a restart with art

By Jhester N

Many students may experience bullying and have a hard time finding ways to cope with it. Karen Machuca, a freshman at Yerba Buena High School, is a student who has experienced bullying throughout second grade and has used art as one of the ways to persevere and express herself.

Bullying was hard for Machuca to deal with. She always felt sad and did not like going to school because she was just going to have to deal with the same problem over again.

Some things her bully would do to her were pull her jacket and hair. “I didn’t really understand why she bullied me. I never got the answer, but she just did it, you know. Things happen,” she said.

The bullying affected her education significantly. Machuca struggled with math during the situation and it drove her crazy when it happened. She was doing pretty good at math in the beginning, but when she got bullied everything escalated down, she said.

Machuca tried seeking help from her teachers, but there were still no changes. At one point, a teacher wanted to seat Machuca near her bully, but she refused to. “It was frustrating all the time because nothing was happening,” she said.

When things weren’t going well for Machuca, she would do a bunch of crafts. Some things she would do were sketching and painting. Machuca learned how to do these things on her own and got inspiration from her mother.

Art was an outlet for her to express her feelings. In one of her paintings she did a butterfly because it was a way for her to express how different she is from everybody else. Machuca would use different colors to resemble who she is: “I have always been shy and stuff so I kinda painted a dark blue you know to resemble that dark you know, shy like you know place I was at when I got bullied in second grade.”

Machuca’s art was soon recognized by her teachers and entered into the Art Fair without her knowing. Her paintings ended up winning while she was in second and third grade and was something that she was proud of.

The support she got from her mother, art, and friends have helped her overcome her bullying problem. After looking back on this issue, Machuca says, “It kind of like changed me to be more open about things, you know speak up for myself because before I didn’t do that at all, so you know that’s how the bullying, you know got created and yeah…I was really quiet, so all that kind of affected me, but now you know I changed and now I am more outspoken and I could speak for you know myself now.”