Georgia Outcast

It was the summer before eighth grade and I felt like my life is over. I moved all the way from Pittsburgh to Atlanta Georgia and you could’ve said that I was moving to Canada and it wouldn’t of made a difference because that’s how far away I felt. I went to the same school since kindergarten I was the line leader with a boy name Ron and in my head he was a boy that I was gonna date all throughout high school we were going to get married have kids the whole shebang.

So you can imagine my little eighth grade brain being demolished when my mom got a job offer at Northside Hospital. A job paying way more than what she was getting paid at the hospital she worked at. This was an opportunity to go somewhere completely new so of course I was super upset. We were moving 1000 miles away with my mom‘s new boyfriend that at this point I wasn’t sure how I felt about him.

In this situation my friends didn’t believe me when I told them I was moving until the last day of school I kissed Ron for the very first time and of course it was goodbye and squeezed my best friend Dominique and that was it my life in Pittsburgh was over.

I started this new school and it was an absolute nightmare; I just did not fit in it was like a parallel universe. With me not knowing anyone and on top of that not knowing what was popular there that wasn’t a big deal in Pittsburgh. People were curious about me because it was the last year of middle school but as quickly as I started out being a hot commodity I soon became the weird new girl. I read too much for people to really get along with me I didn’t know the places they spoke of. I just wanted my life to be normal like everybody else’s and it wasn’t the case. I kept my nose in the books,music was everything to me but it wasn’t the same music that everybody else was listening to at that age.

I was starting to try to find my voice so to speak so I can figure out what kind of music I liked and what kind of person I wanted to be. Unfortunately middle school is already a terrible experience you take middle school in a completely new city were you know absolutely anybody it makes it a lot worse that. To top it off this was first year that I had uniforms so it made it even worse any sense of individuality that you could probably have stripped from you. I walked into that new school with not a lot of hope I was afraid I was going to be different and that people weren’t going to like me. I was right; I was an outcast a pariah.

I met my first trans person and I didn’t know what it trans meant yet I just knew that people were mean to them. With that I tried to befriend them if anything I knew what it was like to be different. That was the year that I got to go to an interracial school. That was different for me the little town that I lived in outside of Pittsburgh there was four black people and I was one of them. I never noticed that it was a big deal that I was only one of the four because I grew up with these people.

So when I moved and I got to meet more black I got to go school with all different races it was a completely dialect. The boy I remember the most though Was named Donald he was nice to me even though I was the weird kid. Though what completely sealed the deal to make people not like me he offered me an olive branch. Donald was having a 70s themed birthday party and if you were important you were invited. When he started to befriend me and I got invited so I was so excited. My mom‘s boyfriend at the time was a dictator and told me that I couldn’t go to the party. I was crushed and at that age I felt like my life was over. He then told me an hour before the party started that I could go by the time I didn’t have an outfit. I didn’t have anything because there was the score 60-80’s shop downtown that I was going to go to to get my outfit ;but when he told me I couldn’t go I didn’t get it. So while everybody was having this amazing time I laid in my bed crying.

Wishing my hardest to be back in Pittsburgh where all my friends were. Even though slowly but surely they were forgetting about me. Here I was stuck being there no one liked me and nobody wanted my friend it’s hard being the outcast and I was stuck that way for another three years. Finally I transferred out of that district I made a new friend became a new person. Geeky shy Marissa was gone, step in new rocker chick Marissa a bad ass someone who doesn’t take bullshit the girl.

The girl who was bullied made fun of the girl; that only had one friend who was this pregnant girl that everybody treated like a pariah. The girl that had her iPod stolen and was so afraid of the other kids and getting beat up all the time. Who literally carried a knife to school to try to defend herself. I locked that girl away tucked her in the back of my mind and I became this new person. Just remember whoever you wanna be you just have to hold on and remember; it’s OK to be an outcast. Nothing last forever and life is fleeting so hold on.