Thursday, September 23, 2010

Courage Connections

In fifth grade, I had arrived 3 days late to school, the start of the year. When I came, people were in their groups and cliques. I blame myself for not coming early enough, because if I had, maybe I could stop the problem. I'm going to write about what happened on the internet in the whole problem. Cyber-bullying. The bully was named Vivienne, the queen bee of the year. She acts like she's the nice person and her friends are too. But her and her friends just gossip, act nice, act smart, etc. I'm not afraid to stand up to boys so I've been in their gossip before. Ok, so, this bully sent me emails (i need to inform, there was a new girl who I was nice to but everyone wanted to be friends with her so I washed away) about how mean I was. She had said, "It's like you guys are acting cooler than us. Just you and your friend, walking around alone talking, avoiding us, as if you're cooler than us." I had cried once from her emails but it was more like a "I'm sick of this, leave me alone, you annoying person." cry. She had even whined on the messages, "You made me cry!!" that's what she had said. I was just like... "Ummm... yea, ok. I don't care, stop sending me and my friends emails." I stood up to her in the end and took my friends away from the problem. My friends found out why I was so hung on to not being with the cliques and just us. Because, it tore us apart and there was so much back stabbing people could get.

If I had that type of problem now, I'd take my friends and explain why I didn't want them there. I know, it's like bossing them around. But, I just don't want to see them in cliques and just gossiping like that. Cause' those cliques? They don't care. They just keep talking like it's nobody's business. And THEY think they're the nice ones. My friends didn't know why I was so angry. Well, they did, but I guess they wanted to not be in my rules. But they got the consequences. I let them learn. They came back, knowing why I did that and it's a tight bond, even now.

To help ISKL feel more safe and welcome, I would do absolutely nothing! It is already as safe and as welcoming than any other school I've ever seen in my life.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

A Time Of Courage

A time when I had to had to take risks and show courage was about 2-3 years ago. My mom was pregnant in the first time in 9 years with her fourth child. It was a huge surprise to my sisters and I. I might have to mention, there's no males in my family, except for my dad. There was name planning and we settled with Delilah. About during summer that year, there were these problems. My family was staying at my grandparents' house (no reason what so ever, we had our own apartment close enough to there.) It was night time and we were just relaxing on the beds in one room. Mom went to the bathroom, Diyana (11th grade, oldest sister) went to check what happened, told me not to go. And so on. These things resumed. I was beginning to worry.

 We lived in the middle east in a country called Oman. I won't be specific because not many people know about Oman. But it's a very friendly country with great people. Right, moving on, the problems began moving on. Once back from summer, my mom was off to a hospital in Oman. MPH, Muscat Private Hospital. She was in the hospital and my family was casual with it. As in, it was just like a week's stay for checking and testing. Not much. Time passed, she got out of the hospital, time passed by slowly, everything was okay. This is where it really kicks off. But now it was more worrying.

The baby was 6 months old. Not like I was counting. 9 minus 3 is 6, I seriously wasn't counting. So, my dad has these lunch breaks, sometimes he comes home to eat lunch on work days. Diyana, Dahlia (9th grade, 2nd sister) and I were at school. Dad was at home on his lunch break or he had no work at all that day. My mom wasn't allowed to go upstairs because of the pregnancy problems. So, their matress was downstairs, on the carpet. Small TV for my mom also downstairs. Temporarily, of course. My mom was downstairs resting and my dad was upstairs, watching on the bigger TV. Mom called for dad, dad came down. My mom was bleeding and she was probably running around trying to do something about it. My dad drove her to the hospital and my mom's doctor was ON VACATION. How idiotic. So, MPH took out an ambulance, put my parents in it and drove to a public Oman hospital. Khoula Hospital. They had an emergency and had a surgery on my mom. This is where the physcho freak out comes in.

Diyana, Dahlia and I came home, I was the first one to dump my bag, sigh and suddenly see blood. The gory sight of it all was a little too much. I gasped like in those over dramatic movies. Diyana just stared and Dahlia nearly went up the stairs, nearly stepping in some blood. There were puddles from the bathroom, to the stairs, from the bed, to the bed. My dad came down, emotionless and we all came down to the kitchen. He explained it, Diyana made some tea/coffee for all of us and it was pretty astounding. I was surprised. Time passed by, silence filling the house. Pretty empty and my dad told us to focus on homework. There was no more than 10 % of my little sister living, the day she was born. The doctors just told us to go home and pray. The chances didn't get much higher. Maybe to twenty percent? But everything came out fine. We had milk mothers to bring milk for Daleela (yup, my mom named her Daleela instead of Delilah.) It was such a long experience and a rather forgotten one. Terrifying and annoying. It took courage for me, if you could imagine. Courage to sit down, look the truth and the eye and not hate it. Because, it's the truth anyway, why try making a fairy tale?

Anyways, that's my time of courage for my blog post.

Signing off,
Dee Zee