I had developed social anxiety pretty early on in my life, and moving only made it worse.
School was tough. Especially when you’re the new awkward kid. I probably could’ve made friends but I was afraid of people. My family had convinced me that I was unworthy of any type of love so I mostly kept my head down and tried to get through the day.

Diana was one of the kids everyone feared.  She chose to mess with me because I was an easy target. I don’t know why she had such a problem with me but she made it known by beating me up during lunch. It wasn’t too bad, so I didn’t tell anyone, plus who would care anyway? Eventually, I got tired of constantly getting it from this girl, so I decided lying would get me out of the situation.

I told my teacher I didn’t feel well so she sent me to the school nurse.

I started going to the nurse’s office often, and complained about headaches or something random that would be believable, all to avoid Diana. After a while the nurse started to question my reasons and I ended up telling her about Diana. “Why don’t you tell your parents?” She asked. And I told her my mother wasn’t around. I told her I was living with Alicia and Joe and that my mother would come home soon. She felt bad for me so she offered to hang out in her office during lunch to get away from Diana. Ana, the school nurse, was probably the closest thing to a friend I had at my new school. She was younger than most of the staff there so it didn’t feel too weird. She would tell me about her life with her boyfriend and I would tell her about mine. I told her about Tina and my life at home, my shitty father and how Joe beat Alicia. Sometimes she’d let me hang out after the bell rung and would give me a note to go back to class a little later.

One day, I really was in pain. I had period cramps and wanted to go home and lay down. I was pretty new at this whole thing and of course no one showed me how to deal with periods at home. All I knew was what I was taught in school. Ana explained it all to me. She taught me how to use sanitary napkins and tampons and what to take to ease the pain. This was highly inappropriate but I really didn’t think too much about it at the time. She wasn’t being weird about looking at me or touching me. If anything, she did everything to avoid looking which made me feel like she really was just helping me. Plus, I could never even imagine a woman being abusive. So I convinced myself this was normal behavior.