associate myself with.

    Behavioural therapists were convinced that I could be saved, that I wasn’t a lost cause. They thought they could stop this downward spiral of self-destructive behaviour. They were convinced I had hit rock bottom and I was ready to be rescued. I had just hung out with the wrong crowd, yes, they were sure that my friends were the cause of this.

    I just looked them into their round eyes with my narrow ones and spoke slowly, resisting every urge to ram my fist into their misjudging.