Imagine you’re staring at a picture of a dolphin and are asked to vocalize your observations. You most likely will drone on about the dolphin’s shape, color, surroundings, et cetera. But one girl, this frizzy haired, tshirt wearing excuse of a girl, will spot that dolphin photograph and laugh. For this make up smudged teenager sees things just a little bit differently than those around her, or so she wants everyone to think.

Her name is a little different. It's a name she makes faces at, a name she waits for people to mispronounce. She smiles at everything and laughs when it’s quiet. Her mom thinks she should be a comedian. She thinks that’s bullshit.

She comes from your average American family, which proves to really suck. She’s a child of divorce, of molestation, of a dead beat and then drop dead dad. She’s the combined product of a working mom, a perfectionist mindset, and a mentally ill little sister. She knows how you feel.

Her childhood was nothing worth remembering. It was plagued with struggles, like straight A’s and figure skating national championships; cute clothes and birthday parties. But somehow, this all lead to a crippling depression Sylvia Plath would envy. A ball busting sadness that keeps her up at night. A s*** out of luck exhaustion that brings her to the razor with the courage to press down. Yeah, she doesn’t get it either.

Her favorite thing to do is use her rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. The doctors don’t really like that.

She brings home her self hatred and it hits her like a brick. She can only take so much. With her daddy problems and perfection issues in tow, she plays the mommy role and tows around her constant internally combusting little sister as well. With half her eyebrows pulled out from stress, and legs always shaking from Prozac-like meds, she’s become a little bitter. But she thinks it builds character.

After almost 2 months in multiple psych wards, she’s finally figuring her s*** out, and has a ton of really good story lines. She promises she won’t use real names.

She’s learning to cope, as trite as that sounds. She’s still a teenager and still hates the world, but, hey, she hates herself less. That’s a pretty big accomplishment.

And soon, she’ll be out of here and dealing with her problems on her own. She’s ready, well, almost. And this goofy-smile teenager will be happy. That she can promise.