I just wanted friends

By: Delilah Rodriguez

I love the friends that I have made, I would take bullets for each and every one of them. However making friends has never been an easy task for myself.

As a small child I had a really hard time making friends. As early as preschool I never really got along with my peers in grades lower and higher than myself. I was bullied for a variety of reasons, some being because I didn’t like to partake in the traditional feminine things to the subject of what kind of dad I had. Even when I had moved schools and had a fresh start, making friends was a struggle. This led me to resent everything about school and people within it.

I remember when I was barely in kindergarten how much I was bullied. It was to the point that I was bullied out of being friends with someone. There’s one specific time that I’ve carried around with me about this instance. I was playing with the new kid, I’ve forgotten his name but I know that he was some sort of middle eastern. At this point there weren't many People Of Color in my school and It was cool to have somebody who looked remotely like me especially in my grade. We had been playing ninja with a few other kids and these groups of girls had come up to us. They told me that I couldn’t be playing with the other kids because mexican and a girl. She continued on saying that because the boys were asian and I was mexican I couldn’t play with them. I began to cry, when the other kids started to throw tanbark at the girls.

When I look back on this incident, I think about how much it was a turning point in my life. I'm glad that I ignored the girl and continued to play with my friends. How much I needed to cherish what I had and how the right kind of friends can make a difference.

Knowing this, when I had moved to a completely different part of San Jose, I tried my hardest to make good friends and only till now have I been able to secure friends that will stick by me.