What a difference a day makes, because change can happen rapidly, but not just one way, it doesn’t all have to be negative. You can have two people who get the same negative, rough news, and yet, one is able to sail through it, and the other is drowning. If you can just hang in there, and not react, and take yourself out of the equation — Sometimes I step out of a situation and see it from a detached perspective, so it’s not happening to me anymore. Then you give yourself the room to realize that things can turn around in a day, or a week, just because of who you happen to meet, or run into, and your circumstances.

I think you will understand what it’s like to be a girl if you could just imagine being thirteen years old. Just having gotten off your braces. Kind of being a nerd, but not totally a nerd, just kind of a nerd. So, in other words, I sat in the middle of the bus, not the back of the bus where all the cool people sat. And not the front of the bus where the real, real serious nerds sat. Anyway, I was in the middle of the bus, and the most popular girl in school happened to be on the bus that day because she was going home with a boy that day, that rode my bus, who was really cute and popular, too…

“So anyway, um, they took my books and uh, ‘cause this one boy in the back wanted me to hang out with him. So I had to go to the back to get my books…

“Now this girl would do this to a lot of other girls. Just stuff, make them feel stupid and humiliate them in front of class, you know, ‘cause she was attractive and all the boys liked her. They couldn’t see the slime she was. So anyway, I went back — she was a cornflake girl — anyway, I went back to the back of the bus with this guy, and he was kinda burly and sweaty and gross, but tough, like a young Sylvester Stallone…

“So anyway, he’s sitting there pawing me and stuff, and I get really sick of this news, so I clock him one, and I shove him in the ribs with my elbow. And I know it’s near my stop, so I’ve gotta get off. Well, this girl has hidden my books. So, I take my books. I take her head in my hand and I take my hand, instead of marring her beautiful skin, I hit her on the top of the head. And um, I get my books and she says, “I’m gonna come after you, you little scum.” So she, for the next three months of school, she made my life a living hell. Every day, it was awful, screaming outside my house to come fight her. Well, I didn’t want to fight her, ‘cause, you know, I had done my bit. So, one day, um, she got up from her desk and she was walking, and everybody started to laugh at her. And they laughed and laughed, and she couldn’t understand why. And me and my friend Connie had had a packet of ketchup that we had taken from cafeteria. And we just happened to put it beneath her white jeans before she sat down. And it’s the only thing that got me through three months of hell.”

Over the last few hours I’ve allowed myself to feel defeated, and just like she said, if you allow yourself to feel the way you really feel, maybe you won’t be afraid of that feeling anymore.

So, behind this church with this music going on and on in my head, I started to really think that maybe just one day I could run faster…