It Gets Better

I just watched a video Cesar Milan made for the It Gets Better project.  I so related to a lot of what he expressed in his video. But I have not become a media super star, have not become someone who can easily share information that might be shocking to some people. So mostly I just think to myself.
  I was bullied miserably from about 3rd grade on, that I can actually remember. Most of it came from one main reason- that I lived on a farm in a time and place where farm kids were not the norm and that I smelled like a farm when I went to school.  For the longest time, throughout my childhood and adolescence I simply thought that getting ridiculed for smelling like the farm was one more lie they told about me.  It was only later, when I returned to the farm after having been gone for a while, that I realized that my clothes really did smell bad.  It was a mixture of scents that filled my house; manure, urine and wood smoke. These smells combined for a scent that wouldn't quit.
  I remember a time with my mom when she got so hurt by her father because she was attending a funeral of an old family member in newly purchased clothes, and he told her that she smelled like cows. She just couldn't believe or accept that there might be some truth to that, so she internalized it as one more hurtful thing her father said to her.
  During my high school years, I rode the private school bus with students from various private schools in the Capitol District. Those students were particularly loathsome to me, and made every effort to ridicule me on the bus, even resorting to using a little sister to come from behind me and slap my face. Of course if I said anything, I was labeled a bully because after all, she was only in 3rd grade and I in was a high schooler. Even the bus driver was complicit in this, ignoring what they did to me and reprimanding me if I said anything to the little girl. And so it went on and on. I would always sit by myself and often just put my head against the window to pass the time.
  It wasn't until I got to college that bullying really stopped. I was still shy and had difficulty making friends because of my years of being isolated, but no one knew about the farm and I didn't tell them.