Willium Valen and The Blessing of Apollo

This Is Me Trying

Before that day I thought that I was like everybody else in my family. With my blonde hair and green eyes I had to be, right? My eyes, it was the shape of my eyes that made me different, the tone of my skin, and my race. The day that I was first called a slur, I was 6 years old.

It was a normal thing for me in elementary school to get bullied that is, I was used to it, but nothing could have prepared me for this.

Lunch had just ended and I was walking back to my class like I normally would. This was when a group of three boys walked up behind me. They grabbed me by my backpack, swung me around, and pushed me against the wall.

"Where do you think you're going, Jap?" One of them scoffed.

The word rolled off his tongue so easily, like it was nothing like he wasn't being extremely hurtful.

I started crying, of course, they called me other names like crybaby, I knew that one all too well. My teacher ended up finding me and sending the boys to the principal's office she asked me if I was okay and I shook my head. If I talk when I'm crying, my voice sounds pathetic when I do, so that's why I don't.

My parents had been called into the office with the parents of the kid who called me the slur. The kid was staring at me the whole time like I had done something to him.

"Our son would never bully anyone," The woman scoffed.

"Well, let's ask Willium that. Willium, did Max call you any names?" The principal asked.

I didn't know what to say, I felt so much pressure, it felt like an interrogation. I felt like I was all alone, like no one was on my side.

"He called me a..." I didn't want to say it so I whispered it to my Mom.

"He called you a Jap?" She exclaimed. My Mom was angry, I could tell it by the way she clenched her fists while she took a long sigh. My Mom always hated that kid, but she almost killed him that day.

If you're lucky, you don't know what Jap means. It's short for Japanese.

I'm Japanese, and the only features that I got from my dad were the color of my eyes and the color of my hair. My skin is pale, my eyes are slim, and I am Asian and also white.

Growing up biracial I wished that I could just choose one race because I was too white for it to be racism, but I was too Asian to be 'normal'. I often felt guilty about calling what they did to me racist because after all I was only half Asian.

I have always gotten good grades when it came to school, and I have always tried my best and more than my best so I could be proud of myself. I wouldn't call myself an academic burnout, but having panic attacks over work doesn't count, right?

When I was in high school, the bulling didn't stop, but I knew how to push my emotions down. I was able to suck it up and just cry about it later.

One time I got pushed into a locker by some guy who thought that I was weird, I ended up passing out because he pushed me so hard and this only made people call me weak.

I mainly got picked on in P.E. class, my whole family was strong. My uncle caught Zeus' lighting blot, but I can't even catch a ball.

My whole life I have just been compared to my family, I'm just tired of it, and people seem to forget that I'm an actual person. Then again, I'm used to being compared to people.

I woke up in the early morning, before the sun had rose. It was quiet, nice, but lonely. I felt out of place after all these years away from home, it felt like I didn't belong anymore.

I just had a nightmare about all of the bullying that I went through as a kid.

This was my first night sleeping in my own bed again after the mindscape. My bed felt like a marshmallow, after months of sleeping on the ground I felt like I was going to fall through the floor.