Extraordinary stories of personal redemption

From Darkness to Light

In sixth grade, overnight, I went from being the class queen to the girl that no one wanted to talk to.

At the start of the year, I was very popular, and everyone liked me. School was a total breeze. Then one day, I found a really nasty note in my locker. I was shocked. Where had that come from?

My classmates started bullying me, and overnight, nobody would talk to me. If they did, it was to say something nasty. I was blackmailed into not telling anyone, and I was miserable.

Two weeks after the bullying began, my life as I knew it changed forever. That was the day I found out that my father was no longer frum.

It had been a really hard day; one of my classmates had poured a water bottle on me. I couldn’t wait to get home and unwind. Later that night, I was taking out the garbage when I noticed a McDonald’s wrapper. Shocked, I asked my mother about it.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” she responded. “But Tatty is not frum anymore. He hasn’t been for a while.”

The news hit me very hard, and I became withdrawn and totally disconnected from the people around me. I no longer had a reason to go to school and began staying home frequently. I had no patience for anything or anyone around me. The whole situation was so painful. That is the only way to describe it.

Every Shabbos and Yom Tov, my family (besides my father) went away to my aunt or grandparents. At first, it was fun to go away, but after a short while, I just wanted my own house, my own bed, and my own meal with my family singing zemiros together. My brothers wanted to go to shul with their own father.

These may seem like the simplest things in life, but they were things that I couldn’t have.

By eighth grade, the situation became unbearable. For two weeks straight no one in my class talked to me. When someone finally did say something to me, it was a nasty, biting comment. Yet I still kept my mouth shut and didn’t confide in anyone. I felt so alone.

Going from school to home was like going from terrible to even more terrible. School was horrible and lonely. Home was so painful. And yet, I learned to put up an “I’m okay” facade. I always had a smile on my face, and academically I did very well, so none of my teachers had any reason to be concerned about me.