She could feel the cold, hard pavement on her back as she laid on a manhole cover in the middle of the street. It was late, perhaps one or two in the morning. She was alone, but that was how she spent a lot of her time anyway. Her parents thought she was at home sleeping in her bed. As she stared up at the stars, fifteen-year-old Daisy Horning wondered just how much farther she’d fall before she hit rock bottom.

A freshman at Langley, Horning had just moved from Germany and was hitting wall after wall whenever she tried to make friends. While she says she never experienced “actual” bullying, such as teasing or shoving, she noticed that social exclusion took place on a daily basis. And to her, it hurt just as much as physical bullying.

“I had it in my head that I was going to have a group of friends, be in a clique by the end of September,” she said. “But it didn’t happen. At Langley, people shut each other out from conversations all the time.”

Horning did not fit the mold of the stereotypical “Langley girl” — she enjoyed belly dancing, loved anime and wore clothes from the Gothic store Hot Topic. “It’s inevitable that people judge based on the way you look,” she said. “I feel like at Langley, nobody tries to be different.” However, for Horning, changing herself just to fit in was never an option. “If I had tried to be anything other than myself, I would have felt disingenuous.”

Throughout freshman and sophomore year, Horning struggled to find her niche at Langley and overcome her loneliness.

“I remember one time, I was with a friend and for some reason I just leaned over and stared right into his eyes and said, ‘”I’m so lonely.” And he didn’t say anything back.”

Around that time, Horning was beginning to rebel because she felt so lost and dissatisfied with her life. She got piercings, dyed her hair, and snuck out on weekend nights, such as the night when she found herself lying on the manhole cover.

“That was definitely a turning point for me. I was tired of doing stupid things just because I felt lonely,” she said. After that, she began turning her life around and seeking out more people with whom she could be friends.

“I used to think that certain people were too smart or too cool to ever want to be friends with me,” said Horning. “But then I realized that those are just imaginary rules. They’re bogus. You’re allowed to talk to whoever you want.”

Because she knows what it’s like to feel excluded, she always makes it a point to sit with people whom she sees sitting alone at lunch. “What does that reflect about us, if we never try to sit with new [or lonely] people at lunch or in class? It bothers me,” she said. “We should try to make a good impression on people.”