I would have to say the most difficult part of moving away was leaving behind my life in the hood. Though having to hear stories years later of my old neighbor. Who lived across the street getting raped. Knowing she was only gardening made my heavy soul feel heavier, facing the truth that could have been me. But instead I was most likely in bed napping away reality. But hearing this story from a man who reeked of alcohol. Who seemed a lot less surprised by the news made me feel that it happened often. Not shocked by the fact that he was right next door and could not help her. I assume the lack of change in the area has weakened the morals of the sad, depressed looking man.

I always wonder if my morals would be as his if I ever stayed as long as he did. Watched the family car get broken into more than once. Or watch my mother argue with another woman over bumping her car in a dark alley. And fear of more than the woman and insurance. I wondered if I would have as many friends. Or stay shy long enough to be alone through teen years too.

I’m glad I don’t wonder as much as I used to though.

It’s hard to think what my future could have been if it were all different. If I would stay in the hood for as long as I lived. Or died trying to defend someone at gunpoint. It’s not even a matter to brag about. Something my childhood has built upon.

I felt like memories always come back when I start to miss it the most. These memories are never in the perspective of myself. I am always on the outside.

A ghost floating attempting to comprehend all that is happening in my conscious body. I look at myself when I was younger and want to take it all back.

Though being only twenty minutes away from Detroit. I guess was not preferable for a white family with three small children.

In my backyard I caught fireflies. And watched my babysitter struggle to blow up our inflatable pool. It’s where my brother lived his second year in, my first, and my younger brothers first too. Where I ran to the swing set and discovered a disease infected dead bird. My dad would kick this yoga ball at us and we would tumble towards the grass only to bounce back up and yell “again, again.” The garage filled with treasure and trash. Where I rode my toddler sized electric charged barbie jeep. Where I watched my brother learn to ride a skateboard.

But there was this fence. That taught me to keep everything in. My parents felt that it could protect me from all dangers outside of it at a young age. Never letting me outside of what I considered the backyard as a cage.  That something could happen. Staring at my front yard with so much potential I knew scared my parents. But I would never know what it would be like, because the only thing I could see from this fence was a pastel yellow house. That kept my neighbors in.

Inside this yellow house though was not only my neighbor, but a person I considered to be my best friend. Someone who I learned to skateboard with. Who threw pool parties together with barbies. Laughed and played, walked with her mother only to make it across the street. I still remember the first time we met. I stared at her and she did the same as our mothers chat.

Wasn’t new to the neighborhood. Only afraid of the dangers that could keep me inside our house that stood tall and light brown. After I moved though I only saw my childhood friend once more. Wanting nothing to do with me. Looked at me in curiosity of my new life not living where she still did.

This house is where I searched for Easter eggs in. Spent weekends watching the cheetah girls in. The basement though, was the spot where we all could live. Me and my brothers played the Wii, and I learned to hop on one foot too, hopping from one end to the next. Our basement shaped like an L and from the stairs walking down them stood our Christmas tree. Plastic, and standing for years even after we moved every winter holiday. I held birthday parties down there and tea parties in my pink decorated room. Hung a princess poster up and switched from pet to pet.

Roll out salt scented snakes in Play Doh. And only ate marshmallows out of the box of barbie cereal. But instead now I have the memories kept alive on shitty quality videos.

All I remember when I was eight was feeling nothing but excitement for moving away. Even at a young age I still found ways to suppress how I’ve felt. And the three friends I had were more sad for me moving away than I was.

Though one of the three friends that i’m not sure remembers my existence anymore. She taught  me from an early age that anybody could be toxic. Taught me that I should still be okay with them, because it’s normal for a six year old to be defenseless. Against the walls I sat as she wailed stuffed animals at my head. I still remember how upset I was, and suppressing it too. Not telling anybody. Because I'm still terrified of what would've happened if I did. She fooled me with her shyness, and what I thought was her kindness.

She was only the first toxic friend.

A person I felt I needed to hang onto only because our moms would have good chats about debt.

But my other one, she was the best. Taught me that as long as I have one best friend that was all I needed. When she was gone I remember writing against a tree trunk at recess. Sitting in the dirt writing down lyrics of already created songs. Enveloped in what it meant to obsess over music. She was the one that supported and grew my knowledge and creativity. But a song this time was not long enough to express what I have been through and how I’ve felt my whole life. I miss her to this day but have no idea where she is.

I ate lunch with a mentally impaired kid. At lunch time every day I remember it was when I was the happiest. I got to share lunch in quiet, in a secret room behind the office. An excuse to get away from everybody. And even sometimes got to read books to him. I know that sounds selfish and quite sad. Only being there for the silence. The only time of the day it was acceptable to not have to talk to anybody. Where I could read to someone in peace.

But that school I read burnt to the ground, only another good memory from my childhood that has collapsed. And turned into another playground where adults were soon to kidnap little kids.

It’s where I remember my brother being so energetic. Having such a passionate outline of his future and what he wanted to do. But he’s struggling now more than any of us. The happiness I remember him having as a kid is not the same person I recognize him to even be now. Almost regret and pity for wasted time spent sharing it on memories with him.

Now I live the white suburban life many people die working for trying to get in the hood.

Yet what they don’t realize is living in a better neighborhood won’t make you feel less dead inside. Tragedy strikes and hits those that least expect it. People that you have loved your whole life still die. Only to keep memories in a sad picture frame chosen from an overpriced furniture store. Nothing changes. Only the crime percentage I suppose.

Those that live still want the peace in knowing they will die. And those who so will only be in the memory of those that loved them. That is why we call these ideas universal, they run what we thought we could comprehend.

The city of love and the angel of death is all the same for those that accept it. And those who don’t at least have the peace of mind that they understand it.

The idea that being alone will inspire those is universal too though. Loneliness hits everyone, even those who have the most richest in the world. Those who have struck a gold mine of love and support still struggle with the agonizing thought of dying. Without reassurance of any of those people showing up to their funeral.

Though it helped knowing I was not alone when leaving. I had my brothers and my brothers had and supported me. Even though not speaking I could smell their disappointment from a mile away. Owen might have been too young to understand, but that was the only home he has ever known. Every birthday catered in the backyard. With every memory he could have remembered from the age of six and below held in the place I used to live.

I cried to the sound of my own heartbeat many days in a row. Ashamed of the tears I would never usually cry for myself. But this time it was different, it wasn’t only me I was spilling tears over. It was everything, the chance for something to be different if I did stay in the hood. In the place I called my home for years.

There was another night, in the heat of my own shame I cried. Wanting the innocence of my childhood, relive every dull or boring moment from back in the day. Because even the least entertained moments were still times I was okay. I would take back every moment I complained about. My short span, and small complex of what boring was when I was younger. To remember an episode of looney tunes. Or a movie bought, directed, and aired at night time on Disney channel. And have them claim it was an original. Remember Wii games that filled my childhood with the most activity.

Only once did I have the opportunity to visit the house with no space between the next. Climbing on top of each other trying to climb our way to the top. Some people considered lucky to even make it to middle class. Crime was only the essence of our ideas, what we considered it. Lucky to not be a target of a home invasion.

Yet in a place with so much crime it was still home to me. A place I could call my own. And a space only with the view of the backyard. I regret not looking out of it as much as I could.

Though the house I lived in was how I remembered it the last time I looked and embraced it. Empty in its presence the walls turned yellow from heavy smoking. I towered over every stair and ducked only to look at myself in the mirror attached to my closet.

I grew from the last time I came, and in a sense I could feel the house saw it too. Stared at me with the love it did once before. And for the first time in a long time I felt a little less alone. Like the imaginary friends I made up when in that house came back only to greet me again.

A place I spent so much of my innocence in.

Some days I wish I could live in that house again.

So I can remember what it feels like to not have so many holes in my morals.

In the game of life I’m only spinning off the ideas people find as acceptable in society. I’m not claiming everyone should blame our society. But that was the community who determined who should be safe and okay with their rank on the pyramid in school. Who was as the top, and meandered to the bottom. Even in elementary school it was prevalent of who they were and who they are still against. Who they felt should be the most successful in life. When growing up and who will always be at the bottom even after graduation. Predetermined who will stay and live in their mother's basement.

And moving to this place full of nothing but ranks I was at the bottom. Trying to swim my way back up, yet no one wanted to throw me a life jacket. A raft. So I stayed at the bottom until I drowned in the ideas from others conformity of an acceptable young lady.

Someone who was fun without getting wild. Quiet minded yet loud in spirit. And still finding ways to scream out their ambitions, or jokes, or anything to convince them. That they were not the enemy, but someone to be friends with. Begging for the applause from those at the top of the pyramid. A person who could say whatever was on their minds unless it doesn’t agree with their ideas. Someone everybody needed to be friends with to feel accepted.

That girl was who I aspired to be in the third and fourth grade.

And I still remember how excited I was my first day. Suppressed my nervousness with a smile that might have been fake. The first time I ever got to have a locker. A fresh start away from the shyness that controlled me. But the more I tried to break through the more it kept coming over me.

I even had the opportunity one day to escape from the bottom. But intimidation washed over me. I still wonder to this day how my life at Howell could have been different if I took what I considered a risk at that age. Almost asked my shoulder partner, the only person who would talk to me, to play imagined games at recess. Ridiculous now it seems, but that could have been the moment that would have defined the rest of my school years.

And I didn’t take it.

Except this girl took a risk for me. A different girl that greeted me one day after gym. She must have known I was new, because she didn’t have any friends too, We were drowning in the same broken boat. Bobbing like apples trying to grasp for anything new. But I ended up being her apple to grasp. She made a friend that day, that friend being me.

When I got home from school that day I jumped and screamed in excitement. I wailed at my mom the words “I made a friend.” She was proud of me. But now that I look back at that moment I knew inside she was also sad for me. Sad at the fact a friend, that so many people have, was something to be celebrated.

From that day on I knew she knew where I am.

A lost little girl always reaching for new friends.

Something she could not do anything about. And she was sad for me. I’m sorry now mom for how it seemed to be. But I made a friend that day, the only one I had made that year. The only friend in my life I thought I’d ever make.

Who then I had to let her grasp from me go. Because she was closing in too tight with her hands. Insecure with anyone leaving her. That even sometimes I still feel her imaginary fingers of insecurity. So scared to let someone go I had to for her. I lost her one day. And sometimes I still regret what I did. But I also realized I didn’t need anyone holding onto me.

It is easier now though all I have to do is hide my face behind a screen. And nobody will question you. Or talk to you. Scared to interrupt a private conversation. That they feel is between your phone and your own identity. Not obligated because people think my phone can be my only best friend.

Talking to a stuffed turtle in the corner of the room was the only way I could speak. o anybody during the day in third grade. My only friend before my phone. But the classroom for me I still found a way to feel safe. Without the interruptions of my thoughts caused by those who still don’t accept me in tenth grade.

You might be wondering how I could write a whole chapter about loneliness when all I was at that young age was alone. But there were still things that surrounded me. Still things I missed in my childhood. Like sleepovers on the weekends. And play dates with close friends. I missed bikes rides around the neighborhood with others who I could call the best in my life. I had one friend in the neighborhood though. But she left.

I rode the bus everyday with her and that was the only entertaining thing in my day. Overlapped was the happiness I could consider was the best part of my day. Yet seven hours of the rest of it were times when I was the most depressed.

The most scared surrounded by kids who didn’t understand me.

Didn’t get my sense of humor.

Peers that I could not laugh with.

The teacher found a way to work her way around others young perceptions. Perceptions of what their lives would be for the rest of their lives. At the top of the pyramid. She taught me that being different was okay, treated me the same. Yet I still knew when she was not looking my way I could feel her warm smile turn into confusion. How could somebody so small already have so many enemies? Without doing anything?

I always wanted her to know I was not someone to get confused about. It almost made me angry how I knew the things she was thinking when I was not near. She looked at me during recess. Confused of why I was sitting on a tire with no one around. I was not a special snowflake in the eyes of what she wanted me to be. Only someone that got intrigued by writing, especially when I was alone.

I spent those two years acting like the victim. Writing things in my school journal, anything to hold onto the memories. When my best friend who is now forty minutes away supported me. I spent those lonely days writing against the tree trunk. And then I had to spend every day on top of one tire the exact same. With nobody else interested in what I had to say. The only thing that surrounded me was dirt, I guess I felt that was its own island. Nobody could interrupt me. Except the whistle that rang the ears of every kid when it was over.

There was a spot only for me in my personal jet. The one I created in my mind to justify the fact I had nobody to play with.

Some days I would look up at the kids swinging themselves down the slide. Or attempting to climb up it when the supervisors were not looking. Fascinated now of how small we used to be. Tiny humans attempting to climb anything. No social structures or rules were necessary while you were spinning on the tire swing.

Or games made by the creativity of what we used to be when we were kids. People without any sense of the way the world worked. No politics or fights or unequal rights. Only creative minds that inspired fake fights and colorful sights.

So that is why I wrote a book when I was the age of eight. Acting like the victim of what I felt was my deserved loneliness. Of course my story was more innocent. In life and on paper still. I wrote of mummies and summer camp. Yet when it comes to it I have no idea where that book is. Most likely hidden, with the writing of years ago most likely withered away. Faded in the back of my brain, another faded memory.

Obscurity in my path the oddest person was the most popular girl I ended up being friends with. She was not any different from me. We laughed in a group and ended up being friends. Even posted a video years ago claiming I was even her friend. Three years of torment from her group only to have gotten made up with some conversations with me. We don’t have the pleasure of speaking anymore, but she was not bad. Or evil. Or anything I expected her to be.

She made me question my theory that every one of those people in her group were bitches. Made myself act like the victim when it was only them not noticing me. Except for one. I was right on one of those girls I stereotyped.

The first person to confirm my insecurities.

In one of those grades that I felt terrorized in she came up to me at recess. Called me weird while all her friends that surrounded her laughed. I still remember the way she smiled. An evil I could see nuzzled up inside her. Warm by the fire lit in her heart.

I know that it is strange to assume a small child already had anger and hate growing inside of her. But I could see in her eyes how much she was against me. Without even having a conversation, I could see the glow in her eyes from the rings of fire. Because I imagined her pushing them out with a pressured breathe.

The first time I got bullied for something so minor.

Her brown eyes still pierce my soul today. To remind me of how low I am on the pyramid. Shout from the heavens that god didn’t know a loser was in the making. But I am not intimidated. Because I can see behind all the makeup and people who bow down to her is insecurity. Either brought upon her from the lack of good parenting. Or she can’t find a way to like her appearance. Because when there is one big insecurity there are always a thousand more. The small ones, lying behind the surface.

Or she found a way for people to not like her. Something that could knock her off the top of the pyramid. Insecure from the things people say about her. Not written in a book but said in real words.  Even from people she thought would be by her side since elementary school. She was not the last though that I found hidden insecurity in.

Because she can bat her eyes and swing her hair at me all she needs. To not bring up the suppression and depression from most her emotions. Though on the inside I can feel the presence of someone who needs escaping. Never to question the mentality or taking the time to question her motivation. Of taking so much negative energy and taking time to push it onto everybody.

Though sometimes I wondered about how the girl I used to know is actually doing. If her subtle bullying and lies of being innocent ever get tiring. Even now all I hear her talk about is of the people she cant stand. And laughs along with the boy who tries too hard to show his worthiness to her. To show that he is somehow worthy of her words getting thrown in his direction. Trying too hard to impress her.

He says what he can to get any reaction from her. If there is none though her sidekick doesn’t laugh along to his dry taste in humor too.

Call it hypocrisy all you want. But in third grade when I was daydreaming I am sure she had a lot to say about me. And still does now in all honesty. Because this book wasn’t created for me to sing the words of Jesus. Or sell as many as John green. It got created from a state of empty. A state of having something that means anything in my life missing.

I am not here to spread negative energy.

Only to tell my story.

Then there was another bitch who tried to lay down the path of my life. Who tried to determine who I was inside came into my life too. She might have topped the last one if the things she said behind my back she said to my face too. But she didn’t.

She looked at me with a glare that would intimidate anyone in fifth grade. For normal people she would have been intimidating. But when you’re at the bottom the only way to go was up. So her looks of anticipation and clear security in who she thinks she is did not bother me.

A group we were set in. Could be I was the first to start yelling. This boy who both of us were not friends with struggled with reading. She yelled at me to not give him the word he was trying to say. I watched him in distress panic. Attempting and embarrassed by trying to pronounce the word. We started yelling that is all I could remember. I was trying to defend him. Trying to give him the word he struggled with. But instead because of sheer bravery and her meaningless intimidation, we kept yelling.

It was the first time I felt I finally got back at the top of the pyramid where all she did was sat. The first time I felt fury stronger than only a small fire that lies in the center of my soul. It was the first time I felt pure hate in my heart for another human being. And I will never forget it. Because for some strange reason I regretted it. Something in my head told me that it was wrong to yell at her for that. I also felt everybody's eyes glued in our direction. Confused of why we were yelling at each other on a hard carpeted floor.

I can’t forget it. My mind won’t let me suppress this. The first time I’ve actually felt embarrassed for what I did. I know that she doesn’t think of it like I do anymore. We were only about ten years old. But she doesn’t forget her emotions when she takes the time to look at me. She knows that for some reason she doesn’t like me and that is all she needs. To feel justified in her life that none of it was her doing.

Because the argument went both ways.

She hated me from that day forward. Ignored me with a passion of hate I have never seen before. That was when I decided my theory of being a bitch to get to the top was correct.

And I was still lonely.

Still insecure with who I was.

I guess nothing ever changes.

I still find a way to miss those days though. Because in a weird way I still had my innocence. My thoughts were pure enough to push through others insecurities. In a weird way I kind of made my own raft crafted by my subtle positivism. Had to be the light of my own life. And push past the rest of others thoughts of an imaginative pyramid. That still found a way to keep other creativity from going outside of it.

This was the innocence that kept my sanity. Kept me alive long enough to make a few friends in middle school. Because the day I graduated elementary school is what I considered to be the happiest day. A way to get separated for three years away from a few of the popular bitches that tried to control me.

It was so tiring at the same time though, to create this persona where I was somebody I was not. This shy little victim that had no friends and no one to talk to during the day. It was sad to think that this was my life a few years ago. I got exhausted from being that girl nobody wanted to sit next to.

The things said behind my back was the worst of it all though. Something that inspired me to stay hidden behind everyone. I could see vicious eyes that cornered me. They gave me a title, made me who they thought I was. Someone to be afraid of only because I didn’t have the courage to talk to anyone. I guess part of it is my fault, they are not all to blame.

But it was difficult to be friends with someone who didn’t care about learning what your name was. Who you were and where you came from. They made me feel ashamed even though they never knew I grew up in the hood. That I was not living my life in a white suburban neighborhood.

In my brain dedicates a pity party in honor of my name when thinking of third and fourth grade now. Terrified if someone from my past will ever bring up moments when I was most embarrassed. From talking to a stuffed turtle in the corner of the room, who was my only friend. Or taking the time to bring up my time on the tire. What I was doing always with a notebook in my hand.

I went to the middle school on the other side of town. Separated by an imaginary line that determined whether you go to one middle school or the other. And they all left me alone for a while.

I look back and understand the starting of it all came from a sad space of mind. The kind of story created to justify living on your mother's couch still thirty years after it all. Someone who has the capacity for making friends was so small they lost all confidence. And at the same time potential of living a good life after this young age. But that is not going to be my story.

I refuse to be the person they look up on Facebook and find still sad and depressed. With only five friends, those being my family members.

I understand also that it is not the same for everybody. That the people who may have a starting to life like me end up being so successful. But with lonely kids I still feel there is such a stereotype given by those who had to most friends. Yet grew up to live the most anticlimactic, dull life.

It’s a lesson I felt I needed to understand and given from god himself. That friends does not equal power in life. The people you grow up with now are most likely not the same people you will grow with your whole life. That should be something accepted and in all honesty expected. A lesson to not bring your standards up to those who can’t get and checks in the checkbox. I’ve learned that growing up lonely will still make you lonely. Even after having an acceptable amount of friends.

Only understand though elementary school was when I became the most vulnerable.

When I thought about my grandfather I want to feel love, feel how it felt when I would spend the night at his house. Though now all I can think of when his memory comes into view is the despair of knowing that he is gone.

He spent years in hospital beds hooked up to IV cords and piss bags. Nothing brought me more happiness than knowing that he survived at the end of the day. I wanted so bad to wait at the phone every hour until a call finally came, and stopped my heartbeat dead in its tracks.

If I could I would have been at his side until the very end. But my grandma wanted the best hospital for him. So instead a hospital bed at the hospital of Michigan occupied his name. I wish she would have realized how much we all wanted to see him without being an hour away. I figured what was the point when even the best hospital in Michigan could not figure out what the f he had.

So he laid in that shitty hospital bed and gave him about two weeks at home. Before having to go to a building of only white walls again. Even at the age of ten I knew those walls did not stand for health and peace when it came to my grandpa.

Grandma was always hovering, always stuck like glue to his side everyday. I figured it was a sign of their love, but in all honesty all I saw in her eyes when it happened were dollar signs. Someone told me years later that those dollars signs would not be too far from the truth.

It hurts to know someone you could love for years could end up only being there for the money. I thought that only happened to sugar daddy’s and pimps. I wanted to be wrong about it so bad, though let's say for now my grandmother owns two houses, both in her name. Though this is not the chapter for my grandmother, this is about the love for my grandpa.

I still remember the first day he got taken to the hospital. I got pulled out of elementary school a few hours earlier for visiting. Though it scares me to see him so pale and thin already when I was at the young age of nine or ten. Hooked up to machines galore, enough technology to create a whole robot. I’ve never seen someone so happy in a hospital bed though.

When his grand kids and children came to visit at the end of his cycle, I knew that was when he was at his happiest. I knew that he wanted nothing bad to ever happen to us. Having someone you love die at a young age opens new doors and possibilities to bad things.

Inside I knew that we all knew it was the end, it was only a matter at that point of how long he would have held on for. In the eyes of everyone around he was a man of great honor and humor. Always laughing or enjoying the sun around.

I remember a day when I was a young girl again. Me and my brothers were spending the night at my grandparents like we always did. My grandparents were always people I could rely on and love in my life. People that could be there for me in the sense of any clear danger. Even living thirty minutes away. I got comforted by the thought of their love and commitment, it was something I crave in my life.

It’s weird to think how my happiness was so abundant in those days. People would hear my laugh and find the humor in everything I said. Though that week I finally learned how to count to one hundred. I sat down next to him and to show off I used my new found skills and up the number chart I went. Not stopping until I hit seventy eight. Where I messed up again but we both started laughing.

He let me understand that not every mistake had to suffer consequences. So I restarted until he decided he wanted to also. Together we counted until my attention span ran out.

My grandpa had a passion for cross words. Never would I see him without a pen and a newspaper in his hand unless he was eating. Or  finding entertainment by a comedy show or NASCAR on the television. One night I thought I was a genius and helped him along the way. Until I got bored because my attention span in those days was small.

The last thing I can remember was the last Halloween he spent with me. Every year when I was out trick or treating my grandma and grandpa would pass out candy. I spent hours getting ready that year, being a zombie pirate. The smell of cheap fabric from party city always reminds me of the last Halloween. He sat with me the whole way along and watched me get my greasy makeup done by my mom.

He sat there and asked me how I was doing, and how were my grades. Typical stuff that I did not realize meant a lot until he passed away. If I could talk to him one last time I would answer those questions with as much honesty as I could. Without happiness in my voice, saying that I am doing okay, because I was not. I wish he would have known out of anybody close to me. A sign that I trust him.

There were two things that I regretted the most when it all came to an end. The first thing was not having the opportunity to spend more time with him. Even through all the nights I spent their never had it felt like I got enough time to talk to him.

Even if it were something simple. Like watching NASCAR or solve cross words anything would have been worth it, or at least that's my opinion. Though I cringe at the knowledge that if I did have more time with him would I have taken it at ten. Where life and death did not get in the way of my mind until he passed away.

Even if my memory got filled with us talking over facetime anything would have been better. Than waiting in patience for a call I knew was coming. Anything to occupy my time, to somewhat forget. Forget what was happening in my family medical wise was better than what I did. Which was nothing.

I wish our last conversation was one I did not regret. One that did not happen. I blame myself for it every single day in all honesty. I regret not having the opportunity to say I love you at the last Christmas I had with him. Could be it was me trying to convince myself I had more time with the thin outline that now was my grandpa. Who laid on the  couch not by choice, but by obligation. Because moving would make him feel pain.

I didn’t get to say I love you one last time. If there ever was a sincere form of regret please let it be this. After he died I wanted him to know that I loved him with all my being. I wanted to shout it from the heavens or wherever he is one last time so he could understand. Why would I lie to my parents. Why could I not go over and say it to him. Because in all honesty I did not think it was that big of a deal.

That I could meander over him any time I’d like and say it out loud Though I should have known that was not part of reality. Life comes to an end whether you want it to or not. Not saying I love you at the end of that Christmas party though, I wish I could have gone back in time only to do it over again.

Because nothing was the same without him. His funeral was one of the only times I’ve felt pain as surreal and brutal as that. Everything craved for him to hug me one last time. Wanted him to kiss me on the cheek with his scruffy beard that was uncomfortable. I wanted to be able to say both my grandparents made it to my eleventh birthday. Or my sixteenth. That they both made it to the next Halloween to pass out candy. That is now why Halloween reminds me of regret and guilt for the memories that could have been. Wanted to say they both made it to my graduation. That they both had a seat at my wedding.

It hurts the most to know that would have been a lie now. Something fabricated to make it seem like I knew what I was doing after his life ended. But I was more lost than I was before and I wanted to suffer in silence.

I want everyone to know this sadness was not a thing of my grandpas doing. Of course he was the reason, but sadness came over because I did not know how else to handle it. Never should anyone even have to think about losing a grandparent that early in life. I wish for everyone who has lost a grandparent to understand that no matter how much it hurts life moves on.

Even if the hardest thing I could ever have attended his funeral. I even wrote a note to him. Confessing how sad I would be without him, how much our family is falling at the seams. Though at the same time in that letter I was holding back how I was feeling and I knew it. I knew it in fear because I knew my parents wanted me to read it out loud to them.

And I did. That's why it was not the same letter I put in his casket. No matter how much I begged downstairs that it was personal, privacy is not a thing that exists at the age of ten. Only for your age do people feel you can not write anything with any meaning.

Though the memory of what I wrote will stay with God and him forever. As even I forgot how much passion I put in what I wrote. Though I knew the words I scribbled down made me so emotional to the point of tears.

At his funeral though it was an open casket. Nothing screwed me up more than the first time I’d ever see a dead body. Especially of a person I knew and cherished until life found a way of ending.

Looking at him more pale than he was sick made me look at life different. Made me look at myself in the position he was in that box. With his arms crossed and laid out all proper. Terrified of thinking what would happen to his body a few months in. The winter cold to freeze over the ground he lay in. Snow always to remind me of watching him get placed with grace inside of the grave.

The depression I come over in wintertime I still feel caused by the memories from the cold day he passed away. My face lay with the same sad expression from that day. Never learning how to smile with confidence with finally understanding how many die in a day.

I held it together with such grace. And stared at the floor when the reverend looked over at me, checking on how the family was doing. I had my two best friends there with me the whole way through though, my biggest supporters, my cousins. They were there for me when all I could taste is the bitterness of my tears at the end. They were there when all we could think about was how someone we love so much could die like that. I held it all together until the last five seconds. When death finally hit me as a thing that can happen to anybody I love.

It was an epiphany that my grandpa died, no more sleepovers where we could count together. No more having the opportunity to hear his laughter. Everything was pain and seized every lonely, sad, depressed bone in my body. My cousins had to support me as I walked down the aisle again. Supporting me with their arms wrapped around my shoulder. I could see everybody staring at me, I was the only one crying. But the tears kept rolling where they wouldn’t stop.

Rolling, rolling, rolling down the cheeks. Of someone who did not have the ability to feel happiness. The months following though, they were the hardest I had to go through. Not only for me but the people surrounding. No one would admit to me how they were feeling. Inside I thought no one wanted to discuss it with me. Because I did not completely understand the concept of dying.

I did not get how in a world full of so many people there is also such a big amount that die, or that are dying slow. No one discussed it with me, most likely because they were all mourning their own ways too. Might be out of respect for not discussing the dead.

Though I wished somebody would have talked to me. I wished someone would have told me what was actually happening. We were all silent in a time where anybody saying anything about it would have been better. Or at least better than breaking down in the same house, only different rooms.

I didn't even know until years after that my mom got extreme anxiety over it. In all honesty nobody knew how anybody was feeling. I cried myself to sleep for months, years after still sometimes I cry about it.

Nobody asked how the littlest kids were doing though, that was something that I wish I did. Because even though they’re young if you are bringing them to a funeral. Meaning they should understand whats happening too. I wish the younger half of my cousins had to grow up with grandparents the same way the older ones did. My cousin brought it up months later how they had to grow up with only one grandparent, never did I realize it.

I wish I did earlier though, ask how everybody was doing. Never will they be able to even have sleepovers at grandmas the same way I did. Never will they get to say that he went to their ninth birthdays. Or celebrated by sitting quietly next to grandma in a chair. Embracing the warmth and happiness that now has to get spent without him.

I can’t go to a hospital without thinking of him. Or thinking that he died in the same house I spent nights in. After months of getting scared to even look on the outside of the house I spent most of my childhood in.

It made me more vulnerable to life at that age. Made me grow up with a tougher shell and capacity to not feel things as deep the way others did. Not a way to avoid my feelings, but a way to cope in a vigorous manner with life after death.

Having to contemplate heaven or hell at that age with only those memories. And tears sending me to bed each night made it harder for motivation to do anything.

I’ve learned to mourn. To feel things. It taught me to be silent, It taught me to be more vulnerable, more fragile to the ones I love.

In all reality I know this will be the hardest chapter I will write in this whole book. But I am dying inside from what has happened. And want to release the stress you have placed on them after five years of silence off again.

To this day I’m still unsure what to title this chapter of my life. You will find out who this is by the end of the chapter. I need you all to read though. I need all you to be aware of something more serious. The issue of sexual assault and rape in all our communities.

Because the idea that they will be a person lurking. Lurking in the shadows pawing at your every move until they entrap you is not realistic. Or the idea that it would never be someone you trusted and loved with everything.

That they will be standing and waiting in a parked white van. Anything they could dress in as reality. Waiting for an opening. A spot where you are in your most vulnerable version, falling back on the words anybody says. Not watching, only waiting. This is only my story.

Out of the million times girls have gotten silenced for it, I am ready to speak. Ready for people to finally hear my voice in another version other than weak, only because I am a girl.

I am finally ready.

To this day the memory is still the most vivid.

We were sitting, only watching television. I was nine. Or ten. Anywhere near that age. But you were twelve or thirteen. Should have known better than anybody.

I knew that I was at the bottom. Watching everybody around start to rise to the top when sank to the bottom. But I stayed in my place. And made it my own home every single day. Because it was better than the home I was living in.

But being at the bottom came with no protection. They forced you to open your eyes and show you what life actually is. A place of vulnerability. No shield between you and everything you thought to be innocent morals. I guess in a way I had to grow up a lot faster than everybody. Only to catch a breathe from the surface long enough to survive again.

But you looked into my eyes and only watched me. When roughly forcing your fingers inside me. Then against my knowledge taught me to wrap my fingers around a d.

All I can remember is staring at the clock, lifeless on the couch. I let it happen and all I could do was stare at each minute. Scared of what he would do to me if I stopped him.

Across from me hung up laid the painting of the Mackinac bridge. I remember my mom saying how much she loved it. How much it reminded her of our childhood trips. Now all I see when I look at it are those memories. He ruined my happiest place. Some days I wish I could ruin him. What he has built and what he has accomplished.

Tear him down the same way he decided to tear through me. Both mentally and with my raging hands. I still regret this being my story. I regret having to know and having it in mind I have to make this one of the most important chapters of my life. But because of him nothing else would have happened. Not the start of my extreme unhappiness or anything that has taken away and started to be chipped at my sanity.

Some days I regret not bringing him to the cops. But they are always in favor of men. Even if I had eye witnesses. This is now the only method I have of coping. Trying to write everything I’ve felt.

Try to describe that sinking feeling. When everything goes up life finds a way to turn it back down again.

Reject the ideas and thoughts not written by a man. But that is not a way to live. Always defending your word and your body from the outside world. Yet that is who he made me be.

Someone searching with no point in a sea of concentration, obligation.

Focus on all the small details, struggling to find the bigger picture in life. The meaning of it all when all I wanted to do was lay down in the hole I dug in my mind a die. In peace is what I wished for it to be but in the end I see peace only comes to those who are trying hard to earn it.

Though I still try to find today what I deserve. A person to look after, protect and love me. Fight with instead of against the trauma in life I bring up to them. Then that is the only way I thought I will find real peace. Replace the mistake brought into my life and in turn have someone I can finally trust. And confide in the rest of my life.

They say nothing is quite like a parents love though.

But if they love me so much why was I trying so hard to make them feel that I should be the favorite.

In the end though revenge wouldn’t be so sweet if I also knew I was ruining my family. Tearing them apart. Some days I thought how selfish I am for wanting to turn him in. And other days sometimes I realize it is better than suffering in silence.

Sometimes I come down and cry on the couch it all happened on. Wonder if my tears could ever whisk the memory out of existence.

It never does.

So now I stare on the couch it happened on. Stronger than I was those years before. One night I dreamed of lighting on fire the couch it happened on. Burn down the living room it happened in. To be specific, it was the seat I was sitting in.

I look back and caress it’s print with the gentle softness of my fingertips. Trace all the places my fingers could have landed on that night. Try to make a pattern with it but in reality all it stands for, it’s only metaphor is to be a couch.

The best one it can be.

Try to justify the couch like I tried to justify him.

I was so unhappy.

And this justification never worked in the end.

Though now, again for the first time in a while all I am is angry.

But then it happened again, and again. This time with some more privacy. I remembered getting terrified with the things you wanted me to do. Terrified by the only thing you wanted from me now. No chance for conversation. Only the opportunity to take advantage of me yet again.

But then the last straw came. When I felt tears rushing towards my face. And you started screaming at me. “Suck it, what’s wrong with you?” Please keep in mind I was only about nine.

And petrified.

He wanted to stick it inside the back. And starting grinding up against me. But all I could do was stand there, terrified. This is what I knew was wrong. I wanted to scream at him. Wanted to tell him I got petrified to be near him. Because inside I knew the extent of his rage. Of his fury.

Then my dad saved me. By yelling his name from the bottom of the stairs. I never let it happen again. Finally understood that my happiness was worth more then not making him mad.

I still remember staring at the sink though when it happened.

Wishing a stream of water could refresh my face. Refresh my soul. Make me brush up on my morals. Than have all my troubles and insecurities wash down the drain.

But that never happened.

All I could do was live with the anger inside that he was getting away with it.

One night all I heard from his bedroom was yelling. I thought they caught him; my parents. Years later I found out that they did. They knew about it the whole time and although I got scared I was also furious. Because they did nothing. Never asked me what I thought about it. Never learned that to me it was rape.

I was angry because they wanted to send him to military camp and discipline him. When father stormed out of his room I could sense the tension. The way my mother was yelling at my dad to stop. That he did not deserve to get yelled at. Yet in that moment I was finally a little happy. My dad was almost once again my hero. Only a small sliver of revenge from a lifetime of unhappiness.

And that slight discomfort and fear he most likely felt in that moment I wished he could feel forever. So he could always understand the fear of women when going to any party. Or staying at home, staring at the door, waiting for it to crack open.

But they never did send him to military camp, only let my rapist then live in the same house as me. And I am still angry. Because I tried to forget all about it. But I didn’t let myself.

Because I need something to hold against him. A grudge, hold against him the motivation for living. That I can survive a life living in the same household as him. Prove something to myself whilst doing it.

That I am so much more than something that has happened to me.

I am so much more than only a victim.

Though at the same couldn’t see my whole life slipping away from me. Sure I can survive. But there is a difference between surviving, and living with it.

Learning to cope.

Learning to move past it.

But I never did.

He taught me what it actually meant to not trust anybody.

Why did he want this from me? I still ask myself to this day. What did he want from me in all actuality. I want to tell more people. I want others to understand ,my anger towards him. I want people to see right through him.

When people look at him I only want one word to pop into their head. Rapist.

Because by day he looks average. Like someone who has lived a regular life, someone who might have any real tragedy. That might be true for him. But not for me.

The innocence from my childhood, my morals of what is right and wrong. They say that when you hit rock bottom the only direction you can go is up. But they forgot to mention the layer between rock bottom and being  f'ed up. Beyond repair. Beyond healing my emotions. You took away something that I can never regain again.

My capacity for trusting anybody with me.

In hopes that I won’t hurt them inside the way you did to me. Both with hands and thoughts and no good prayers.

I thought at that moment though, the worst part of it all is that you knew what you were doing. You understood the birds and the bees. When at that age all I should have been worrying about was playing with the imagination of barbies. Or what color skittle I was planning to eat next.

You took everything away from me. And I still sit here and cry over a boy who has no sympathy. No ambition for him to be part of my future.

I wish I could forget. But by the time I forgot you made me remember. One night in the flames of my anger towards ignoring you I almost forgot what for. But when it hit me that what I wanted to dream of happening was real, it was a lot harder to come to reality. So instead I avoided everything enveloped inside of my tears.

Decided it was easier to drown in my own than the ones that others had cried for me. The water created by those who liked my suffering. One of those people being you now it seems.

We did everything together. You were my best friend. Always my light at the end of a long tunnel, someone to look up to. But you took away everything when you decided that my love was not enough for you.

Now I can’t even look in your direction. Knowing all I will see is a little boy with a smug expression. I haven’t hugged you in three years. And I never want to again. Because when you try I always feel my heart fill up with anxiety. Not anger. But fear.

I’m scared to be around you now. Because I know who you actually are. Someone with too short of a temper, someone who will do anything to get their way.

I can’t talk to you anymore. It fills my heart with anger and regret. All I hear when you talk to you is a whisper that crawls down my spine, “suck it, what’s wrong with you?”

It used to be screaming though. I learned to tune your voice out over time. It used to be yelling, screaming, repeating. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?” Those words made me cry so many times.

Then I have to only look at you now and all those regrets come rushing back. Fear too. You’re irrational, and I never know what you will do next. When you touch me I run away. And you always wonder why.

Every time you raise your voice at me I’m scared for what you will have to say. When I hear actual screams than the ones I used to imagine when you spoke. I get scared when you don’t get your way. Because I am the only one who knows. That behind that calm exterior is a monster that will yell me back to my vulnerability. Unsure of everything I want to be.

A person who loves and admires the art and sentiment.

I wanted him to suffer for such a long time. Wanted him to die. I imagined it so many times while I cried in privacy. I wanted to see him bleed. And laugh at his funeral. But now I understand that it would not make me any better than him.

I felt that the soul I lost could have gotten made up with replacing my soul with his. That I may feel justified inside for wishing these terrible things.

But in the end I was wrong. And I still feel bad for the things I wished daily.

I always think of what my life would be if that did not happen. If I looked back at childhood and didn’t have to think of that. I want to say my story. But I forgot that also meant I had to relive the memory. Ponder at every detail and rip through it like a present. A gift for you I suppose. To feel bad for somebody other than yourself.

Some days I felt you starting to confront me. Arguing the fact that I don’t love you anymore. Inside I know the real reason, but only blocked it with a simple “it’s because you don't listen to me.”

In the end I thought we all know the reason why now.

I always feel though it is too bad that in the heat of his own selfishness he decided to take my childhood. That is when I started overeating

I dedicated more than my time to you. But my life. Everything I used to do was for you. A drug my brain would collapse on. Something to distract me from the pain of trauma.

A coping mechanism at the age of eleven. A way to ignore all responsibilities and only focus on the thing to me what actually mattered.

Food.

I made years of my life structure come falling down like a house of cards. Because in my mind you were the only thing I could control. Almost an art I had perfected.

But only felt that way when I started to binge.

Grasping to any food I could find in the pantry with a calorie amount of more than three hundred. I couldn’t stop myself because nobody could stop me either. It was all I had the pleasure to think or worry about.

It was everything.

No sense of control when it came to standing in the kitchen.

No sense of how much it affected my parents.

Day and night except when I was sleeping was there anything I could eat inside my mouth. No sports to counteract that only the adrenaline of being alive at eleven. I still remember every night needing a night snack to fall asleep. It became part of my sleeping routine every night. On repeat again and again and again.

I never left my dinner plate empty. A rule taught to me given from my mother. I’m scared to leave my plate not empty today. Scared of not eating all the food given to me. And I know it is silly but I justify it with the fact that it is a waste. But feeling full and still eating what's left is the most selfish thing I felt you could only do to your body now.

I was the fastest eater out of anybody. I was always reminded by my father that nothing on the plate is leaving, all I had to do was slow down. But I never did. I look at my food and don’t stop until everything is empty. I never stop until I look up and find others staring at me. Wondering in amazement though also silence of why I forced myself to eat so much food.

I made myself apart of my own habits. Consumed again what meal was going to be next. I dug and scraped so far in my mind the importance of food so I didn’t have to focus on anything else. No obligation to anybody but myself. Another way to be selfish with the person I was becoming.

Selfish in the sense of knowing what was coming next. Selfish to myself because soon I knew people were going to start noticing. And I had no choice but to suffer with these consequences given by myself. The consequences that seemed to finally start. And disturbed everyone with their goal of living longer than me.

But I did not care. As long as I could eat whatever I could I was content. Content with the fact and knowledge of knowing that for as long as I live, nobody could actually love me for it. Something to get in the way of most people's first impression of me.

Nobody could see how funny I was with my double chin. No one could learn about the way I laugh or my personality without a fat role getting in the way. It might have been different if I didn’t learn to binge eat at such a young age. Though in all reality everyday I wondered the difference it would make if I were skinny.

But nobody would focus on me. I felt so not welcomed in my own house that finally it was almost like something that clicked. A way for me to not have to focus or care about any of it. There was a hole in my heart for replacing my own home with it. But at the same time food was the only reason I was living. Finally something in my life that kept me in line with everybody else around me. I would starve myself during the school day only to shove in my mouth anything that could amuse me.

The days finally felt shorter. And there was finally a reason to come home. I didn’t want to run away from my life after so long of pushing myself and convincing myself nobody could love me. Because at that age I also did not focus on the body I was in. Thought I could eat anything without any consequences.

But I was wrong and I want to apologize for it now. I couldn’t seem to comprehend how my eating habits were hurting everybody around. A part of me wants to actually apologize. While another part wants to yell f you to the sky. And dance on rain clouds that blocked everybody's judgement of me. But that is not what I am hear for. Not my message for the world.

It took me years to fix my habits. Change who I was as a person. One year it finally worked and the girl I was four years ago is not the same girl who is typing this.

But that story is for another chapter.

The only person I want to apologize for though is myself. Because I did not deserve the things that I put in my mouth.

Pacifiers became the lies I was shouting to myself.

Lies that what I was doing is actually fine. The voice in the back being the only one to reassure me what I was doing was right. But the more colored plastic wrappers that flew past my head I now realize are the wrappers I have had to sell my life to. Wrappers that still weigh me down and crackle in my ear every day.

People want to point fingers and laugh at me to forget their own reality. Point out my insecurities that what I’m doing is unhealthy. That who I am and what I’m doing to myself I should forget about a new life. Yet nobody understands the full story. Nobody can seem to bridge point A point to point B.

Though I still remember something that happened. A moment before I was too far down the food hole to ever climb back out again. I still remember it because it was the only time I felt I even needed reevaluating. Something that could bring me back to square one again, but it didn’t.

One day I remember my parents, completely ashamed of me. Leaving me home alone unaware of my eating habits that have most likely damaged my body still today. They all came home after something I can not seem to remember. Only to find a pantry that once was the colors of the rainbow when looking in now dull colors of something healthy.

They started to yell at me not in anger, but in disgust. A monster that stood in front of them, the monster that they figured ate everything in the pantry. That was the first time they couldn’t recognize me as their daughter. I could see in their eyes that they're confused and ashamed they raised a girl with the appetite of a wild animal

That was the day I was the most angry. Angry not at myself but at them. For thinking in the short hours that they left that I was not doing anything bad. Only a person who needed a snack. Who thought the nutrients and nuts from a honey and chocolate dip granola bar was feeding my energy. Giving into what I knew inside it wanted that day.

I was angry because they could not see me. They could not recognize me as someone in their family to love. I felt so ashamed I hid it with anger. Turned it onto them to make it easier and act like the victim.

There was nothing to be a victim of though. With no one pushing me, I ate all that food in the pantry and didn’t think twice about it. It was not only the first day that my family could not see me for me. It was the first day I can remember I could not control myself. It felt like someone who has not eaten in years jumped into my body. There was no one their though, only me and whatever I found in the pantry.

But there was a moment that day, the first time I ever thought twice about what I was doing after it all. Wondering if there was something wrong with me. But the anger was too strong inside and my thick skeleton self decided to just ignore it.

That was the first night they kept dinner away from me. The first night in a long string of nights between. Where I could not distract myself from the trauma and heartbreak of it all. I tried finding different methods to distract my mind, though nothing worked. Nothing fell flat in my mind. All it is was chaos night and night again and for the first time I had to look at my problems as something that happened.

My body would not have been the same if only I took a third glance at that possibility that day. Though now I only take my time to look back and regret everything. I miss the days I felt normal again. Not the days I felt binge eating was okay, only a day where everything was in speculation. Something I did not need to hide or devote my whole life to. I miss being a normal child.

And in the night I cried over wanting to be back to my old house again. With the park down the street, I missed everything important to me when leaving.

Another problem and trauma I hid and guarded myself with food too. One day I know I could understand my intent to keep everything in.

But this is for people to know the real story. Instead of fake allegations said about me. Whatever it could be I forgive myself for now.

I was so oblivious to the idea or concept of a subject called overeating. Felt whatever and how much I ate felt justified because at the end I could feel my stomach expand. Like a balloon to fill up and float away once filled with too much helium.

And that feeling I still feel like today.

But this chapter is not about my insecurities quiet yet. Only a snippet in a life of eating food to feel the most comforted. To receive the love and support I should have been getting from my parents at that age. But all the memories start to blend in.

And like a piece of film burned with a match, so many memories started to disintegrated.

It’s a chapter in my life because I can still feel what I made myself eat and shove down my throat when I was eleven. The only thing I had control over was what I was going to eat next. My night plan of sneaking a snack up to my bedroom.

It felt liberating when I knew I had the freedom I could eat whatever I want. Though now the thing that I want more than anything is the freedom of knowing.  I will live to the age of seventy five at least.

But when it comes to it those good memories today are still blocked from those thoughts of food. Some days I fall back into the habit of not caring. Those days always seem to start out being great too.

Starvation is never the answer it wants either. It is not even a topic in my brain for there to be discussing. I felt it’s unhealthy, my brain says to me. That starving myself is how it latches onto fat from my stomach. Though what about what you have fed it. What about the fat you have been giving it for years. The worst part is it’s that there is nobody to blame. Trauma could have contributed to it. But there was nobody in my life that tried to force feed me anything.

Making myself vomit was never an option in my brain too. I know it is silly to say or even silly to think but at a young age of ten I already knew what bulimia means. I learned that it was bad and not accepted by society. To be honest I thought that reason and fear was the real reason I never tried it.

Sometimes those messages of overeating still poke at my brain, they won’t stop unless I feed it. That was the only thing I felt to motivate me into thinking about starving or being bulimic. Only if I give into it. Those days I always do though. I give in because they don’t give up. Find the most filling most craved food I love and yell at me to have it. They scream in the front of my brain loud enough to hear it in the back too.

It leaches onto my thoughts until it is the only thing present. Trying so hard to justify the screams of imagined pain. The imagined thoughts of hunger. I can’t focus I can’t think of anything or anyone. All I can see in my brain is the food hiding in the freezer or fridge.

I find whatever fancies me and don’t look at the label. Ignore the universal fact that fat is ugly in the eyes. Always of those who are skinny and plead my mind someone will love me, someone will love me. Though if there is anybody who will love me then where are they? Have they lost the invitation I’ve given to my heart? Though they actually missed the date of it I still hope. Whatever it is I am still begging for anybody to love me for my personality. Not the shell of a little girl beginning to feel insecure in my efforts of finding anybody.

I felt guilty still for what I made my parents go through.

They tried their hardest to make me live a normal childhood. One that was not controlled by the fear of not being the fastest eater in the room. It pained me to know that I didn’t care what I was doing to my body. But I could not stop until I was past the point of ever returning. People look at me and all they see is someone begging to get shit talked behind my back. Nobody takes the opportunity to even take the chance to know and understand and love the real me.

Thought that suffering from being overweight at the age of eleven was okay. So in turn they stopped feeding me. A fair punishment for an eleven year old misbehaving. But at the same time the day I stopped overeating changed me. I finally got more control over life than I felt I had with this food that controlled me.

Control in different senses. Still all as unhealthy as the last though, my parents could tell too.

All my parents wanted was the best for me. I understand that now. Though still sometimes I felt like all they want is a world that neglects me. A world that turns me away from any opportunity of having a future of excitement. They reject ideas that are not catered to them.

My dad is a homophobic, he can argue this point all he wants. Though I have argued time and time again with him the fact of equal rights for everybody. Could be he doesn’t understand it, but that does not mean he has the right to turn away anybody that is different from him.

Even though everyone from a young age, conditioned to think straight is the only thing that is okay. It frustrates me knowing he can’t accept those who are trans or any other gender not assigned to birth.

Though that was only an intro to ease you into things they made me do. The things they saw and did nothing about.

When I was eleven they saw me getting heavier and heavier. Behind this book you may be imagining an ugly gross four hundred pound monster. But I am nothing but a tall sunflower in my mind. Only to shine when the sun comes in my direction. Someone who is not comfortable with sharing their weight, but I am only one person, I promise.

There was an incident in mackinaw, where I spent a week in my childhood summers. I made a scene at the dinner table with my whole family, my mothers side, a fight I had with my brother about bread. Who knew it was a stupid piece of bread that would finally break me.

It sounds stupid I understand. But that was the first time I saw my uncle finally see me for who I am. He looked in shame, disbelief and confusion. Though my dad, he finally broke me. He stared right into my eyes and in front of everybody said “when we get home your going on a diet.”

You may think this has no importance. That I am ranting about bread as a metaphor and not a purpose. But those words broke me inside. It was the first time it locked into my mind the theories. I used to have my parents thoughts about me were all true.

The first time I got embarrassed for something above more than me.

I got embarrassed though, for my father too. Because I knew how much he didn’t want to do that. But I looked into his eyes and it was almost as his brain wasn’t the one controlling him. Only the discomfort I brought to the dinner table brought out his impulsiveness. The first time I thought he didn’t love me because he couldn’t accept me for the body he fed.

When we got home though I knew he was serious. A chart to mark how much weight we lost was hiding on an app. I knew he made my brothers do it out of pity for me. So I was not embarrassed for being the only one subjected to it.

Everyday it was non stop though. I wish I could describe to you how much pain I was in both inside and mentally. I came home from school begging god I could lead astray from the treadmill. But the basement was the unhappiest place.

For thirty minutes I would run on the treadmill. And for thirty  minutes I would cry on it every single day. All my dad did was stare at me. He would look at me and acknowledge every tear that fell down my face and did nothing.

Some days when I was in the basement alone all I could do was sit and cry. Cry at the pain gotten forced in me. Cried at the times my parents didn’t acknowledge the hard work now. All they cared for was the goal that they set for me at the end of everything. The satisfaction of taking me in public. Yet not embarrassed of their child seen by passing carts. The freedom to take me anywhere and not feel uncomfortable of what others thought of me.

Nobody understood the discomfort I felt. I wanted to yell at my parents DO YOU ACCEPT ME NOW.  WILL YOU ACCEPT ME NOW. Inside was always an internal battle though my dad was only a suspect. Making sure I didn’t change the speed without him knowing.

This wasn’t my rescue. Only validation that I was not thin enough for anybody. Not even my own parents. So I turned to every method I could only to get accepted and loved again by my family.

Sweatpants in the summer I wore to bed only to wrap myself and lay in the discomfort of my own sweat. At night I would lay under this thick blanket without even a fan pointing in my direction. My sweatpants would cling to me halfway through the night from how much I sweat away. I thought it would increase my chances of my parents loving me again. So I withered and wiggled in my sheets trying to find comfort from my life that was missing. Even in my lonesome with only my bed to greet me.

After hours of not finding anything comfortable to latch onto I fell asleep. From heavy eyelids and snores from next door. Enough to where I could not see anything but darkness. To the point of exhaustion that I finally dreamed.

Now I want to know if that was healthy. Because I look back at it and question what I was improving myself. How was this any better than a restful sleep. Trying to make results from uncomfortable nights and blank dreams.

Every morning I woke up I looked sick, almost like a cancer patient. My skin was pale and I always felt so sick inside. I felt weary of sweating out everything that made me healthy.

One week I remember losing five pounds. I was so proud of myself. The days I had to weigh in were the days I was most scared of. Only one day that made or break the rest of my week. I stared at the scale always in anticipation of what was to come. Because I knew it was not for my brothers, it was only for me and me alone. It was something that was important to me. It was the only thing important to me for a long time.

Now you might be thinking of whose parents would feel justified enough to do this. From the point of them trying to make me healthier I could understand that justification. Though the battles, they felt less than justified. But from my fathers own insecurities. He is the man that is four hundred pounds, and even after surgery he couldn’t fix himself. He could not seem to adjust his ways and can't understand the way my mental health worked.

You may be wondering how I know it's based off how he felt about himself. It was because one night I came downstairs and their he was leaning on our kitchen countertop. Alone where he could talk to me in privacy. I knew he was going to bring my weight up. It happened in every conversation.

I only stayed because I wanted to talk to him though I needed to discuss how I felt. Bonding after weeks of him ripping the sturdy walls of a secure childhood apart. He called me a whale. I can not remember what led up to it. Or if he was drunk when he said it. But it still came out of his mouth. The words I would thought never to actually hear from my parents. You look like a whale. He never brought it up again. Although it still bothered me.

There were other times too, I knew that wasn’t the first time. But I  wanted it to be different. I wanted to talk to him without feeling the constant pressure. The pressure to be perfect because I was his prized possession. The only girl given birth to from two boys who helped control his world. Who both did nothing as they saw me struggling with self acceptance. Though this chapter is not about them.

My mom stood in the background like a witness for everything. She tried to love me for the body I was in. Though she still saw me suffering and said nothing about it. Letting my dad take his little project over.

She was struggling to speak the words I love you and I saw it in her eyes. Ashamed that she was making her daughter go on this diet when all she promised her was security and love in life. I can’t remember once her telling me she loved me in that chapter of my life.

But I’m glad she didn’t say it because I knew she would not have meant it. I knew inside that if she said those words she would be lying of what I meant to her.

So instead she would be their to weigh me in but nothing else would come about in any other situation.

One day she flashed me a fake smile. A smile built off of the tears of her baby girl crying. Of her allowing father to do what he has done to me and without missing a heartbeat. Agreeing with him on everything. For the first time in weeks she asked me how I did while working out on the treadmill. Though before dad came home and tried to control me. Again.

I remember telling her it went good, that I hit thirty minutes. Though I did not mention that I cried the whole time. Because it broke me inside to think that she might have not believed me. That the fake smile she flashed was out of pity for me. It showed that she thought I should have already been healthy. I wanted her to admit to me everything.

But I was too young to understand the concept of a fake smile and see through to an emotionless face for me.

Even told me that she was proud of me. Something I wanted to hear before I was suffering. Something I wanted to hear before I knew that they did not accept me on the outside.

Though overtime I felt the outside turned into the inside too. I was not sure of who I was anymore. But a robot who followed rules seven hours a day only to come home and got commanded by my father. Who wanted to show me off like a show pony at the end of it all.

Another day I remember my moms friend complimenting me on how skinny I looked. I have been wanting to hear that comment for forever. Since I started running and crying and the inside of me suffering at such a young age.

Nothing ever actually changed. I was still terrified of going to every doctor's appointment with my mom by my side. Because in all honesty nothing ever changed. The weigh in results were always the same, and that I'm diagnosed overweight. Against this and my parents nothing could make me feel beautiful anymore. Nothing to remind me of the compliments from my father of how I was the prettiest princess he had ever seen. Nothing to remind me that I was even his little girl anymore, instead I felt like the big girl.

So instead of reminding myself of beauty,  I replaced it with the emotion of feeling nothing.

And to feel nothing finally turned to the most beautiful thing I had in my life again.

On those days it finally felt like freedom away from everything. I was so detached from the world and social life I tried to make for myself I did not care about anything anymore.

But my dad's an alcoholic now. He hides it as much as he can from mother but I still watch him. Witnessing him. I love him now. But I am too scared to say anything. Although it might seem pathetic. I’m too scared to say anything because I am so afraid he will use his words against me again.

Argue the fact that I am not the image of beauty. That people would look at me and shame me for not being the spitting image of their healthy childhood and body. The childhood that still lingers in casual conversation today.

But I am also scared for my mother if she ever found out too. If I did admit to her that I see dad pouring his alcoholic beverages even in the morning or before he goes anywhere. That he hides his bottles any place he can. Any crook or crack my mom can’t seem to reach because his thirst for it dives too deep.

His last straw being to break the diet he promised to stay on. Because my mom deserves love still. She deserves to die with him at an old age. Although how much they love each other though, some days I’m scared they won’t make it together. That loneliness will pick up right where it left off in my whole family. Last one to pick it up being me.

Those days were finally the first days I finally knew what it meant to be lonely. To have no body on my side supporting me unless they wanted an answer from me.

I would sit in my chair seven hours a day and say nothing. Because I feared nonacceptance by my peers more than I already was. If I lost my graduating class in my mind that meant I would lose everything, and everyone.

So I started liking school a lot more. I raised my grades as high as I could. For the first time I was not known for the girl who was shy and had no friends. Overtime people started knowing me as someone smarter than the average fourth grader. Which felt liberating.

In those days at school I felt wanted for something. For the second time in my life it reminded me of my vulnerability.

The one thing in my life that was actually hiding from me, but I still knew that it was their. I was desperate to latch onto anybody that could hear my voice loud enough to scream with me too. But nobody came to my rescue. Nobody to share ghost stories or the joys of prepubescent life with.

In the end people were people with no real emotions towards me. Nothing to express and nothing but a silent whisper behind my back to say.

I lost comfort in every aspect of my life. In my house I felt punished and at school I still struggled. Everything around me screamed through to the back of my mind suffering. Even in my dreams I thought of nothing uplifting. Either awaking to remember only a black screen. With nothing playing on it or a movie to describe everything on the inside.

At such a young age I had to learn so fast was the concept of maturity. I lost so much of my childhood at age nine and then decided to break at it more and more. Only fragments of memories. And some faded feelings remind me of everything that happened.

A fever dream I’d like to describe it as in all honesty.

Everybody was the same and again I targeted myself as the victim of a game I did not want to play. Even though I had the freedom to make the rules even I do not think I was following them. As strange as it sounds I moved on with that chapter in my life. Though many times I had tears welling in my eyes, that trauma has been birthed into new things in my life now too. Things I still hold over my head and things that I would rather leave suppressed.

In every great story every main character has a weakness. I was  on that sin grind enough to have too many of them I guess. Sometimes felt all that happened was only karma from stupid shit I did in my past. But in all reality I can not remember if I started acted out before or after this. Though my true weakness was something that would not be important till later in my life.

In life every great actor needs the best role. Mine was the devil.

Manipulated by words in life that I thought was speaking from my soul. Yet those words always turned into having someone to account for. Something I could never be, someone to depend on in a state of crisis.

And although I don’t doom people to an eternity to hell felt I’ve done that to myself. Sinning against people I love the most. It’s ridiculous to concentrate on so many negatives without others. But my grandparents were the only family members who actually loved and supported me. Especially when I felt the reign of havoc.

Inside I felt myself turn into a daredevil. Someone who expressed themselves through actions because words were not good enough. By the age of eleven I’ve had so many things that I never saw for my future. So many things I wish I could take back. Although my life was not as bad as others, it is still a story worth telling.

Regret took form in the things I did other than the things I said. And I was seething with rage. Angry because inside I knew we could never be a happy family again. It was hard to comprehend what happened to me when I was eleven. I was angry I let any of it happen. Why didn’t I say anything? Was I waiting for the world to finally take pity on me? Inside in all honesty I thought I was looking for a break.

A form of self expression that would make me happy to be anywhere in life. A place in the physical realm where I did not feel like a target for the things I wanted to suppress. Some things I did though, while I left others alone. Stirred it in a pot long enough to not have to cry every time I fell asleep.

This rage I felt wreathing inside was something to distract me from the tears I shed at night. Anything would be better than to lay in the bed that's soaked with holy tears of past innocence. When I had nothing else but life to weep for. Nothing else to get excitement other than how it felt to finally fall asleep. But dreams in the end always collapse, and I woke up each day craving a nap.

I felt inside that this anger was taking away my sadness, taking away the tears from my dry eyes. Although that was the case there was another thing that the anger was taking away too. All my energy.

I felt exhausted from being angry for days. Yet if I did not have the lack in every other emotion I always wondered what the f else did I have. What else was I living for. What else was I waiting for.

In my mind the answer to that for the longest amount of time was nothing. I was waiting for a world where unicorns were real. In a land filled with corruption of any type of imagination at my age. Suffering from anger inside no words on a piece of paper would suffice.

Even if I was not completely aware of the fire now lying in my soul, I never wanted it to go away. That fire for once gave me a reason to stay where I was. I wanted to yell with all the discovered emotions. instead of screaming inside from the silence I knew was about to take over. Though I did not have a way to care when all I had in front of me was finally a chance for a little escaping.

I’ve always wanted to say that this escaping was worth it, but the deeper I went the last I thought out plans. I remember the days where I lived in clouds of gray. Clawing and grasping away for pieces of hay. That could finally bring me to genuine sunshine smiles and happiness. But as long as I lived trying to suppress everything the longer it took to dig out of that whole that I made for myself.

Winning was half of the battle in my mind. Because in my situation and mind set now there was no winning. Only waiting for opportunities to push me farther down the whole that claimed it would save me.

Expression in the art of anger. Because music refused to take such an anger child back to a land of tranquility. Instead I suffered with the consequences of the path I found my way back on.

Someday I felt that gray cloud came to hover over me and everything I did because it knew I was wrong. It knew that I strayed too far away. That cloud knew my past and this was not it. To feel alive I did anything for the thrill of it.

This raging pit inside of me that burned a hole where I felt a piece of my heart used to be. It was like a drug before I even knew what that drug meant. I would go from thrill to thrill, small things though, nothing that completely sent me over the edge.

Of course at the age of eleven you would find it hard to do that. It’s so ridiculous reading this then finding what age I was at. But trust me when I say that everything I felt inside was rage.

I talked about wanting escape, though this was the only way to pull it off without making a complete fool of myself.

Because no one would listen to the eleven year old who was acting out.

After a while in my mind anything was better than living in anger. I would take all the gut wrenching and uncomfortable making sunshine smiles. Only if it helped me out of the hole I got trapped in after that day.

My grandparents were always my biggest supporters. They were the only people at that point I felt I could rely on. I’d tell my grandma sometimes how I’d feel. Because I knew she was the only one gentle enough to listen to what I had to say.

Only know that with the lead up finally to the real story. The evidence behind the wrong path know I did not do anything completely terrible. I promise I did not do anything like murder them for the thrill of it. But I still feel guilty and embarrassed for what I actually did.

I was eleven and I grew up knowing better than to steal. I spent the night with my grandparents. It was great, in my mind those were the only people who did not completely betray me. Other than my youngest brother. It was refreshing to realize there were still people in the world who cared and wanted to check up on me. Inside I felt that they saw me slipping. Though never would they mention it, never would anyone mention it to my face.

And I was okay with that, because I knew I did not need an intervention of how I’ve been acting.

It was almost time for my parents to pick me up though and I was going to put my bag on the kitchen table. Though I saw a twenty dollar bill sitting on the counter.

I stared with it in intent, knowing what would happen if I got caught. I knew everyone would feel disappointed in me. I know it is ridiculous to think that this had any importance on me. That it was a twenty dollar bill. But at eleven if my idea of the world was already surviving on the thrill of money. Then there was not anything else real to live off of. Nothing real enough to send me in the direction back to my path.

Though still that twenty dollars was still sitting on the table. Almost waiting to get picked up with my grubby hands.

Hid the bill sticking outside of the waist on my pants. Covered by the smell of regret and the shirt I decided to wear that day. I may have made mistakes in life, but it was a lot worse knowing that mistake was completely my own doing. No one by my side to witness only the shame I have now inside for taking their money.

I knew it was wrong, I spent a good minute or two staring at that bill. Waiting for it to escape from me  like I did the outside world only surrounding me. Nothing changed about it though. I stared. And stared more. So intent on thinking if I should  take it. Though the flames inside overpowered all my innocent sides wishes. So I stuffed that bill not thinking of any regrets that would come out of it.

Right after grandma asked me what I was doing. It breaks my heart to think of it. But innocent, the first time I’ve ever lied to her, I said nothing. I felt weak in that state. But those were my actions that overtook everything. I wish I could have blamed it on the inner voice telling me to take it. But in the end it was mine that finally convinced me that it was alright.

Everything inside I knew wanted to take that money and run. But then I looked at my grandma with the thoughts and the rush of what was going on in my head. Facing her after taking it made me regret it though. Made me see the faults and cracks in that plan.

Though also running through my head was the thought that I had no time to take it back. That I could not take it back because my action already spoke all the words for it. I did not understand my aim. But it was almost like manipulating myself. Convincing myself what I was doing was not the worst thing.

If I did not get caught for it that same day I  can't say I had any idea what I would have done next. So that fire inside I learned to keep it in moderation. Over the years I finally learned to not have it complicate my morals of what is right and what I know to be wrong inside. There was this part though that did not want to keep it in moderation at all even after my actions.

I know it is terrible now to think but there was this part of me that still felt it was holding something back. That if the thrill of that controlled me to a point of almost breaking what else could I do for it.

Instead of nurturing on my own, that part of me wanted to set it free. And corrupt every idea I once found as innocent. Though in the end I was only a child acting out. Someone who wanted my actions to give me attention. I did not want to be silent for the things that happened anymore. I wanted to unleash wrath on those that found me to be inadequate.

But I was eleven. No one would have listened to what’s inside anyways. People only start to listen when things start to complicate their path too. That was the only way I ever got my parents to actually pay attention. Seeing the things that I was doing with my life without turning away in expectations.

When they thought that I was the best behaved kid. The one who must be mentally healthy. For having such great grades and upstanding reports from teachers. Inside I was the only one who knew that cover was a facade of reality. Though that raging fire inside turned to me being silent again for the hundredth time already in my life. Because if that fire could not speak for me then what the f could

From such a young age I chose the path of trusting nothing. By twelve my parents gave up on their attempts to make me prettier. Gave up on trying to reform a person they were supposed to find as perfect anyways. My dads project of turning me into someone skinny without any problems of beauty giving way at the end of it all.

So they had no reason anymore to give me attention.

They had no reason anymore to try and bargain with my health. They had nothing to hold over me. I was finally free from the misconceptions of having to be skinny. I could have escaped if I wanted to. If I felt like never coming back, I'm not sure if they would have noticed.

The harshest critic that was my dad finally stopped paying attention. Giving the gauntlet of correcting everything to me. I was my own judge of character and all, but for once I gave my body a break from everything. Panned out options and found that trying to focus on my personality was the best for me to do. Decide that focusing on my body wasn’t the best for me anymore. Not on the list of priorities where there were so many other boxes to check.

I took a break on what in meant to be perfect and tried my best with focusing on who I was. In the eyes of me it was a whole new ball game. Everyday felt like I was living on autopilot for good reason. I felt like a robot of those who could not identify who I was on the inside.

Miscellaneous guessing turned into confusion of what it meant to be human. What it felt like to live in the body of a preteen without the crushing weight of what my parents thought of it. It was almost freedom, I almost made it out completely normal.

Still today I question who I’d be today, most likely not as wise but would anything I wondered be that different? I always wonder if the trauma of my past would have changed the amount of friends I had in elementary. If things were different I may have been a little bolder with who I was enough to make friends if anything. Even small things like music taste, would have changed.

Sixth grade also known as middle school were completely new to me. So instead of giving myself again the negative attention thrown on my shoulders. When I was in elementary school, I sank into the background of everybody. Always second or third best with people that I considered my friends. Though it was also worth it for a while to for once not be that one girl that was weird. In the eyes of anybody who cared to know my name. It may have been a fresh start, but I still felt so alone.

I had to go out and grab friends like they were on display in a museum. And from day one I did that. From the first day of school, my plan was to talk to any and every person who looked nice enough to be my friend. It was odd to look at so many people coming from so many different groups. It was almost like free reign of any group I decided fit my personality best. Though none of them did.

It was a realization that being different was once okay. Too many groups to consider completely unique from the others.

I looked at all the people who could have been my friend and adrenaline rushing all I would say is hello.

Conversation would build like lava. About to spout from the top of a volcano almost, and I’ve never felt that way before. After that school was nothing but flowing day by day. Trying to grasp as many friends that I could make. Which in a sense I suppose that is selfish only wanting friends because I felt I needed them.

Though every new beginning have rocky starts.

A few friends in elementary were either sprung onto me or some people I knew by fifth grade. Nothing to define a friend except one who was my best. Who knew how to start every conversation with me because I was too shy.

But she left me to fend for myself in a buildings hallways would stretch and build until hitting a dead end. It was confusing for the first time the intent of actually making any friends. After only a few weeks I couldn’t fathom the idea of going out and trying. It finally became mentally exhausted to keep up the appearance that I know what I was doing. On the outside I was so intent on listening that I never took opportunities to speak.

I tried to stick with the few I ended up having at the end of elementary, but after time we all separated. The social groups we ended up in are still the social groups that defines us today. In my own opinion that is bullshit. No one can let anything be if it is not perfect in the eyes of them. I don’t understand why one group has to categorize us until we graduate.

It was odd to have everyone being nice to me though. When trying to keep up this appearance that was only strategy, no extra planning. Nothing but the purpose of trying to keep those who have been friends with me still in my life. I became unaware after a while though. For once the pity nice I’ve gotten my whole life finally faded away. It was a reformation in the purest form ever.

Rebirth of a soul that had lost its path.

People for once finally wanted to be my friend. Some people would say my name if anyone asked and wouldn’t have added yeah but she's weird at the end. It was everything I wanted.  I finally got escape from the popular bitches. Trying to always dictate my reputation in the eyes of those that were not sure of who I was.

But also with this I still found ways to feel so lonely. So alone, the shell of a person surrounded by those who I can call my friends. Everyone surrounding me was fake images of what I wanted my life to be for so long. Not popular, not weird, but average. Though only a few months I could tell keeping everything of how I’ve felt would be exhausting.

I actually found a table at lunch who accepted me and who found me to be sweet.

That was a word I got often because I was so grateful for everybody. But the word sweet, it got sickening after a while. In a way I understood the word, and of course it was nice to hear. But nobody had the opportunity to know who I was behind all the fake first impressions.

All I would hear is that word being flown my way in every direction. I wanted something new, something fresh, I wanted someone to say I was a friend too. The word sweet finally became a word without any true meaning. A word turned into something with such negative connotation behind it. But I never complained, I was still okay being in the background of everyone's lives.

Because in my mind if I didn’t have that one f'ing word to describe me what the f else did I have.

I complained so little, at some point it finally turned into me not talking. Being afraid to admit anything to anyone other than myself. Because in my mind that was the only way to uphold the reputation of being the sweet little innocent girl.

A push over in the eyes of those that still had to learn what the phrase even meant.

In all honesty it became exhausting to cater to everyone’s thoughts other than my own. They made that reputation for me based on the things I would say and do for people. I guess in a way it is fair, but I felt they had first dibs to define me other than me. Even when I hear that word today it reminds me of the shell I used to live in away from the outside world. Only to crawl out when someone wanted to have a conversation with me.

I finally decided to turn away from the misconception that all I was is sweet like candy. That turn though, it messed up everything. I turned into that weird girl again, who sat in the back of every classroom. Becoming the true shell of a person who thought they were finally safe for once. From the target that got placed on my back.

I could tell things were being said about me. Weird in the eyes of everyone around trying to grasp for redemption.

Because if there is one thing that hit people more than puberty it was the thrill of spreading words. Though only to friends at the expense of others backs.

This silence turned into me talking to nobody. The attention my parents gave me from exercise and dieting finally calmed again. After that they had nothing to say to me anymore. All I could see was my parents lives moving on without me by their side. They gave up, disappointed by the fact I let them down with my weight.

And once I made friends, I tried my best to stay with them. But building up anxiety of talking, nothing ever came about from those situations. I was on my own little island again, fending for myself against sharks trying to leap up and eat me. Though silence on that island was the one thing I thought protected me.

I was wrong. Everyone could see through the shell I put on. People would watch me on my own personal island. As I actually had the faith to think that I was away from everything and everyone. Like a fish in an aquarium they would stare and point. I was different again in the sense of the elementary school way.

I wish a fever dream is all I could have remembered it as. But in all honesty I was on my weird shit again. Trying to corner myself away from everyone that I thought made me who I was. The rebirth of a soul that f'ing lost it’s path yet again. I had no idea the direction I was heading in, nor did I like the suspense of finding what was at the end of my rainbow.

But my parents, they were the ones that did not bother looking over. They did not bother checking on the island I put myself on.

For once there was nothing to protect me from my own inner demons. No words to lull me again to sleep like they used to do when feeling that I was worth their efforts.

Never asked me how I was doing. How my friends are. I did not come running to them when something like making a friend would happen. Because I knew how my mom felt about it inside. But that was not even the problem. The silence I forced myself into at school finally carried to the house I lived in. The house I for once when everything came crashing down actually felt safe in.

Though not anymore, not from what I felt as only misdirected neglect.

Nights in a row I would fall asleep without bothering to say goodnight to them. I regret it now, but the streak I forced myself on of not speaking trumped everything else.

They gave up on me and to this day I am unsure if they meant to do it with intention.

Might have been they felt I needed to do some escaping away from everything and everyone too.

Might have been they felt completely ignoring me gave me some sense of responsibility in a way. But I still depended on them for every single thing in my life.

They could not see the anger building up inside of me. They did not realize that I still needed them to be my parents. I needed the support and love that was always given to my brother.

I understand how my youngest brother deserved it now. Considering I depended on them the same way at that age. But after so much attention when forced on a treadmill finally died down, I was living in a world of silence again. The selfishness and the sense of importance finally overpowered my desire. My desire to be completely silent. The silence once brought and created by me. I am sad about the fact that they never noticed me in the back drowning in the insecurities that they gave to me. Didn’t care to notice my island while the center of their lives was already occupied.

One night I wrote a note to them only to give away tension. To the constant anxiety of living in the same household as them. I wrote it in a time of fury that turned to soft anger then tears. I still remember how they felt rolling down my cheeks. Cold in a sense of my insides dying. Along with the mind that got forced to carry so much knowledge of let downs in my life brought on by myself. Finally I went downstairs, because in a sense I was still holding everything in. Everything I wanted and desired from them written on a piece of paper.

It was the first time I let everything go without fear. The expression of my mind on paper for once inspired me. Instead of the crushing weight that held those emotions down, attached to the core.

I sat down and made my mother pause the TV. Nervous to sitting down, all I could feel the whole time were her eyes that always watched me. Finally, I started reading it.

All I could push past was the first two sentences before tears welled in my eyes. A whole page filled with my regrets and their neglect. In a sense it was freeing but letting my parents know how I’ve been feeling the whole time was terrifying. Especially holding everything inside for such a long time.

I wish I had that letter today, though in all honesty I wanted to burn that piece of paper to ashes. Hold a flame to it long enough until I saw it turn to black, then float away. Float away like the weight of everything that held my breathe. And that stuck my f'ing head underwater.

What I could hear was my mother in the corner sniffling. I knew that she was crying but I could not seem to move my eye away long enough to look at her. I knew if I did that I would regret everything that I’ve written down, what I already said. Everything in my body wanted to run to her and tell her I know she was doing the best she can.

Though I needed to get the truth out. Knew I couldn’t handle another blow to my self esteem before I completely broke down. Before the words that inspired me turned into the words that held me down. The words that would have been everything resting on my bare and weak shoulder.

No little girl should have to hold it in. No little girl should have gone through what I’ve been through by the age of twelve. I wouldn't wish a small sliver of my past to my worst enemy.

The only thing that held me back from letting it completely go was having to read it again to my father. That for some reason was so much more difficult. He walked up the stairs and the first thing my mom said was, “sit down, this is the saddest thing.”

After that, all I could feel anymore was completely and overwhelmed. For some reason I only wanted my mother to know how I felt. Might have been in a sense the only reason I wanted that is because I knew she wouldn’t have done anything. She wouldn’t have taken action against the words I stated.

That was the only thing my dad wanted. To fix things that were not broken. And break them more if needing fixing.

He sat almost across from me. And from the top I repeated every word I said to my mother. Again tears welled up in both me and my mother's eyes. Crying over the child who had lost everything that made her who she used to be.

Though when I finished I looked up and my dad did not shed a single tear. I was not upset anymore though, I was f'ing pissed. Something inside that has never been there before and I was angry and upset at him.

It was like realization of what he done to me. Insecurity and anger to carry through all my life. How could he have not of shed a tear for me? How did he have to let his masculinity get in the way of f'ing everything he cared for? How could he been so selfish to not express anything. For the  little girl that was crying on the couch right in front of him.

I wish I could remember what they said after that little family meeting. I wish I could remember the pity words that came out of my father's mouth.

All I can remember though is that the pity turned into actions. And it wasn’t for me anymore. It was for the pity he felt inside for me. Because never in our lives did we have a daddy daughter date before it. I messed up everything taking that turn.

I regretted expressing myself that it took me years to tell my parents how I've felt.

Because I did not need to change. I didn’t need for things to be different. I wanted to express how I felt without becoming indifferent to everybody around.

It was nice of course to have a father I felt loved me again. But I didn’t need the pity date and flowers. I needed parents that would listen and care for me when I felt none of my friends could.

I lost sense in everything in the end though. The sense of neglect and selfishness. I grew out of the traits of craving attention that I don’t even need it anymore.

Though the sense I missed out of all that happened was the sense of what it meant to be a good person.

Music sells the soul without ever actually replacing what it means to be a child of the devil.

Something to latch onto when I am in my weakest period. Where the legs I’ve stood on before trying to fail me through loss of motivation I used music as my crutch. Something that made long days turn into even longer nights.

This is actually my first chapter where I am not suffering. It’s a weird shift to write about how great something is when all that surrounded me was a bubble of darkness. Also it is actually almost sad to think that I can not  comprehend a time that was not all tears. Though the ones I cried for years I felt make up for the feelings I lack for now.

Without being too vulgar in my description of what music has done for me. The window to every opportunity I’ve ever had came from my love of music. It’s a way to feel that pain with also sympathizing with others who feel it too. A way for others to share their views of the way the world works. Of the way love works. An easy to find passion for those that can’t find anything. In the darkness that surrounded all inner functions.

To peel emotions right from the inner layer and not take the surface views. Because that would take off points for uniqueness, you find this new layer. One where thoughts aren’t paralyzing you, one where you don’t need inspiration a pen and paper. Almost a book of their lives for those not motivated enough to actually write a book.

That’s what I’ve been doing since I was four.

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to share in the pain of others. Music was my only way of communicating with the outside world. Because I did not know how to operate a telephone at that age. It was almost bittersweet every time knowing that there was a long drive away. When the songs on the radio were not literal shit. I could still recite to you today almost any lyric to a Maroon Five song. Or a Bruno Mars song. An Adele song. Or a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Although they still release music nothing lit a fire in me anymore I felt. More than knowing I could scream to Adele on the car ride to anywhere.

It also brings me great pleasure in knowing I was the one who inspired my brother to start singing too. I will yell at him every single school year to join choir, although he never does. Too strong headed and too much of a jock to realize that his life will pass him by if he does not do things that he cares about. Which includes music, because I know that he loves it as much as I do.

When I was around the age of ten the last time I was in Mackinaw there was this enormous stage. Big enough to seat Jesus and his friends at the last supper. All that surrounded was tables of people. Up on stage was this girl who loved Taylor Swift with every fiber of her being. Every song she would sing was a classic from Taylor Swift. My mind process took that as an opportunity though. The only way to shield myself from the heat that was beating down midsummer.

Finally after this drunk man sang I figured I could top that. Especially since I was so young and everyone was so drunk they did not care what they were listening to. As long as they got entertained in all honesty.

So I heard my name get called up, though at this age I was actually still shy as f. Didn’t speak to others if I did not have to and didn’t volunteer if it meant I had to do anything social. I walked up on that stage feeling like I had no choice though. Something inside of me felt I needed to prove a point to myself. That in a crowd of strangers I could be more than  a doll sitting there like at my childhood tea party. Not contributing anything but the sense of company.

So I stood up on that mother f'ing stage and I sang. I sang until the song ran its course and relished in the applaud coming from all around. That was the first time my compulsive manner paid off. It was the most freeing thing, to not care of how I sang, only that I did it. And it might have been because they were all a little tipsy but they loved me. Or could have been how adorable I was at the age of ten.

Either way they clapped and it was an epiphany up on that stage. That the most freeing things happen to those who are the most bold.

I even have a video of it posted on my dad's social media. Though I don’t think I could ever release that to the public no matter how bad anybody begs.

Please don’t skip this chapter, I know most of you may only be here for the parts where I am suffering. And although I do feel that is a bit sinister it gets interesting. Because I am no bitch sitting in the f'ing corner strumming off tuned ukulele strings. Singing f'ing riptide to a campfire in an indie voice.

Not saying I’m the best, because in no means am I the best. But music took a fatal turn for me when I turned about twelve. You have to trust me in the sense that it’s not fatal but more in the sense of it being more tragic.

It was my dream from the age of four to be a songwriter. Even if  not singing those songs but I wanted to relish still. And celebrate in the fame of writing something that sold millions. Although few would know who I am, it would be better than sitting alone in a basement. Attempting to write a book that has only a slim chance of making it on the shelves. Almost dark to think about. Huh.

I remember the first time I ever felt free through music. Only the humming grew stronger and stronger. Until I stood up on my twin bed and sang with no grace, no rhythm, no tone. The only real way to yell without actually getting yelled at for it. Releasing notes finally felt like something I could have been finally appreciated for. Something I could make a difference by doing through the actions I took.

That is also the first day I realized I could make others feel the same way too. By writing words on paper in the format of a song. I don’t remember any of my masterpieces I created, I wish I did though. Because when I realized I could write songs I grasped onto that fact with all my heart. My soul felt inspired by the music. It was like getting high without actually getting high. At home, during class, even in my dreams would picture song lyrics. Things that I felt would inspire me and so many others already at the age of four.

It was the first time I felt free in a place where everything got forced to stay inside. A mattress to land on when the hard blows from life came flying my way.

Though the fame I wanted so bad to grasp for only lasted a few years. Because in all honesty dreams get ripped from us every day. Dreams get ripped from us in an economy that has to make you bold enough to try and reach them. The pursuit of working towards something harder than the knowledge of knowing how to do it.

Though this was not explained to me when I was young. All I learned was that working hard and finding a path will only lead you to a boring office job. Where you will work the rest of your days until they run you to the grave. I got taught dreams don’t come true for little girls who only knows what music is through a car radio.

The worst part about it though was the fact that I had to discover this pattern all on my own. Had to teach myself that in a corrupt world the chances of becoming famous for anything is two percent. No matter how many books I write. Or how much music I release the chances of them inspiring anybody is so f'ing slim.

It taught me that I had to work a little harder for the things I wanted. It also made me learn that things won’t get handed to those who are not selfish. Pissed me off every time I see someone become famous for music that was not written on their own. And then not credit the person after getting blown up.

A corrupt way to win and break the system in a corrupt world is only being able to rob a f'ing bank in all honesty. And get away with it. Money controls everything though it’s not a matter of how much we have, we are only noticed for the ways we spend it. I’m not saying that I’m an angel. Though if the opportunity of fame ever rises upon me i’d most likely use all that money for my family. Except only a few who don’t deserve it.

That is also why I gave up on my dreams of being anything in the music industry though. Because in my head even from so little I knew the hobby that I loved would stay like that forever.

I wasn’t brave enough to tell people how I felt through song. I didn’t try to join a system where lack in morals equal fame. Especially if all that fame somehow came through a sex tape.

Hard work won’t do shit but wear your opportunities thin. That's when I decided I would only sing the music that I loved.

Though after that realization it music was never the exact same for me. Although I love it I always regret the fact that I gave up on it without even looking back. There was this one time though I still remember where I wanted to write music again. Words that inspired me from something else almost re conjured the love that felt dark for so long.

I wish I could look back on the moment the feeling of wanting to write music relapsed.  It was not even a hobby for me anymore. Something I only ignored for so long. I understand the structure, the lines, the flow of music and writing. But for some reason I’m so afraid of being a disappointment to my younger self I never took the chance to try again.

Although I wish I did it always came to a matter of not being brave enough to impact anybody. I was afraid that no one would listen to me. Though I’m making them listen now to my words. And not regretting the things they feel can’t get heard through only words, but seen through pictures. Though as long as you can describe something for long enough no one takes time. To focus in on the smaller details.

I felt that over time I gave up on music. Songs were not songs anymore, only reminders of the love I lost for them. Songs I used to sing in the car all the time turned to me in the back seat silence. Over time I had an on and off relationship with singing. Though it was hard to find good music when nothing in that time inspired me.

After everything that has happened to me I used music not as an escape. But something to keep me trapped in the same mindset. Tears would stream down my face, music to guide it to my chin. Hand in hand music almost walked me over to my grave. Music I’ve listened to for years only became reminders of my brother, parents, and grandpa.

There was this one song I would listen to every single night before I’d cry myself to sleep. In a ball on my bed always feeling that the world was attacking me from every angle. I felt the weight music used to lift off my chest turn it to armor. Heavy medal, strung across my face and eyes.

Exhaustion from tears I made myself think for months was the best way to fall asleep. Make me fall into a pattern of given up dreams and family that brainwashed me into thinking I was nothing.

It’s tiring to think about now though, always trying to keep up with that routine. It made me weak, made me think underestimating my life. That I thought was supposed to make me feel shielded from the monsters that peek from my closet.

Never have I felt more vulnerable in my lifetime than I did in that moment. Things that sent me over the edge I did not have control over anymore. Looking back it was most likely my fault, crying to things that did nothing but relate to me. But taking the opportunity to abuse the privilege of free music is the only thing I don’t regret.

I also fall asleep to the thoughts of f'ing sugar plums and gumdrops now. Though saying that still won’t please you. People like to believe what they want but the little girl who fell asleep in tears is not who I am anymore.

Though that grief I felt for giving up one of my dreams and life in general turned into something new. Music was not a way of singing  Adele because I knew I could hit those notes. This sadness though it grew inside of me each song I sang. It was not about knowing all the words anymore, it was about feeling the words.

My heart bounces and emotions would shake with each rhythm twisting and turning. Branching out trying to find somebody to save me. I found a new passion for bands and grunge music in seventh grade. An edge lord in the making I swear. Though growing up never did I thought that I’d even have the opportunity. The opportunity to feel so passionate about something I’ve loved for such a long time.

It was almost a dream reborn, finally a cord that has not been strung in such a long time finally came alive inside of me. I felt inspired enough to open back up the Pandora's box of lost dreams. I didn’t want to write music though, my time at that age was already occupied by god knows what. Too busy to write about my life in the even earlier stages.

When I came home after school never did you not hear me singing. Before I went to bed, even sometimes waking up in the morning. There was always a song stuck in my head. Though the music I listened to was some to question. But at least I was not crying to sleep because of it.

The music I listened to made me feel alive. Like for once I was not drowning in the medal strung on me through the tears that I shed. My music finally became something I was passionate about again. Never did I fear something I thought was inevitable. Though middle school did do one thing to me that was brutal. It shed the light on beauty and what people thought were the highest standards. Queens waiting to sit at the top of the throne, and others neglected, forced to bow to them.

Though music influenced the most important aspects of my life, it never fixed them. Music was the best distraction though, to take away the pain of looking in the mirror. Seeing a reflection that wasn't courteous to those that would walk past me on the street. See me in class. Or even those looking at me in my own house.

Although music changed me, it never changed my perception of the outside of me. The insecurities that still carry onto this very minute.

There is only action in a place where people use their words to hurt you more than fifty percent of the time. In a land where make believe and fantasy turn into realities. Of times that were once greater than you. Times where tracking everything you see won’t drive you mad.

Where the memories of something so wonderful are so distant. You try and find the happy place, the divider between what is real and what you want to pretend. To have your eyes play tricks and deceive you. Believe that something as wonderful as living can turn into only a hobby. Against forced habits.

Habits of finding every little detail that is wrong with you. It’s not  some pretty bitch standing in the mirror and thinking oh, what a horrid day, what a ruined opportunity. My pores are too big! Can’t you see! Can’t you see! Oh how come the world can’t notice me and my over sized pores.

Lunch won’t be the same! I will never have any more opportunities to make friends! Hide in the corner I beg! Oh how come nobody will listen to my complaints. Must I only ponder the idea of smashing the glass my reflection stares back at me in? How terrible, how delightful! I can only wonder how it would feel to not be able to see my pores again.

Though they back away from the glass and everything looks the same. No pores to get recognized, only attention to have given. Body positivists and all that great shit.

Though I’m only spiteful because I can not relate to the beautiful girl looking at what stares back. I am the friend standing next to her, only recently have I learned to keep the secret of how my face looks inside me.

But I’m ready to release it now, I’ll even sound ridiculous to myself. Chances are in all honesty though that I will only notice them more. Nothing to hide with a face mask only the eyes that preserve their appearance into the soul. A place where I can nitpick in piece without any single person saying a thing.

Although I will not remember the exact words I say in chapter five, I will always hold onto the reflection. Of a face I wish was not my own. How I wish to stop procrastinating though as my chapters I can tell are downgrading. Though it is still my life, still my rhythms, still everything that makes me well, me.

My face, I can not stand looking at it. I have this weird bump on my nose that I got from my mother and I thought it is quite ugly. Though she looks okay mine juts out bigger and is more obvious with my pale skin. My nose makes my whole face look bigger. And although how much I wish for it to be pixie style or straight never does it come true. Someday I stare at it in pictures and think of a life without it. Though that would not be standing by my brand, which is to always appear disfigured and abstract.

My upper lip curves in when I smile, giving me the look of nothing up top. That’s why I try to prevent it as much as I can. Only there when I am not feeling comments crawling up my back. Of why she does not smile in pictures, then when I do, people surprised almost of what it morphs into.

Always watching people look down at my puffed out face that becomes larger in size when I smile. I recognize it almost as a lion’s mane. As my cheekbones come up too high and makes me look dishonest and not worth trusting. I can feel the squish in my face when I touch it though letting it rest makes me look so tragic. Rude even, I apologize to those I’ve given a resting bitch face to. As for some reason I felt that is more attractive than an actual smile.

I hate my chin most of all the features on my face though. It is much too big and covering it only helps a little. I know everyone can notice though still I hide it as much as I can. A battle to distract myself from it when I stare into the mirror. It always fights with me though, finds its way to poke itself no matter what position I put my head into. I can’t wear ponytails anymore, I see them make fun of it. Though I position my head up high in hopes that it will disguise it again. Only about a year since I have worn one, even in the summertime when sweat is pouring down. I’d rather suffer in heat than cool myself at least a little. If I could change anything though it would definitely be my jawline. I admire those that complain about being ugly though have one. They can not understand that if your insecurity is so bad people notice it too. Then you want it hidden and out of your life forever.

My stomach is large and does not compare to my other body pieces at all. Every time I look at it all I remember is running, forcing my limbs to move, step after step. Closer and closer to a goal set up by my parents. Yet there is no goal anymore it's only drowning, suffering. Trying to sweat out fever less dreams of being comfortable. But I stare and I stare and the more I do the less acceptable I am of it. Some days are worse than other, yet on the bad ones all I want to do is scream. Shout to the heavens WHAT AM I DOING WRONG. What other punishment could you force me into as harsh as the one I have gotten cursed with. Why must I suffer with the body I am supposed to feel okay in. I stare in the mirror and I stop seeing a person. Only weight goal after weight goal after weight goal.

Staring at all the size twos makes me the most irritable though. No, not irritable, but curious. Of how safe their childhood must have been to look the way they do now. How secure could they have been to look in the mirror and not have to see the stomach that I stare at for hours on end. I sit and I don't want to look anymore. Disgusted by what I see in that god damned mirror.

A stomach is not a stomach anymore, but an inflated over exaggeration for what life has catered to me. No love, no real life of living. But a stomach made for the most secure to finally feel unsafe from comments and hatred. Nothing to complain about with a day in their shoes. Only memories of the stomach that attached senseless to a brain. Who somehow could not cooperate together.

I’ve worked for months though, 700 sit ups each night and still little progress to make. I know the best things take the most time though why I wondered does my stomach have to involve in that analogy. Thoughts of giving up though still will not bring to the point of crying. I am strong, those words repeat though now more than ever I don’t see why.

Why should I have a mindset that there will be a day when I am comfortable? When I have not even found myself okay in my own home for years on top of years. Walking out of my room, I still am in fear of running into him. Though his chapters now done, and although I do not have to move on, I still get to say I moved on with that chapter in my life. It’s the fear of him that keeps me on edge, that keeps me from moving on.

Though another insecurity I have reaches down to my fingertips. My hands are almost clunky in a way, and lacking so far from grace.

It is peculiar to look at them and think  that they are my hands. When everything about them screams that they should be on a man. My fingers I’ve gotten comments about. Rough in their appearance and my fingertips bitten from the anxiety of life to nubs. I hate my hands, even looking at them disgusts me.

Each crease and line that flash from letter to letter. I want to speed up more and more until they completely vanish. Rough and rigid, reminding me of the hands my father used to use to kill people in wars and battles. I wish so bad to replace them with those of a dainty. Graceful, thin, and pale hand from the most graceful of ballerinas.

Even down to my thighs, which I have recently accepted as skinny enough to fit in. My hips and thighs take up most space when walking anywhere. Between rows and seats I have to slide into while the girls who grew up with a better. A healthier childhood only have to use both legs and walk forward. I can see them neglect me. Thunder thighs are only nice in a school where they're seen in the eyes of others as attractive. Though I almost stand out like a sore thumb in any classroom as the thicker girl.

The perspective I have of myself over time shifted. Into looking at the outside of myself in every scenario. I wanted to know what people thought when they looked at me, I wanted to know what people saw so bad. Look the best for those that don’t know me. And only have my confidence rise for a second anytime I hear a compliment from someone sweet come my way.

Acceptance when I was younger was always out of the question, I thought. There would always be somebody who did not like me, someone who wanted to fix me. Though having those people be my own parents did come as a shock to me. I only bring them up because they are the ones that have led to such much insecurity in myself. Along with me, who I can also blame never did try to rationalize my body in a positive light either.

Though their chapter is now finished and I'm over it too. I will never forget the things that have happened in my earlier childhood. Because it will never be as bad in the eyes of those who did not experience the pain months on end. All I can do is not write about the life I wish I had, but the life I am experiencing now. And as much as it frustrates me my brother and parents were and still are a big factor to my living.

Though I can only write about letting go, and for once I finally felt relieved they are not here to rain on my parade.

But that can not say for those who do not know me. Those who do not know my story or anything about me are always the quickest to judge. The quickest to say things behind my own back I’ve had to watch for so long. But now I let the knives flew my way, the stabs don’t hurt as much as they used to anymore. I look around and admire the skinny girls who vape, drink, and smoke weed. Those are the bitches who are going to grow up and have my body I felt. I may not know them but the shit they brag about. Them putting in their body is way worse in my own opinion than normal things to eat.

After years of crying over things I know I could control my tears  turned to liquid gold. Always tired at the thought of comparing myself to others. Never did I let the tears that controlled me for so long take away who I actually was. Underneath all the things I felt I lost inside I knew there was a real person waiting to burst out.

For years I stood in the mirror and stared at what I had become. The only monster that had crawled far enough under my skin always ended up only being myself. Popping from thought process to thought process. Justifying what I was doing to myself all the time. Nothing felt the same anymore I did not like who I was turning out to be.

My nose is not thin enough, my body not thin enough. Curves I wanted to stand out always curves I find too big. I’m sure it was not a surprise to most people how I felt about myself. Because the eyes I always feel stabbing into me was envisioning their life only with my body. How my stomach movement would affect their life daily. Questioning how my chin was not somehow choking me every night.

It’s not my body I need to accept anymore. It’s days like these that now control what I want from life still. I ask myself these questions; would you be prettier if you were skinnier? Would you finally have the ability to wear what you want? Finally find someone to actually love you? Not have to gawk over the clothes the skinny girls wear?

There's never an answer though. Nobody telling me I will find more success, find love, live in a palace. It frustrates me not having any of the answers I’ve been begging for for so long now.

The only barrier between peace of mind and happiness is myself.

It makes me angry to not find anything worthwhile if I don’t see beauty when I stare into my reflection. Angry at myself for never allowing me the opportunity to discover a whole new world. A whole new life made easier, if only I looked like a barbie doll.

There will always be days where I want my boobs to be bigger. My teeth to be whiter, and my stomach will be flatter. There are no answers in life when it comes to anything though, only what you want to see in the mirror. Only the things that people will accept you as.

I was then not only angry at myself, but at the whole world. Nothing seemed to fit like puzzle pieces anymore. Although it was always a bit dysfunctional. Nothing was too stressed on until I  started to look at my body in the mirror. Manipulating only myself into what I wanted to see. Before comments could have affected me.

I was angrier than I thought I was at the world though, wanted answers that weren’t worth looking for.

Wanted to know why the skinny girls did not think they were perfect. Why hiding themselves behind baggy clothing was worth it. Self discovery, I understand that was what middle school is about.

Though there lack of discovery when it came to the mirror frustrated me. I wanted people to know how I felt, not out of the crime of hate or envy. Only for them to understand how it felt to never actually fit in.

Never to be beautiful enough for people to accept who I was on the inside.

For once all I wanted to do is smile in a picture without feeling obligated to only smirk. I wanted to feel as secure as the skinny girls. Though while middle school may be about finding yourself. Nobody finds self acceptance within themselves. I never realized that though. I never fantasized the possibility that in a way nobody  was ever supposed to like themselves.

Comments of looks and gluttony that were honest for others I took into a sympathy ballot.

They were only being nice I would say, and inside my heart I felt the lack of depth inside of everybody's words. All I could hear were my own, mocking, making my eyes flash from limb to limb. Only to remind myself how deep my insecurity only lies within me.

It was a sense of desperation, a red flag of mental illness. Middle school I knew inside of my heart was not going to be as simple as I wanted it to.

I knew that middle school was never going to be easy for me or for anybody.

Yet forced to work extra hard to not get thought of at as a fat dumb broad in whole. Of course I always stayed scared about my grades. Made myself feel that if I did not have my wits about me than I had nothing, that I had nobody. Nothing the slightest unique about me if I did not have the answers I wanted surrounding me.

In a way school was almost a distraction if there were not so many people. Though never did I have the opportunity to tune the voice out, even coming to today.

Never had I felt they would have been such a huge role in my insecurities.

The remarks to myself that I was always lingered in the back of my mind no matter what I did. Pressing harder and harder until popping again my balloon of golden tears. Rare when they come, yet beautiful to release from the core. This gold was the only relief I had to feel ever in my life. Crying was not for me to release the pressure and thoughts put on me from my parents, the past, or death. These tears started to empower me, they made me feel stronger and more confident. Sure, I was still considered the weird girl in sixth grade. And the constant stress of insecurity still plucked so many cords inside.

Yet nothing felt better than coming home from a long day and letting the tears build up. Until flowing again in the river made of everything I hated. Only for people to forget, or relieved, or solved. Any of those choices though were better than letting people actually see who I was. Behind the mask I decided to put on.

To this day I still wonder if I still have the mask on. If that became who I always wanted to be. Easy going, social enough to make more friends . Opening my arms for those that need support. I know it was a mask through seventh grade to not seem like an outcast anymore though I wondered if it is only a part of me. Or who I ended up becoming in the long run of middle school.

Thought mask or not I find myself still finding and nitpicking things I do not like about myself. I assume at the end of the night I’m still the little girl. Standing in the mirror sucking in, finding ways to justify how good I look. But that would still be lying to myself. Something I still do, though still after years that justification finally became reality.  Confusing, I understand. I took the mask off though in front of others. Opened myself up in eighth grade finally to a world of freedom. Though I took that freedom for granted. Made friends. Disintegrated the facade.

I thought I was finally mentally healthy enough to finally be in a relationship after a long time. Though I could not have been more wrong in my assumption.

Anything by this point would be better than waiting for words to fall on a page. Recollections of this relationship I felt are less vivid than others. Though I can still remember every feeling. Every call. Every tear she has shed for me. Times in pain where I still found ways to comfort her instead of looking at me.

If you didn't know I am bi and I did date a girl in eighth grade. Ridiculous, I understand. Though when circumstances and fear called can’t we all seem to recollect? Recollect a little how everything felt in eighth grade. Years go by so fast in time, though emotions flew farther with every day. And we still can’t consider the fact that younger kids can be in so much pain too. So much hurt, insecurities and childhood trauma start setting in. This age defines how you cope with things in the future.

I was still so unaware of mental illness. Of course I understood it as a thing many people have though never did it feel stronger than when I was with her. She used to be my best friend from sixth grade though. There was always something for us to talk about. I was comfortable even when I felt trapped in this small box of fears at home. She understood me and as far as I knew I understood her.

Being in a relationship I felt not much else would have changed.      

Fear was not an obstacle in our way, because I knew who I was and she knew what she wanted. Me.

Seventh grade is when she finally dug her claws into me though. She made me want more than I could handle. Made me laugh and enjoy myself for once. Although my best friend slot was already filled. By that point she turned into someone I talked to everyday.

Sleepovers were always something I looked forward with when it came to her. Every weekend we would find a way to convince our parents to hang out. Almost part of the family in a way.

Though after a while of being inseparable it became something completely different. I could tell she was coming closer and closer with every step that I took away. I became more distant with her, I became alone again. Those steps I took away from her trying to reach closer ended up sending me over the edge.

Because every time she left I felt so empty inside. I wished my heart could have been full every time that she left my house, though it was silence, quiet, it was lonely. She could tell that too though. Became more and more attached. For a while I was okay with it. I loved the attention. I tried to leave without hurting her.

She was my best friend, and I, terrified to lose her. I did not want her to stop taking steps. I was already over the edge, though never did I specify what the edge meant to me. It was a sudden drop into negative atmosphere. Qualities and development of somebody new. Someone so bold on the outside though so alone on the inside.

Though finally after landing on the ground from that steep drop did I only realize it was also her lair. Something hidden in when trying to leave me in the lonely abyss. Corners she would hide behind that made me blind to what was in front of me.

After awhile she was all that I could see. She was my best friend. And for a reason I could not stand that. It made me sad to know that not only losing my old best friend. But someone who always found ways to leave me behind as it is.

I gave it a break though after some time. I finally told her all that I was feeling but of course I misinterpreted it. Golden in my eyes she still sat because there was no other light to cater it. All around it was dark, damp, and empty, though I used the toxic traits gifted to me and found a way out. I told her everything one night she spent.

I could tell she got crushed. That she did not want that. I felt so bad, so guilty, I made myself feel that way though and that was not her fault. She got too close though. I couldn’t let anybody get that close to me. I couldn’t tell anyone anything because inside I knew that I did not want anybody stepping into my bubble. I did not want to put her through all my emotions.

And I did not want her becoming attached to me. Although I waited longer than I should have at the same time I knew it was the right thing.

Though the story my friends does not end here.

It was eighth grade. I still remember the first time I saw her after everything that happened to us. The beginning of second quarter she walked into the choir room; that room used to be my happiness. Though I got terrified of how she would act, and I did not want to apologize for what I did; it was the right thing to do.

She sat down right behind me and started talking to me as if nothing happened. I wanted to melt. I wanted to float away. I was so confused about why she was bothering to talk to me. Not because I didn’t want her to. But because I knew she used to be in love with me only one summer ago.

I took it as an opportunity to restart everything. This could have been the beginning again of my old best friend, though I was wrong. We started dating about two months after the second quarter started.

It was naive and almost immature of me I know. But it was a decision I made while I was talking to her over the phone. Only because of the happiness I felt for her in that moment. There was something off from the very beginning though I could tell.

I asked myself “why is she more excited than me?” “Shouldn’t I be happy? Shouldn’t it sink in who I was dating” One of my best friends for over two years?” “Why am I not happy?”

There was nothing different, I thought I would feel different once we were dating. But very soon after that did it become so draining. So tiring from keeping up with her. I didn’t know she was suffering from anxiety. If I did I would have tried to help, but she did not tell me. Threw all her emotions on top of the emptiness I felt all other times.

Texts started taking over my phone. Words from her and the anxiety. The first time texts came pouring in I tried so hard to help her through it. I got lost. Not sure what was happening.

Relieved that it ended, I hoped that would have been an end to it. It never ended though. Every single day after school, right when I got home, no matter where or what I was doing I needed my phone right by my side. No matter if I was spending time with family I would have dropped everything to talk to her.

Because I, I'm still horrified with what happened if I did not.

I understand she didn’t feel it was a big deal to come to me with it. But over time it became so much more than texts.

Crying over the cell phone every night, finding things to fight with me about. I can not seem to remember what any of them were. Only that one wrong word would trigger her. And I would have to be there to help her out of the whole of overthinking she did.

Though I will never forget the first night she texted me about wanting to commit suicide. Ten pills texted to me saying that she swallowed all them. Somehow making her throw them up I didn't even cry for her. I was only exhausted about having to help her. When we texted or called it was like she was not even a person to me anymore, but someone I felt obligated to talk to.

Somebody I could not let go because she threatened my leaving with her suicide every single time.

We talked about the future but I always pictured it with someone different.

The words of I love you I had to lie to myself and make myself feel them for her. No songs on the radio were about her. Only emptiness when I remember our relationship. Everything came down so heavy after this time though.

Every text and call felt like she was coursing all her pain through my veins. I could feel her words, and her tears, but I could not seem to conjure the same emotions when I was without her.

I remember being guilt tripped to talk about everything though. My childhood, trauma, regrets, and the guilt others put on to me. She told me if I did not tell her everything it was because I didn't love her. She told me it was because I did not love her.

I wanted to go to the grave with all the secrets that I ended up getting forced to spill to her. Mind revealing secrets, and streams of words falling fluent. Like tea getting poured into a china teacup. Only because if I stopped I knew I would not tell her everything.

Because I knew she would find ways to guilt trip me more into telling her things I did not want to share.

Though the thing that finally sent my veins to course lava through them happened over the phone. A mutual friend of ours called me and admitted to me something. That she told him every single thing I shared the night she guilt tripped me. She told him everything. I was angry. I knew that was not her right. I knew her tears were crocodile, fake ones. I could hear here over the phone.

I lied though, and I lied so f'ing good. Because I did not want to lose her. I didn’t want to lose her to the suicide she threatened me with many times. So I told her it was okay, and I forgave her. It was not her right. It was not her job to tell him.

Even talking about it to them made me feel so much f'ing worse. I was f'ing mad. I wanted to tell her everything I felt that night. I wanted to stop her texts and calls of constant anxiety. The fights we got in for hours, fights I apologized for because of her tears. Only because I knew inside I was so much stronger than her. I wanted to stop the lies I told of love, any chance we had to having a future. The constant threats of killing herself I wanted it all to stop.

Though I stayed with her, because I got terrified of what would happen if I did not. I didn’t want to seem weak for breaking up with her. Using my strength for advantage I felt would find a way to trigger her, and make her cry harder.

I don’t want to completely act like the victim though. Because in eighth grade I knew that I had some toxic traits too. She refused to say no to anyone, so she got me a cookie at lunch almost every day. Though when she told me she can’t say no to anyone I stopped and felt bad for it.

But at least she could tell me things. I stayed hidden behind the spotlight I would turn on for her. Another toxic trait of mine.

We both have different sides to our story, and that is completely fine. But after three months of being sleep deprived. From twelve AM calls and fights that would last until one in the morning I ended it.

Right when we stopped fighting. And everything settled I knew that odd flame inside me completely died out. I stopped trying to defend myself against every little thing she threw at me.

So after three months I was ; broke up with her at lunch that day actually. Finally though I felt completely free, I finally felt happy. I remember going to sixth hour with the biggest smile on my face. It was relinquish, you might think it is over, but it actually is not.

After our break up actually is when I completely exploded. The girl she used to date before me, who I was good friends with well we finally connected over facetime. For three hours we went back and forth, I explained everything to her. Every little detail of my misery I added.

Though when I found out she tried cheating on me with her that was when I mentally broke down because of her. What the girl told me was one night, while I was most likely asleep. My ex face timed her and was covering her boobs with her arm. Posing in the mirror, explaining what she was missing out on. My friend covered her eyes though, and hung up on her after her rant of what she was “missing”.

I texted my ex many times though asking if she was cheating, she kept saying no I did not I promise. Back and forth after the relationship when we tried to be friends and it did not work we started fighting. Everything I felt in the relationship I said to her. Of course in a nicer, more respectful way at first.

I was over her. But my mistake was telling friends about the things she did. Never did I discuss her secrets, but how I was angry at both of us. Especially at me for not leaving quicker. Over time though things snowballed. Rumors that I wouldn’t verify in our small group of friends were growing. I felt bad for those, I became claimed as the new ex, someone to be against in her friend group. And the same for mine too.

Our mutual friend somehow got involved to, another thing I felt bad for. My ex claimed that she had his nudes. That her FBI brother was going to send him to jail. It never happened, though because I knew she did not have anything against him. Finally I blocked her on everything though, and it was almost over. More fights through social media happened. Over wanting to know things I felt she did not tell me the truth about.

Though finally summer arrived and it was over. Though that abyss of emptiness without anyone to shine. To shine that f'ing spotlight on still found a way inside. The edge without anyone to share it with was  terrifying me. So I turned all my emotions off and fell into what I can only say was depression.

I thought I was stronger than this. Felt the walls I built were strong enough to withhold everything in my direct line of path. The people I’d meet along the way, heartbreak and anxiousness. Sexual assault, parents, and near eating disorders.

Mental illness for some reason got put at the bottom of my list as concerns to not focus on.

The fortress I built where I sat on my throne though came tumbling down. After the urgency, waiting to see what had happened the only thing I regret. Not looking down at the army that broke everything. Though after time, I realized who the enemy that broke the castle occupied by only I.

It was me.

It was sad to think mental illness was another thing you would tune out. Reason why health teachers would go on a rant of how important it is to seek out help when needed. Of course it was important to get help, naivety caused me to not listen. It was easy to not care when you denied in every single way the need to find someone who will listen, someone to talk to.

Though only the strong, only the brave do that. I took the long way out though, the weaker path.

The day though, the day where I decided to strip my own happiness away was one I still can not forget. Something I still hang over my head when facing harsh decisions.

Waking up was harder than usual that day. One of the first of summer, where the hot rays from the sun licked at your limbs in anticipation of July. Something I used to look forward to each year. Though I could not stand up, I couldn’t walk. Every single movement would almost start screaming at my brain, telling it to shut down.

My brain had no choice but to listen, feeling that each minute that ticked I was feeling the walls come down. Like an oil spill, emotions come pouring from the wall I built since I was nine years old.

Until I felt completely nothing.

The spill of emotions came so fast then in the heat of a sauna, an early June day evaporated everything inside of me.

Dried up the faucet in my eyes I used to turn on and watch pour every single night when I was only a child.

The qualities that used to make me human started to disappear completely. Until I was a mere shell of the excited little girl I used to be.

Every single day it felt like cutting into everything that made me who I was.

I used to be eager, dream towards a future where being alone was the worst scenario. Motivated and wanted to fill my days with endless activities when it came to friends. Everything inside me oozed excitement over what life had in store for me.

I would think about the next day, waiting for an invite from a friend or anything to save me.

But yet again, the edge came instead. I waited for a week and heard  nothing but complaints of my parents. Of how I was lazy, of how I did not do anything. I had no idea how to explain to them the constant exhaustion from battling myself. I knew they would not understand if I told them, so in turn I decided I shouldn’t tell anybody.

This time, this time though I finally had a decision to make. One that my parents had no choice but to wait with patience. So did I; so did everyone. I was staring at the darkness right in the soul, it was the only thing that invited me. Like a play date where company lured me into lullabies of safety and release.

I stared, I stared until my eyes burned for me to blink. But there was no time, no time, no time, I stared, I stood, I waited for an answer to appear. A prayer a notification.

But the golden angel of the past could not shine the light on me. I felt nothing. There was nothing, it was nobody, I forced myself into loneliness. Clawing my way back up the throat of a summer nights past. The edge.

I always came back to it.

For some reason it was always there waiting to comfort me back to solitude. So I let it. Gave into it because inside it was easier than letting anything else build those walls again.

That f'ing pit was a realization though. The walls I built were never for locking everything in. Of course it was where I kept my emotions, behind it, but in the end I could at least feel them. That was all anyone was asking for.

They got built to keep me safe. They got built to keep me protected from the edge. My ex, she was only an angel in my eyes because she lent me a ladder tall enough to peak in. Let me have a look at every emotion I never let people see. Though her mistake, what in the end made me see that she was a demon in disguise was the way she pushed me in.

And there I was again, stuck in the pit of my own making but this time it was all me. Nowhere was there anyone to blame. It was finally me this time.

It was emptier than I remembered though; darker, freezing. There was nothing to occupy my time, walking down the path, using the walls of the same edge I fell down. Trying to guide myself towards civilization.

I was the only person I had for company, and I couldn’t even see that as a problem. Nothing wrong with finding myself more fun than people jumping off boats in summer time. Nothing wrong staying inside my room days at a time, only coming out to pee or eat. No cabin to cozy up in with family up north on a cooler June night. There was not even a river of f'ing tears to soothe myself into sleeping.

No one to talk to, no one I felt would care.

Though after time I was witnessing the walls almost turn gray. Black and white, boring and beige. Nothing but staring at the screen of my phone or watching the walls change colors. Though I was not afraid. I was not worried. Or stressed. Or nervous. All I could feel was the sense that I should keep sleeping.

I could not find this as a concern or problem though. There was nothing wrong or off putting if your eyes aren’t filled with tears. So I stayed silent, and kept sleeping my restless body. Happiness that I could not feel, it was nothing but the lack of entertainment I thought.

I still remember one afternoon I woke up though. Sitting up I felt every single muscle in me jolt up. The energy I had been building up for days, spent only on the relief to feel anything inside of me finally,  move. So I sat there, I sat there and did not think of a single thing. It could have been five or thirty minutes, in all honesty I had no idea of knowing.

Nothing happened, I felt if I moved with the much force it was at least a step in the right direction. Though the cold of black, it still engulfed me whole. I fell back down only to feel my back hit against the bed. And fell asleep for three more hours.

For some weird reason, that was all I could remember. It was all I could think about when going back to that sorrowful June in summer. Though the ending of the month came, and something good happened.

It was a real person, not a figure of darkness. A shadow that could feel nothing. Not a shell of a person that was hibernating. Finally, it was a person.

I had not seen her in a while, but she was the only friend I had that whole summer. There was never any pressure, no talk of deep emotions. A surface level friendship, the ones that always turn into friendship love for each other.

I urge you to not get too excited, all feelings were neutral at all times. I never got to tell her though, how deep I was into a depressed mind state.

I laughed with her, spent days and nights at her house. So vivid, I remember the days I spent where we would laugh and fill a whole room up with giggles. About stupid things, that were only funny to us, though humorous nonetheless. Out of all the things surrounding me, she was the only person to grab my hand. And at least tried to help me find a way back out again.

Though she did not completely save me in the end.

Of course out of everyone in my life I ended up always being the closest to her. But I never let her see what happened behind the scenes.

I was worsening, I knew by this point I needed help; but terrified again to find anybody to try and help me. Thinking punishment would come from my parents. Who were still guilt tripping me for all the nights I stayed up oh so late.

Emotions I had not felt for so long. starting to trickle back into the pitch black that had been dry for a whole month and a half. Longing for emotion, that was the first to come into view. I wanted to feel things, like pain, misery. Begging the anxiety I had not felt in two months to come rushing back.

July now, I lay in the middle of my bed staring at the fan hung right above me. To my left I turned my head, and saw my cat staring at me in both confusion and comfort. The day grew to blaze against my fingertips as I felt the warmth pressed up against the glass of my window. Though still, I shut the blinds and laid there in the middle of my bed. With my sweatshirt hood to cuddle against the back of my head. I could feel guilt, pain of everything in the past.

Flushing my eyes, I felt one single tear trickle down my cheek as I stared into my cat’s eyes, him staring back. One tear. One pitiful f'ing tear. Everything suppressed, I could feel as if emotions crunched inside the core. Into the edge I used to dance across. In that one tear I felt the stress of everything finally start to ease, until only being numb again. For two hours I laid there desperate to feel anything more.

Anything, anything, I begged. Desperation oozed off me I wanted to feel I wanted to be alive again. The freezing touch of cave walls was the only thing that comforted me now. The reawakening of a soul I waited, watched as the world above was circling me like piranhas. Hitting rock bottom, I wanted to feel the pain shared through everybody.

The sense of anything harming me was pleasure over all the pain I used to think back to myself. Pleasure that I could have been exactly like everybody else. I did not tell anybody, waiting for my bravery to rise. I waited, and waited until it finally was not worth it anymore. Still to this day nobody knew what I was thinking, nobody knew what I wanted out of life during the depression.

My mind went to cutting. There was no true happiness, only thoughts of wanting to feel pain. Karma, for feeling joy; talking to my only real friend I felt was helping. But I was still at rock bottom.

I never did though, never brought myself to it. Know I wanted to though. Not in a long time have I felt that persistence though. I reminded myself of the way my world worked long ago though. The same persistence for food when I was eleven finally regurgitated. Into persistence for slicing my arms when I was fourteen.

Only fourteen.

Still supposed to be young and sweet.

I was only fourteen.

Never did I have the opportunity to tell her everything she did for me. How the shared happiness between us was the only thing I had to look forward to. Until I mustered up the courage to actually cut myself.

But silence was better, silence was more comforting than the longing for pain in the end.

Light would sink into my room. But all I had to defend myself from it was a person that made me realize how stuck at the bottom I was. After every single time she left my house. It was never her fault though, I do not blame any of this on her. My actions caused the downfall of a brain that used to work fine.

That light though, that light still haunts me. It glimmers more, brighter than what it used to be. But I can sense the angry grasp surrounding me some days. Some days I leave the room as dark as it used to be. Some days that darkness, it grasps me.

Shakes me into remembering, taunting, screaming. I tell it to go away and for now it still listens. Though I still live in horror waiting for the day that darkness betrays me again. Where the leash I keep on it inside of me gets lost, or breaks.

Depression was a wake up call for me.

Taught me that even people like me can still suffer in silence. Sometimes I tell people what I’ve been through, they sit there shocked at how I keep it all together now. Though some days, some days are still so much worse than others.

Some days I still feel the walls of ice and darkness come caving in on me. Reminding me that the emptiness I felt for months was only a warning, a threat taken to heart by me. I still feel at night suffering before slumbering off to sleep. A present given to me by a better mental state I call it.

Remnants still remain, lingers like a bad wine. The dear friend that  got me through I no longer speak to though. Sometimes my heart hurts knowing it can never be the same between us and our friendship.

A dear friend lost to the brink of only times I spotted her in the hallway.

But I am stronger now, not afraid to love again. Not afraid to finally start a relationship with anyone who could find me as important.

Someone who could make me an actual priority, someone who could love me.

I moved on. I was ready for something new, something fresh. The start of high school though, I felt it was another new beginning. Though this time to find someone who will draw me in, a high school sweetheart I suppose.

In reality high school has taught me one thing in life. It's that you are never going to find who you think you’re looking for. Of course we all have our flaws to look past. Though high school is the period of time where everybody's insecurities set in. And the desperation sinks to find anybody who will listen. To who they will date next or who they’re talking to on social media.

It’s nothing but a facade, the love people lie. Along with the love that people are dire for. They can’t see that it’s not a sense of finding someone who is compatible with them, but their looks. Or how much attention given to one another.

If ninth grade taught me anything it is that finding love will not happen. Being in a happy relationship is rare. Though finding that one person who you will connect to for the rest of your life, that's possible.

But naive younger me, she took the high road with all the advice I drilled into her brain. So she sits here in regret, one year later trying to compensate stupid decisions with a good chapter.

It was not even a matter of me dating anybody, it was the realization. That I did not want to drag the lack of attention and insecurities to somebody willing to listen. Though I did find somebody who was interesting.

Trust me, the first second I even spotted him in one of my hours I right away knew I was in some deep shit. I knew what I was getting myself into. Though combated it only with the relief that I didn’t have the eye opening pleasure of knowing him.

Though I ignored my feelings every second that I could. Told myself that I hated him, even though I did not. I actually like this boy. It’s stupid shit like that I told myself I would get out of when I got to high school. But I still needed to learn my lesson I suppose.

Finally winter comes around, and I cave. I caved so f'ing hard that my chest hurt when even looking at him. Only for a few months I knew him and I never felt an emotion as intense as I did. Even when I would spot him in the hallways or see him in class.

Even friends with him I ended up making myself. We would talk in class and I would see him glance over at me. It was almost passionate in itself looking into his eyes.

He was it I would tell myself. He was someone I wanted to be with the one I was thinking of even before ninth grade started.

Everyday ended up being the same, even basing my emotions off of his. The days that we did not get to talk I was sad, though the days that we did, oh the days we did it was almost a relief. Relief of not having a bad day. The relief of at least knowing he was okay.

Over winter it was almost like I felt him growing with me. The snow and outdoors would feel so cold, though the thought of him being near me made up for it. I wanted to get lost in his eyes, go on dates, even talking to him and all that cheesy shit. I wanted the romance and the relationship with him. Thinking he would be bold enough to do anything about what I made obvious.

Every text I would send him took me forever to think of, I never knew the exact right thing to say. Though there is a reason for trying too hard with my words. And trying to connect with him through anything more than having the same hour as me. At first it could have been my nerves, though over time there was less and less to say. Less and less I wanted to tell him. Less and less I felt he was actually the one I was going to date in high school.

I spent so long ignoring my feelings for him. Then finally when winter came and I felt everything come crashing in it was almost an epiphany. The close examination of what I actually felt for a boy I only knew for a few months.

In full reality my first outlook of him was completely correct. He was nothing deeper than a tall jock who was unsure what he got himself into when talking to me. I felt every single vibe from him as I gave to him. I felt the stares, and I replied to every text. Even the stupid ones where we would fight over what the homework actually was.

Listened to him while he spoke, and laughed hard at every little joke. Though it was not real, none of it was the honest reality of who I thought I liked.

He was what I wanted, what I dreamed of cuddled beneath a heap of blankets. Thought I wanted to be in his life though the feelings I thought I was ready for after my depression it was lust. This whole time, the two months I liked him it was only the surface level of what he looked like.

I listened so close to only to make eye contact with him.

He never had anything too interesting to say. The only reason I would text him was because he would text me only asking for the homework. I was so focused on looking at him in class because the beauty, it was only the outside.

Surface deep. No flaws that I could see to cave in deeper of what it meant to be insecure in any way. Only a friend that I made scenarios about. Scenes from movies of us going out on dates, cuddling while a fire roars while it's snowing outside.

Only a fling, a little distraction from my winter depression.

I only wanted someone because everybody else had somebody. One day though, one day I snapped out of it. Two months of us only going back and forth to see him kissing his girlfriend in the hallway.

It was hard not to stare anymore, hard to even write this understanding the facade of the feelings I felt. The nights I spent thinking of him and I actually being in a relationship. Situations where I didn’t see his comments as him mocking me.

The bullshit I got myself into was simple fantasy. Nothing too great, nothing any smaller than that. Nothing to over complicate and nothing more to dumb down. Hard enough for even him to completely understand what had happened.

Of course I still consider him as a friend, though not one that I talk to on a regular basis. Turned out to be someone not as special as I wanted. Though that was okay because half the year ended up as simple as floating away. It was finally a restart of classes and letting go the stress from midterms.

You noticed my chapters pluralized. And he, this other boy was the reason why. Another situation I never got control of, and some days I still think of him.

It was stupid. Knew what I was getting myself into. Though the regret of not at least trying to find another boy I knew would still linger.

This guy, man was he different. The kind of guy who would not take shit from anybody. He knew what he was doing, I always found it amusing arguing with that guy. He would always lose i’d tell myself.

Because only talking to him felt like I was winning.

For only an hour each day I would have the pleasure of getting to know him. And I wanted to know everything. Little shit like how his day was, how he was actually doing. Opportunities like those never arose, no matter how much I wanted them too.

I’d tell myself that having a relationship with him would be ridiculous. I told myself how much it was going to hurt having to be free. To not attract this edge towards my way again.

Even how much it would hurt when the school year ended. I  pierced that point into my head. If the heart wanted him so bad, why couldn’t my heart actually get him? Constant struggled and wars fighting back and forth. The lust I felt for the last guy came rushing back whenever I even thought of him.

It was so much more intense. I out on a good mask because I knew it was not going to last. Acted happy when he was not there. Angry when I thought he wasn’t though I would look up to find him. I could not tell him, I wanted to not even stand him.

But that spring still means everything.

The light would pour in and I could feel the heat against my face. It was beautiful, though it meant even more knowing the feelings I got to feel whenever he was around. It’s ridiculous I still tell myself, for ten days have asked myself if I actually wanted to write about this.

Why was it so important? I ask myself though it’s always there. Something that pokes out of my memories whenever I thought about it. Somebody who did not care that much for me somehow meant so much more than he could have ever seen.

He started out actually as someone who hated me. I insulted his favorite thing the very first day I met him, though inside I knew it was a facade. I knew there was something more to the words filled without real meaning. Or at least I hope he felt that way.

That day, the first day, it was different from the rest. It was an opportunity of a great first impression. The hate he most likely lied of, this hate felt the same as what I did the first day I met the jock.

He was always stubborn like that, reminded me of myself actually. Somebody who was as honest as he was. We were people who were great because for the most part we said what was on our minds. How stupid that scenario would be or how in common our childhoods were. Which were not very, though even his quirks of him hating me calling him a hick I thought was the funniest thing.

The same exact thing I did to the last boy I found important. I told him that I hated him only because I could not stand the fact I had to be without him. Of course he most likely did not think of it that deep. Though the first day I met him it was already an epiphany of what had happened only a few months ago.

The were completely different. The exact opposite. He would actually talk to me. Of course in a way where he had to hide his real feelings to still stay “a man.” Though that boy made me laugh from his attempts. Our fights would light my face up only because of how little they meant.

Fights about bionic dogs and there being no fun in breaking bones. What the assignment was, and what the best food is. I know he did not see it. I’m sure he still can’t notice. But the little things like that, they meant everything. Something to spark inside the lust I had with the other guy.

He would talk to me about his family. About his shitty mom and dad and step dad, all his sisters and their dreams of being princesses.

The lack of movies he's watched we talked about. I told him that I would have to show him so many that I loved. I wish he had taken my offer on that one. Though it was the little things, doesn’t it always come down to it? The fights, arguments, talks, and silent stares during the most random times. Laughter, joy, I only wish he could have taken the time to look at everything. Because deep down I knew he was not paying as much attention as I did.

They were different because he was not a dream. His personalities, and thoughts, what he wanted from life it was the truth. Not something I made up to feel better. He was honest because he was something real in my life.

The emotions I felt, it was nothing with the other guy. Those emotions I felt for once was not pain and longing to be with someone. It was happiness, it was peace in mind that there was someone.

There was only one similarity though.

Only one thing that they had in common.

When it ended, when the draining and emptiness finally hit they were both gone. Only boys who still consider me as that one girl they would talk to in class. It was hard to understand, difficult to  form it into words, or even think it. Though both of them ended being another push away from reality. Another epiphany, they were dreams.

The feelings for the guy I sat across from. And the mind numbing jock, it was emotions created with the attempt of saving me.

Which somehow they both did take me away from that edge. It was  a matter of holding onto them. Though that’s selfish I guess. Only to remain in thoughts of winter and dandelions in spring.

I still am only a person to him. Nothing more, and so at the bottom it’s impossible to be anything less. Only someone he usually sees in the hallway. Somebody who he knows he could talk to if he’s stuck in a classroom without any of his actual friends. Though that won’t happen, we attracted in my mind because of how opposite we were.

Completely not alike like day and night. Spring and fall, wet and dry.

Someone he would never go for. Somebody to occupy his time only to get in trouble. But he made me laugh, and that will be what I remember the most. So this is a goodbye to him, the things I've thought, though most of all.

The most important thing I am saying goodbye to is my emotions for both of them.

People who I thought could impact my life the most though so prominent in my high school life. From this point on it's me, and me only. Nobody to drag me down, only the life of the party by myself.

My friends though, they were there for me through most of it. The ones who weren’t though, my greatest friends in life, they all left me.

Listen, I have felt pain before. The urge that flew against my instincts, to jump among the birds. The highest peak of a mountain I’ve wanted to live. Sharing ice cones with the abominable snowman pushing past the ice. Freeze and preserve the rest of what I’ve had hiding inside my soul.

Though losing a friend, someone you had depended on for so long hurts the most. No matter who I fall in love with the unbearable break ups, depression. Nothing has hurt worse than losing a friend.

The worst part though, the worst part about every ending is the sense that I never got closure. Over time they faded into golden memories. Times where I’ve cried, times where I’ve laughed. Though most of all what I remember the most from them are the lessons taken.

The lessons I had to learn, the chance for forgiveness. Yet none of them are asking, none of them feel the same as me. But when I love someone no matter who it is staying loyal and dedicated I know is the least I can do to them.

Time only, it was time that had taken me away. Swept me off my feet and sent me to slumber for three years. It was only now had I realized the people I cared for the most about emotions and situations didn’t care as much as I did.

It’s not even a matter of only texting them now, this time, this time I’ve stopped trying. Stopped caring, stopped listening. It’s crazy how long it has been since the last time I’ve talked to any of them. But still, they were my best friends. I lost them over time. I lost the opportunity to even text them long before they were gone.

It was only karma though that I would lose all four of them.

Every single one of them had I lost in my life.

The fact I’ve even had so many of them already in my life has meant more than anybody could have ever known. They were all in one way my soulmate in the form of friendship. I could not be any more appreciative of them. They’ve affected my life for the better, though to also see them get ripped out of it somehow means so much more.

They were the people in separate situations. I had planned stupid double dates and dreams of growing to live in an apartment together. Yet it always came down to me being there second or third choice in every situation. I’m okay now, I’ve healed, I’m only ready to admit what had happened.

To come completely clean about all them.

So for this chapter I would like to sit down with you all. And write letters dedicated to each one. Almost a farewell, goodbye to the people who have hurt me the most.

Sit back, relax, and for the bitches who left me behind, know I’m doing much better now.

Dear anonymous #1,

In all reality it is a bit ridiculous to be writing about you. Yet you meant the world to me. In reality you were everything. The only person to play ball with me on the playground. You had been my friend since fourth grade. From the lonely days in third grade time passed by so much quicker with you by my side.

Though the first time I met you was funny enough in gym class. Both not even attempting to work up a sweat because in all reality we both saw ourselves as divas. Yet you talked to me when no one else would, listened, laughed. Even about the tiny things that only fourth graders could care about.

Never in my life had I have thought you would’ve been my best friend. Someone who had changed me. Pushed me against the limits. Made the silent peeps from the mouth of me turn into roars whenever around you. You my old friend, you crushed my shell to tiny pieces and showed it to our class of midgets surrounding. Now that showed character, that showed me from fourth grade who I thought you were.

The person who pushed me to ask out my crush in fifth grade. Someone who made me go up together in front of the whole entire school for the talent show. Both fourth and fifth grade. Taught me that being more social was so much better than keeping myself locked in the cage I had created. And damn were you so right to manifest parts of your personality into mine. I would not be who I am today without your guiding hand.

Yet this, this letter is not all praise - trust me. Because I still have not forgotten our suffering separation. When going to middle school; which that part was not at fault of your own, only a side effect of what had happened next. Yet young little me waited for a text or a call or anything during the first summer apart. I waited because I knew if I had not texted me first you would not have thought of me at all.

And you did not, it took me three summers to even hear your name out of another person’s lips. Three years had I not seen a single notification on my phone. Except a single I miss you while somebody else was face timing me. Not until three years had I felt you hug me.

Until the first time I saw you running up to me in ninth grade. Yet you still won’t look my way two whole years into high school. I felt your I miss you’s bounce off my ears into your chamber of laughter. I felt them because I had to. That day, that day I saw who you actually were.

With Love,

That bitch you don’t miss.

Dear anonymous #2,

Don’t you dare think I forgot about you. Summer schedule set aside, backs against the sun and bouncing upon our bus rides together. The neighborhood girl who at first felt that you hated me was all you were. Though even from the first day, from the first day I met you were you so much more.

The person I went to for anything and every little thing. I wish we were born the same year, I wish you could have saved me during the school time too. The only friend I had for a while before meeting the first girl. Yet I saved you for second. Saved you, because I knew it was going to hurt the most writing about you.

For five years we were friends, stuck together like glue. Your mom became my second mom. Your house became a second house to my own. Everything you did made me smile or chuckle or laugh. We spent those days out in heat walking around our neighborhood, or in the woods. Or playing house, discovering new music, or hosting a funeral for both a frog and a bird. You were the one who about changed me the most out of everyone who hurt me.

Because your lesson I still recall to this day. You taught me to be adventurous. Taught me that searching for those endless lists of opportunities meant so much more. More than standing against the door my parents had closed. There was nothing to see, nothing to look at my parents would say. Yet you, the person who had grabbed my hand and experienced it all with me. I got lost a lot, and we together were more confused than anything else. But together were we one god damn unstoppable team.

We learned to laugh, to hug it out, fights meant nothing when it came to the thought of ever losing you. Though that, the worst thing that could have happened, it did. Together did we both grow into our preteen phase. And you found yourself someone that you loved for a long time. I was never angry at you for that, never was I against you for finding somebody that you loved.

It was a matter of forgetting about who gave a shit for you though. The people who would listen, the people who loved you the most, you cared for sure. Yet never did I thought I was going to be another phantom of your thoughts, a ghost in your memories. I was nothing but a mere image of a person who you once loved in a friendship. I knew what it was a matter of. It was a matter of finding someone who got you and your cries even more. Someone you found when my ears grew old from your weeps. Someone who you lost interest until that shiny thing left your life for the second time.

With Love,

One of the most amazing adventures from the past.

Dear anonymous #3,

You, you hurt the most when it came to letting go. You were my best friend, all these people were. But you were the only one not ashamed for people to see us in public. The most laughs, the most fun I ever had was always with you. Someone that was not afraid to let go  and take life as it comes. Yet so graceful, silent to the people you care about the most. So different from all the other friends.

I’ve attempted to write this one paragraph three times. Nobody understands that I thought you were going to be there for me through everything. Somebody that opened my eyes to the fact that I was not who I thought I was at the start of sixth grade. You showed me that it was okay to be different. It was okay to be something that I’ve been avoiding since elementary school. Myself.

Now this difference is a little more unique than the rest, you taught me the gift of discovery. Not through adventure or walking through the woods. Though through knowledge I’ve had inside myself this whole time. You taught me big words, disorders. And never could stop talking about the latest news in everything you're interested in. So passionate in the pursuit of your dreams never could I even comment on it. Though that was alright because I know someday you will be so smart. And so successful in whatever career field you go into.

Past every stupid argument and deep conversations came laughter. Which also came the fact that I could actually trust you. Now when people see that you’ve replaced me they say, “oh. I didn’t even know you two were still friends.” I never know what to respond, because how can I say yes we are when you avoid my eyes in the hallway. Walk by without saying a simple hello.

Though once you stare into somebody's eyes and see them cry in pain, that is when you know. When you know how genuine that person is with you. That is the moment you can spot out that being best friends with someone is so much more. More than secrets and sleepovers. I miss that feeling of being important to people. I miss the fact that I can’t be there to comfort you at all through hardships in your life.

All I even know past this point is that you found somebody different. You found somebody more into your interests. And that was okay, it still is I promise. Sometimes friendship is not meant to be and never will I come out to hang over your head. Though we were best friends since sixth grade. It’s so difficult going back to strangers with somebody you know everything about.

So difficult not having you be the first person I go and share the crazy things happening in my life. Not even do I have your social media, or know what is actually happening in your life. I tried so hard to support you in the pursuit of everything you did I forgot that finding my path was important to. So even though I lost a bit of the way, it’s the thought that I completely lost you that doesn’t make the pain go away.

So I need to say this one last time that I love you so much, and to thank you for everything.

With Love,

The girl you’ve replaced

Dear anonymous #4,

Now I’m not going to sit here and lie to you after pouring my heart into every chapter. Only know you have gotten mentioned in this book before. Yet our story together is not over yet. The anger I have held inside still conjures when even thinking of our memories. You, you in all the times we’ve spent together have made me the happiest.

You put aside all reasons to be so sad and together it always felt like we were in our own little universe. Together we could orbit a star, together you made me feel that anything could be possible. I can’t remember as much as you most likely can from our friendship, yet I do remember laughing.

Laughing up storms, pushing down currents, our laughter stretched on and on and on. Oh man, the only thing I could do with you was hang out and laugh. You were that type of person, who’s laugh was as contagious as a cold. It’s strange to say that we were actually friends the longest out of all the people. From fifth to ninth grade had I loved the fact that you were somebody I could rely on.

Your gift although not the most unique had been the longest lasting. You had given me the gift of happiness. From the darkest depths of my depression did you fish my sad ass out to comfort me. Yet what was spectacular in my eyes was that you didn’t even know it. I’ve told you about what I thought was the incurable sadness inside my soul.

Though I could not put the pressure on you of letting you know that day by day the happiness you had blessed me with. Never did I tell you that with the happiness arising came you too. Yet with the time that passed I also felt you slipping away. Together we had played basketball, spilled secrets, you told me how much you loved being my friend.

From the summer that had passed though I knew that it was over. One class together, yet two options of friends. I’m sure it was hard for you to choose who you picked, yet after I knew what you chose it was easy for me to let go. I know you picked the safer option for your reputation. I knew that they had not liked me much. Though from this book don’t I seem like a delight? You could use that for your argument, that the gift of happiness is farther than it seems.

Even with our memories had it been crazy to think that it took you one month to completely erase me. Take our friendship with that little grain of salt and steal that shit away.

Without you I may have found somebody much more important to me. Though it was the trust when you left that got taken away more than anything. More than my happiness. You found somebody to accommodate your stupid reputation. And what people think of you, I understand how hard it was the battle between them. Though know that it is okay now, because I heard karma came to bite you in the ass.

With Love,

The girl that got her life back

Welcome back ladies and gents and whatever you identify as, I hope you enjoyed that. Yet I know inside it was something to get off of my chest in all reality. It’s hard to think that letting go also comes with the best friends I had with it. I know that none of them hold on as much as I do, yet in a way even after all that pettiness came a sense of relief.

Relief that I had so many people that important to me. That through my darkest periods there was always at least one person at my side to pull me out of all it. It’s funny to me to think that in life you should feel blessed to even have one best friend. Yet I had four, four people that meant everything to me.

I have almost nothing to thank other than my improving social skills and practice of it. I understand the anger, even sheer hatred for all the ladies in this chapter. Though in a sense I also forgive them for everything. Letting go seems much harder when you’re alone. Though with them it was also easy to do everything. Each gift that gave the virtue of time, of patience. Yet without any of them I would not be the bold, more fearless girl I am today.

These letters looking back allows me the opportunity to be so thankful for the people I have in my life right now. That with every conversation and secret comes a grain of salt. The future may come, the future may strike, though it is happiness that makes me better through all it now.

Nobody took me by the hand and guided me more than fate did. So a thank you, and goodbye to the people I loved. I will always miss you, yet the gift of time has serenaded me into the silent slumber of peace with all you. Finding love, finding care was much easier than I could have ever realized.

Ever since I was a little child all I thought of flying up to the moon. Grasping towards any chance of dancing the night away with my prince charming. Never had there been a day that my imagination drifted me through all of them. Although the dream had shifted. Rearranged. Found myself dangling by a thread. That was the reassurance I have my thoughts to get me through it all.

Reality is such a cruel mistress for a little girl with so much potential. With the gift of being different came the responsibility. Of always imagining different scenarios. Different situations that love shows through all them. Never is there a day for that grown up princess where a scenario that would never happen seems to pop in my head. Out of my control now though. Out of everything I have standing it’s my imagination that still takes the cake on a silver platter.

Like visiting the castle in England and meeting a strange boy I could fall in love with right in front of it. Or walking down the street with the monsters in the woods following me. Dreamed that the sun was trying to catch up to me in the moving car with only glass to protect me from the rays. Pretended my basement was a stadium with thousands of people cheering me on while I sing. I even used to imagine that I was winning an award. For the greatest actress in every movie that I starred in.

I used to sit my stuffed animals down for a tea party. Made my barbies dance, acted like I was my best friends roommate whilst we played house. I thought that ghouls would follow me around to check up on how I was doing in that old house I lived in. Things like this you might think is crazy.

And yeah, it is a bit strange to fall in love with a vampire waiting in my closet. Yet it is imagination I had discovered that runs the whole world. A tribute for those that think out of the box is who this chapter is for.

It might be gullible to think all these things will come true, yet it is naivety that helps rule over us all. A street one day to you could be the one you get proposed on. The school that you walk in could be the place you find your first or final love. The halls shaped for you in your own house could be the place you have your first sexual experience. While sitting patient in your front yard stands the grim reaper. Who's attempting to track where you are in the house.

It’s the little things like that to help rule us all. It’s our thoughts and our actions that changes imagination into the world full of reality. Some people need to escape through drugs and alcohol. Though my imagination carries me through it all. The creative process behind it all used to inspire me. Though with age it has been morphing into it’s only little demon for me.

Overthinking is a factor that comes into it all, though what's life without a little anxiety of what’s to come. Over the years imagination had seemed to run it all. Yet shifting the gears through that time had I realized how toxic it was for me. Setting these huge standards to get proposed to on a bridge in silence. Covered with flowers while petal rolled through the wind. The sun would beam and the love of my very life would bend down on one knee praising god how lucky he felt to even find me.

How disappointed I was when coming to the conclusion that I could never become a princess. The fact that having singing as an actual career was a pipe dream for those that want to be disappointing. That falling in love in the most extravagant way could only happen in the movies. The monsters I found out were only big, having branches of trees twisting. And the sun that used to see me as it’s own star was staying and waiting for the moon to arrive before doing much else.

With imagination through time also came the fear. The fear that I would have nothing but a dead end office job working nine to five. I knew in some way that was where I was going to end up. So I did not fight the future, didn’t argue with fate. I sat my ass down and realized that this is the reality for girls like me.

That I would come home and have to make my children dinner while my husband sat and watched the game in the living room. That the white picket fence in my front yard would blow over from high winds in the boring state of Kansas. Forced to stay put from a man who claimed his love for me five years ago. Yet it was the privilege and money I saved, that’s the only reason he checked me out.

Realized that anytime I caught up to my neighbors a fake “hello, how are you doing?” Are the words that would pop out of my mouth. How on Sundays our families would get together and on the walk back to the house. How I would pick the little details out of why I hate that bitch.

That with all the imagination that reality was going to come too fast. I was going to force to a life of a depressed trophy wife in the 50’s. The future so fucking appealing to everybody around me. It was what also made me realize how much I wanted to escape from it. Though there still is more, there still is frustration for a woman that does not need to know her own place.

How I did not want the local Walmart to be my f'ing escape from my demanding. A controlling husband who was sweet as a kid though grew to be an asshole. On autopilot that life in my mind was. Staring at the walls I paint in the house that my husband picked. Excusing myself with, “can I go to the bathroom?” Or words of sorry when I had done the smallest thing wrong. Become so adjusted to the life of marriage that any sort of change would cause my head swirling.

The house with the biggest spot for the flat screen TV is what my husband would pick out for us. I don’t want that, I don’t need that. Excuse me if my imagination carries me to bat shit crazy places like vampires being real. How having a two bedroom apartment with my best friend was a plausible plan.

This is not the life I want for me, this is not the life I want for anybody. Yet that is the life my mother has, that’s the life she signed up to. Working daily at the bank in the next town, yet still my dad makes the most money. And although we may not have the white picket fence we have the neighborhood, we have the house. We have so much of the life I tell her I don’t want to have.

She told me all the time, “you know, that's exactly how I felt about all this stuff at fifteen too.” Yet never has she known my reason, the purpose behind why I say it. No matter who I marry or fall in love with there will always be the thought gnawing at the back of my brain. How no matter who I marry there will always be somebody better for me, somebody I would be made to fall in love with.

Don’t think I’m not grateful, because I one hundred percent am. But that is not the life I want for me. Not the life I need for dreams big enough as mine. I need some imagination, I need some time. If there is no outlet for everything I do I start overthinking. Though at the same time it turns into not overthinking, but constant anxiety. Always pushing the agenda of my hopes and dreams onto the self conscious of who I want to be.

Now don’t worry your pretty little heads, the dreams that I’ve been stretching for such a long time will come later. This is about imagination though.

And the fact that no matter how appreciative I am that some days the world is gray, some days imagination can’t help.

How I need to accept that.

Although my imagination carried me all throughout childhood. Yet there is a little piece of it that is dead now. A little piece of my soul that had sold against my will to the virtue or reality. Take what you take, I say, though don’t come again unless I say so. Though it doesn’t listen, reality doesn't care. Imagination is too much for somebody my age, replies back the present.

Holidays are only becoming holidays. It’s a weird thing to say yet everything is collapsing down with that. There is no magic in anything that happens anymore. Took away my thought process of how exciting everything is. Indoors I stay warm yet inside is freezing cold. From the little bit of myself I have left stolen away from the man in charge of everything. Gifts and toys ain’t nothing but what accompanies most holidays. After finding out the truth about Christmas there’s nothing too mystical to face me anymore. After coming too close with reality I sentenced myself to a world. Of silence as the misconceptions of life kept revolving.

This I presume is not that serious to you, and shouldn’t be to me. Though that is only the first string to the pinata. It takes teamwork to pull all them to only leave a big hole in the chest. It’s what comes out of mine though that makes the party a bit more corrupt. A hoot and a holler, only you would call it.

It’s dreams, ambitions that lie on the grass becoming mauled by ravenous children. What I have inside gets morphed and changed. And turned into the future for children. The love and imagination I have inside my heart right now. To some days only getting absorbed by crazy, sugar induced kids.

Now that, that is what I mean by imagination. You might think that it is crazy, the fact that I imagine things like this. Though it must be a good day for me. Because all I can see is little glimmer of hope and orbs full of imagination getting tugged away from me. The children, the future generation, I hope that it does not become this hectic to imagine for them.

They deserve a safe space where they can be creative. Though if I could have one more Christmas where the magic of Santa. The magic, alive inside me again I thought I would take that over most things. I only want to remember a time where I wanted to wake up at seven to open up little trinkets and toys.

Thankful in its grace, though not in the presentation of it getting made up for the little kids. When my safe space escaped from me all that got ripped down was the sheet covering the real world around me. It’s terrifying, and all I can see while the clock ticks faster and faster is it coming closer and closer. I can’t run away, my parents threaten me, I can’t escape the future even though it is all I can see. Drivers license, applying for insurance, apartment, final love, while my days slip away. There is a little fun to it all my parents propose. But I want to live in a world where life can always revolve around the premise of a good time. Because all I can see still is the box where I sit coming closer and closer into reality.

As complex as the purpose behind these words are, there is  unfinished business to get created. How sorrowful my days as a child were when it comes down to it. The fact that imagination was my only friend, the only purpose I was living at some point.

Never had there been a day where I went without an imaginary friend while living in my old house. Somebody that I could almost talk to, somebody I could rely on when having real friends felt too tiresome. It was only pretend, I would tell myself. It was only something to make the days more interesting.

Yet when moving to my new house my imaginary friends were all I had. I remember spider man for some reason more than any of them. All I can remember though is the sad image of a seven year old girl introducing Peter Parker to her dad.

As time went by I started slipping farther into a world. A world where imaginary friends would have tea parties and hold my hand. It was how real it all felt that snapped me into the mindset. That I did not actually need friends as long as I had somebody to talk to.

My subconscious.

Reality kept slipping farther and farther from the grasp of my hands. I gave purpose into figures of imagination. Scared to hurt my stuffed animals in case they come alive in the middle of the night for revenge. Terrified of the american girl doll I had begged for, that stared at me through the night. Though in all honesty it was kind of my father's fault for telling me wicked stories of it coming alive.

It all became more real than I had pictured, it all became the only outlet for light in the world. I had to make up for my friends to have fun. Had to feel something watching over me to even attempt the feeling of comfort, of tranquility. Never did I grow out of that phase though. I felt the imagination is the only thing left I can hold onto from my childhood after losing it all. The magic, the purpose of waking up, the lack of knowledge that it was all a lie.

By the beginning of teenage hood that only part of me that was still thriving was the creativity of it all. The imagination that carried me farther from the rest. Though I still have friends I make up. Scarier now though realizing how old I am. Yet still attempting to make friends with my subconscious.

I needed escape, though now feel more grounded to Earth than ever. And still am having arguments with a side that I also made up. Scenarios never to happen. The only chance I’m not completely losing it is the fact that I have not named these friends yet. Haven’t given them the power they would most likely demand if real.

It’s only my imagination, the purpose of my ways. The thought process of a girl trying to slip away. Though not everything has to be so deep, not everything has to be so metaphorical in my situation.

It’s my thoughts that started to pick up the missing pieces instead of this figurative world I made. Much easier to control, and all for me.

It was a terrible assumption, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry repeating words I have to say to me friends. Live on the high road of life and love it  are my values. Yet miscalculations between reality and everything above. Keeping me apologizing for the smallest things. Don’t overthink it, you’ll keep holding onto stress. Though at this point that is all I can do.

Hold onto the things that keep my brain the most occupied. How I thought that guy who stared at me likes me, thinking of different ways I can fail the semester for a class. Always overthinking the embarrassing things that I have done. It’s always a case of who is who more than anything.

Aren’t you the one I tripped in front of? And aren’t you the one I  hit up? The teacher I screamed f in front of? The guy who saw my eat a bag of chips while staring at me in the hallway? Although it is fun to make a fool of myself, it is the thoughts after that keep me more wired than anything.

Keep the nights longer than I ever could have intended them. I’m a mess, and I’m not afraid to admit that part of it. Though I do factor in the people I have to see throughout the day that keeps thoughts like day dancing up in the air. Questions of oh shit who saw that in class.

It’s bittersweet, it is ravishing to me finding out new things like that all the time. Imagination that I recently discussed definitely does factor into it all. Yet this is reality, these are about the people that hear me whisper the word f to myself. While I stare anxious at my grades. Tests and quizzes leave no room for an optimistic version of myself. This is for the people that glance over at me and me feeling that they are falling in love.

For the people who find my social media accounts and I felt wanted to stalk all I do. Connecting the dots from friend to friend to catch up to guys. Who I thought liked me and wants to know what I’m doing day to day.

It’s always a map, a hidden treasure chest buried where many can’t  take the time to discover. It’s all metaphorical in the purpose of understanding. Yet it’s my case of overthinking that keeps the gears working.

What if this? And what if that? Tiring day to day from being so curious and wanting so bad to ask the right questions to nobody. It’s always something I forget when the days pass yet in every scenario it is so real. The livelihood of wanting to keep the magic alive. I need from life so bad the answers that I want that never can think about the answers that I already have.

Some days are more anxious from it than the rest, could be some type of anxiety of the unknown. Though it is only a possibility, it is only a guess. He’s friends with him and that friend is best friends with that guy. Trying to find ways where the guy I like can still see the things I post without trying to be obvious and tell me. Yet I know in all reality that it is only my imagination that actually feels that way. Bringing it up to my friends and the people I love I can only sense the judgement. I can only feel the lack of motivation that goes into understanding my crazy ways.

It’s a crazy life when all the things you think is only a sense of desperation from a lonely subconscious.

Yet it is all the same, each day there is nothing too different. Like thinking all my guy friends like me even though I know they don’t. Only two, and I figured that out because I actually used my senses and their obvious presence. Yet it made my day so much more exciting, and I guess in all honesty that is what I’m grasping for. Finding ways to make my day much more interesting than it  was. Though there are still so many questions, so many things I want to know.

It is my curiosity that always gets the best of me. But even thinking about the guys who like me twenty questions popped into my head. Things like what made you feel that way? Was it the things I say or because you think I’m attractive? Could it be that you are the one? There are two though, two that are close to me. Two that I let into my life.

But even thinking about it another set of questions and curiosity came out of it. Will us dating mess up the chemistry? Will the other one still want to be friends with me if I date the other one? What would I do if they themselves came up to me and told me in person? What would I do now if one of them happened to text me? I need to know, I want to know these things so bad.

I want the future to tell me, I want fate themselves to walk up to me one day and tell me that everything is going to be okay.

I don’t want naivety to come into the way and mess up such a good thing like both of my friendships. Both people that I talk to on a daily basis. But this is how my brain works. How its been malfunctioning at the smallest type of things. At least since knowing the greatest questions I’ve needed to know since birth.

Some days I want to open up Pandora's box to see what would happen from it. Some days I need the answers so bad that I get tempted to bring it up to them. I know that it might seem ridiculous, being in high school will mean the exact same if you had somebody to date or not. But this is life, this is happening right now, everything is so close up. My parents might think it is the illusion of life being real, but it is for me as we speak.

This is life already, and it is one hell of a ride. It would be so much different my life right now if I spared the time to see how both of them feel about it all. The woes from my thoughts at night finally having a little peace restored to them. Yet there is still so much I thought of, and that is for good reason. Things much smaller than a love triangle between two oblivious friends and me.

I used to have this weird thing as a child where I got terrified to walk up in the middle of a lecture to sharpen my pencil. I would worry and think and repeat in my brain that it is okay. That they would rather you interrupt them then think about the anxiety that comes from it all. How having this dull pencil is building up more and more things that I needed to write down. By the end of it all I only seem to have a fourth of the math page while I drown in the worries of sharpening my pencil.

It’s so silly most kids in my class would have said that I should have  gotten up and sharpen my dull ass pencil. Yet it was always so much more to me. The constant questions in my head in that moment needed to get answered, yet there was nobody to answer them.

It was in that time frame in the future only had I figured out what that pencil represented. It represented life, the struggles around it. How trapped in my tiny box of thought was the future, it was the worry and the twists and turns of it all. It was the way I had to keep thinking on my feet of other places I could sharpen it. Yet things kept flying at me, information, precious time in my life I kept losing.

It was the fear that life keeps moving. And if your worries about the future interrupt it then you weren’t living in the moment, you were only on auto pilot.

Things like this, the lessons that I had missed. That I had missed to thinking and kept a fragile, terrified girl wanting more from it. I needed the anxiety of it all because without it what the hell would for the other seventeen hours of the day. How could I keep myself occupied as I lay down and try to rest my eyes into a peaceful sleep. Overthinking the matter of the situation. All it meant nothing anymore without the questions.

Who the hell am I? What am I doing with my life? Will I be as successful as I plan to be when the future comes full speed my direction? How can I cope with who I am now if I am not the greatest I can be?

It’s procrastination stacking up against the odds of actually getting answered by the end of it all. How could I have lived an amazing life if I have constant worry about who I am now? In the end isn’t that another question too. We die without the peace in mind of knowing who we are.

We die because nobody gives us answers, because we are all scared of what the future will bring even in death. Will we float on the other side of it all watching over the people that we love? Will it be completely dark, completely black for all eternity? Will we be re birthed in the soul we are always meant to live in? Will god come greet us by the stairs? Will the devil disguise himself with the mask at the gates of the only thing left for us in all eternity.

Why will nobody answer? Why are we all so afraid of asking valid questions? It’s because we don’t have the answers. e don’t have the answers, nobody has the answers because nobody seems to be brave enough to find them. Nobody can live life without remorse for the things answered. Without the regret of never having enough questions when death comes.

Everybody lives in sheer wonder because they have to, everybody lives this way. Sheltered from the lives. The potential we could have if we had some goddamn questions answered in the end. This is not the life that anybody had wanted, I can understand. I can cope without knowing but at the same time I know that in reality everybody is thinking the same thing. Who will I be without the answers I have been craving. When the stars align my dear, when the stars align that is when you will find who you are people say.

But that is utter bullshit, those assholes that say that I am sure have no idea who they are inside. With the questions we all have eating us alive. To the bone they dig, to the bone closer and closer they crawl through my veins.

It’s nothing but an imaginary world where people's ideas intertwine. Where nothing but pain comes from getting anything actually done. That is why our Earth is imploding, that is why I have my thoughts carried side by side.

Who the hell do you think you are when nobody's around. It might be yourself, yet at the same time we are all bred to be the exact same. Character traits inherited by parents leave us who we are today. Childhood trauma from the lack or love of parents leave us who we are today. All copies of former generations, shifting yet staying put in the sixteenth century.

Our parents, the past is what makes us who we are today. It is our passions though that somehow make us unique too. Our set of skills from birth is the only thing that separates me from myself and my brothers. That keeps my life more private than others. I have the gift of writing. And only use it when I need to spark the plug from the real world. Into an ocean of emotions brought to life through characters, through love. Though most important through the process of overthinking.

The past, the present, our parents make us who we are. Yet that could also mean two things. That we are about the worst forms of ourselves. That who we're meant to be got interrupted by a shitty hand of cards from who our parents are.

Though that could also mean that we are the greatest living versions of ourselves. That it is because of the shit we have all been through who made us this way. Made my skill set lack in sports thrive while writing. How the past I have had, the shit cards I’ve gotten dealt made me see the person I could be. Hell, without my past and the trauma from everything I wouldn’t even be writing this right now.

It’s much simpler than I had sympathized for. These questions, they build up for everybody. Yet it is the answers we get from very few of them that hide all us, dense. and deep in the dark for so long we survive by shining on our own. Shed some light through the dark tunnel of fear. Only to come back on the other side from a night of good rest with the answers in our hands. The dreams that we strive towards help write that fate. Even if not in the stars. Even without the alignment from point A to point B us creatures stay the same.

Curious by blood, curious in our souls. We need to know who we are for at least a day to know that we can keep surviving that way. Our struggles, our battles, the lonely days of childhood or the one caught up in adventure. It’s glorious, magnificent. You could take a damn bow and wrap it as a Christmas present.

Yet the danger that we present ourselves with keeps us hidden. Questions that we ask about ourselves. Questions we string from past to present always leave us so curious in a sense. Though we get scared to answer them, we get scared of giving these questions the power to control us.

Because if we do we have the potential to grow into an even greater version of every single one of us. The questions we could find the answers to leave us always in a state of panic. Terror in the form of words, terror in the form of questions. Like what and who would I be like now if grasping onto my side of adventure?

I’ve always felt like there had been a part of something missing my whole life. Something I have, forced to lock away from the misconception that I would use my privilege . My parents have hidden me in the dark over so many things, yet they are the ones who are afraid, not me.

I can’t be, after the life I have lived there is a voice that guides me now. A voice that speaks over the ones fighting over what is right and what is wrong.

It is my own. My voice that has developed over time for so long has finally built up the courage. The strength to speak the truth of who I  am. Who in the end I always want to be. A person who seeks fun instead of slumber, a person that goes out of their way to find this adventure.

A journey taken by those that aren’t afraid of anything but death. Somebody who does not allow the courage. Courage from curiosity restraint them from finding life. Even if inside of such a small town. Since I was a child I have always dreamed to be the person having the most fun at parties with one hundred or more friends.

Yet growing up did I see how terrifying a life of adventure can bring. After the night the inability to even crawl away from predators that have drugged your drink. Fear of getting murdered from one taxi ride. Though I am not afraid it might only be because it has yet to happen to me. Yet you still see it plastered on the covers of newspapers and television screens.

Best friends died from taxi man with thirteen warrants. Snapped from wife divorcing him, extra, extra read all about it. Woman drugged and robbed from somebody working the late night shift at a bar. Girls get taught that this is what life is. This is the world we've gotten tied to, the hand of cards dealt to us at birth.

Yet I want to refuse, and some days I still do the fact I can’t walk down the street the same as my brother. A person who assaulted me, without history or knowledge of my past any person can walk up to me and do the same as he did. It’s a scary world for a woman my mother would say to me while we lived in the hood. It’s a scary world, a scary world for a woman.

There is this beckoning voice in my head still, pushing past all the news reports. Some days I want to break free from the string that connects me to my parents and float higher than any person could. Free fall from the sky, from the clouds without focusing on the consequences. That had brought me to that decision.

Some days I want to yank away the life threatening grasp my parents have put around my wrist. Discover the world, discover who is in it.

It’s only a few days though, that including today. Today more than anything I could almost feel the escape away from the small town. The town I have never wanted to spend the rest of my life in. Break free from the losers and bitches and find what has been calling towards me. The dream I’ve been crawling towards since middle school.

More freedom to walk, more freedom to crawl from misconceptions. Misconceptions that danger is always around the corner for a pretty woman with a bag in her hand. Late nights where I’ve wanted to escape my bedroom to walk around the streets that I have to drive past. Find the smallest path and break into the trees only to get found five days later like a hippie in a travelling band.

It’s a dream, only a dream. Yet one I’ve wanted to do since being only a child more naive than ever about the threats that surround me. It will never be fair the fact I will have to carry my bag up to my chest. Wear skirts that pass my finger tips, that hit the ground and can’t float up. Unfair that swimming suits are off limits for a teenager with creepy men always lurking.

No matter where I’ve found myself there is always so much more to it. Though never has that stopped me from living. Never have I let that break me down, twist me into a pretzel. It’s life baby and you gotta live it while you’re here. Before the probability of getting sent to hell for breaking all ten of the commandments.

Although I need to walk ten steps faster to catch up to a witness or search my drink. Even at dinner it’s the adventure of taking time to be with friends. Even to take time to be by myself, only if for a little bit.

Inside my room when I die a little from boredom I felt a box creep up to me. It’s invisible yet I can’t ever seem to breathe or know where I am going. My whole body fills with the most uncomfortable feeling and I can feel my room caving in on me. The walls get smaller, I’ve seen it! I promise!

The walls creep closer and I’m not sure if it’s panic or anxiety yet I felt the inside of myself. The inside of my soul die only a little bit. I always see it as a warning though. That the clock towards death is always ticking down and the person that I am becoming is no longer too fun to be around. Who I am I know from that day will not be the same as tomorrow. Yet still all I can do is lay down in one position on my bed and not move. Feel the walls creeping closer, the voice telling me that they will completely fall down on me if I move at all.

Frozen, shocked, repeated silence.

Trying to use my phone to block out the noise inside my brain. To try and keep from freaking out, from moving fast. Attempting to keep that uncomfortable feelings that end up lulling me to sleep. From crawling deeper and twisting the soul already in so much f'ing pain.

It’s all the same, it is all the same. The days repeating without any control of what happens next. The same schedule, the same hours, they tick by, yet I don’t feel the cold against my heart. The cold from living on autopilot day after day, the cold from not being a real living person.

Only a shell of my past and former profession of being somebody that tried as hard as I can to break the rules. To break free from the leash keeping me tied down. I can still hear the words my mother says when I try to bring it up. “If you want your kids to die and get into danger then allow them, but I will not let my children do that.” A fair point I could say, a fair point for somebody that does not allow themselves. Allow themselves to feel the agonizing pain from complete and utter boredom.

Carved into my heart stays the words that my mother say. Yet I don’t appreciate them I do allow those thoughts to cross my brain. Allow my imaginary children to run off and play. I try to tell her I’m not eleven anymore. I’m not eleven, only a person with the same dream of breaking off from the pack and getting lost as much as possible.

She watches too much Investigation Discovery I repeat over and over again. Even though this is my problem, this is my need. Getting lost would not be my first time thing though. In all honesty scarring my mom as a child from getting lost too often might have affected her perception of it all.

I will admit, there was this one time I was visiting this amusement park for my seventh birthday. We split up the park so none of all my family members on my mother's side would get lost. Yet even from that young age did I get so tired and bored of doing the same thing over and over. Even at seven did that want for adventure spoil my appetite for anything different.

I got lost, I had fun for the first time that whole trip. So on the other half of the park did I stay without the comfort of anybody watching me. Exactly nothing happened to me, until my father found me and sent me my mothers way. They scolded me, told me to never do that again, that you had your poor mom in tears and worried sick. It was the first time I say my mother cry.

The first time I watched my mother break down for the love that she had felt for her child. It was the first time I found my father enraged at me. Still I ask myself what would anybody do to a poor seven year old, someone who is still naive of the world? Though again I look at the news and stare at the television. So sad of what we have all become as a society of real, living, emotional people.

I got disappointed in myself still though even at that age

Disappointed that I wanted to get lost as often as I did. Could be it was the sense of escape more than anything yet it blocked any other things. I told my younger self never would I upset my mother like that again. Then I was eleven, and again did the sense of adventure pop in the way of any other mind set I had.

Still eleven, and yet so naive and gullible to the world and trauma lying right in front of my path. It was Halloween, and somehow someway I convinced my dad to leave me.  As I then went from house to house in the new neighborhood. Promised to stay with my friends, promise I would not escape from them.

Yet the night kept moving faster and faster I had memorized already. The format of my much smaller neighborhood. Knew where I was going, understood how to get from place to place on my own. It was a bit selfish of me to leave my friends when their feet grown tired of walking.

Grew senseless I guess of how much I wanted candy. Alone again was me, myself, and I. Venturing farther from the circle and friends I had grown accustomed to. By eight o’clock was I still thriving, writhing in my shoes. That had carried my feet a good two miles around the neighborhood.

It was growing darker and darker, fading sun turned into the full moon. Down pouring rain drenched me and the face makeup of a cat my mother had put on. No coat, only in a t-shirt did I find myself shrinking like a raisin. Finally finished, only to look at my house to see parents and neighbors shouting my name.

Coming up to it my mom was again traumatized by the fact that she had lost her sweet, innocent daughter. For the second time in her young life. Thinking through the possibility that her daughter had got kidnapped. With a van spray painted free candy on the side. Though neither I or my mother has ever seen a van like that pass by our house. Except when neighbors are having electrical trouble. It’s a safe quiet place, I say to her. Yet it is Halloween night and her senses are up higher than usual. I know because she watches too much of the horror. Sees too much pain without factoring in the remaining happiness the world brings.

Angered and crying, neighbors pissed that they had to spend most of the night screaming out my name.

Though to me, it was a thrill.

It was almost a matter of proving to myself that I can be on my own, that I can be independent.

Even if for the small, tiny fraction of time that I had to venture my own little neighborhood. It was an adventure in the highest forms and regards of no regret. I was alone in a big world and for once in my life did I felt the clouds float down. And clasp my infectious love and desire to care, to be with them. It was a high from the heavy clouds rolling over leaving me stuck in drops of rain. Later that would cause one of the worst colds of my life.

Though my parents could not see that little smirk I had when coming home and realizing what I had done. Consequences, forms of punishment that would last years in advance. From my mom, now traumatized of ever leaving me on my own again. Scared I’d get kidnapped by going into the next grocery store aisle next to her. Terrified of me staying the night at my friends in case that friends dad ends up being a bad, scary person. Isolation in the form of a box had my mother put herself in still. Scared that I may slip up or slip out if ever finding a way to escape home.

They lack the sense of me doing the things I need to do with my life at the age of fifteen. Lack the comfort of me being on my own in fear that being a lonely woman. In a world that will lead me to a road full of mistakes, drugs, nicotine addiction, and alcohol. They made me rebellious on my own with no help from my friends they do not know. Scared this little crow will hop out of the nest without preparing.

Though I can feel my wings flap against the pressure of them always watching. From the pressure of always tracking my location. Don’t they know that I am okay? Don’t they know that the farthest I can escape from home at this point is to the high school and the way home? Can’t they trust the fact that it is only a phone and leaving home without it doesn’t make the chip in the back of my neck buzz? Always watching, always tracking my every route and location.

I understand the need to know that I’m safe. Though it is the fact that they don’t trust me enough to text them if going from place to place that frustrates me so much.

There is only one, singular place that I can only seem to escape at the age of fifteen. Withering in my subconscious, dreaming of ways to face the danger of it all without dying. Executing plans to fall from the top of the highest building. Without any remorse or thought of why my brain is doing this to me. Forced to drop, forced to fall. Though above it all is the thought that I could finally escape.

That I could get away from the claw always keeping me in sight. Keeping my limbs pushed down deep into the core of the ground. I want to soar I say, yet here I stay planted to the cold hard ground in Michigan. Surrounded by snowflakes and dandelions with no purpose for either of them.

Well they are not going to be me, I refuse to take a chance like that against mother nature. So my dreams are where I stay put, until one day I can kick my feet and get a head start. To the city of love, or lights, or luck do I say. You won’t catch me until it comes Christmas once again. The only time I plan on seeing my family when I am older.

There is this emotion, this problem recently that I can never seem to express. With the lungs that breathe from daggers still piercing my chest. I whale in pain yet there seems to be nothing. But rushing water, rushing blood thicker and thicker that fill inside a painful sore. It’s a mark, an organ, one of my lungs, or both.

The constant urge from life in the limelight. Staring in my own one woman show. Broadway, center stage, an auditorium filled with cheering fans as I scream. The pain that has ruined a functioning brain. Grammy’s upon Oscars do those awards stack against the filing cabinet sat against a wall in my brain. Expired by the reality of the world that we live in. Fame corrupts us, fame changes the way that we function.

Though it was only a dream.

The opportunity to think wider than living the rest of my life. Without my name written in big block letters on a movie screen. Above Time Square had I dreamed since I was a child, thousands of tourists pointing. Talking to themselves or whoever was next to them, “that is my idol, that is Jenna Lehman.”

It’s nothing more than pity for the younger form of myself. Life sometimes does not pan out the way you had expected. Life changes and forms you into the person that you see in your reflection.

A monster or a genuine person, with emotions and the capability to love again. That dream though, that dream it was simple. There was not as much detail, it was a dream because it had yet to actually ever happen. No thought to put in while presenting the next category, best Broadway show of the year goes to me. One woman with one dream. Only a dream though because I knew standing inside my pink room. Giving my winning speech that it could never actually happen.

I’ve lost so much more than I have loved in life. The thing I regret the most though was losing that inability to love something other than my new dream. One that terrifies me so much to where it may never become reality.

Recently, I got caught up in my passion that staring straight ahead at the future is all I can do. That is all I can see sitting from point A right now. The admiration of inspiring thousands of people with my passion, writing.

All I can think from day to day is travelling for my world book tour, lined up are screaming. Applauding people wanting an autograph. Though that is what most people would only focus on, it would and could only be one part of it. That is the fame aspect I presume, though it can’t be everything.

I dream of sitting in my apartment in New York. Crammed between my side of a brick wall and a window. It is a blank slate that bricked up plastered wall is though. A blank slate for all new ideas, projecting towards me stands what I’ve been aspiring.

Ideas bounce from one wall back into my window. Words that I write sooner than later type faster and faster, inspiration for whatever I need to write. Instead of staring out into a musty basement I stare at what inspires me the most.

That goddamn brick wall.

Sitting at my desk on top sits a typewriter. That pressures to not type out the wrong thing. Realizing how mistakes can make or break a piece of art, something that takes me to a newer place. Perception of how mistakes can ruin a career.

Although I am trapped between walls, there stands my freedom of it all. The freedom to create whatever I need to. There is this cut and copy picture of it in my head, I can see it so vivid, so real. Though every time I reach my hand out and grasp it the present goes to slap my hand away.

It is not time yet, it may never be.

That terrifies me into tears anytime I thought about it. The fact that there may never even be a day where I visit New York at all. The biggest artists, the brightest performers stay. Yet here I am again freezing on a chilly night in Michigan. Closer than most people to it, yet still there is no comfort in the thought.

I could find a brick wall anywhere. Yet the understanding is so much more than taking into true consideration. Of course I can go outside of my house and stare at what can inspire me though the air, it would never be the same. The energy that make New York the city that never sleeps can’t be the same while staying in sleepy Michigan.

It’s different I say, everything about it is different. It might be a wall yet also an opportunity to go out and grab what inspires me the f'ing most.

The world that surrounds, the thoughts from life and love and depression.

Fame is only one part of it, fame can not be it all though. One studio apartment on a middle ground floor is all I ask for. A wall cramped too tight between an alley and another apartment building, is it too much to ask for? Am I getting too far ahead of myself to point the plots between right now and my new dream?

Though for now all I can do is cuddle up and have my subconscious take the way yet again. For now the dream state can take me to the different places I felt I needed to go to live the life I want. It is a misguided life, I’m not afraid to admit that though. Not everything can be the same while living the way that I do.

The only place there is a chance for difference is the state between real life and partial death. The dream state, one that I let guide the way although not always can I comprehend the true meaning behind it.

Takes me to the past though, reminds me of the mind state I have been in before and the one I have forced myself to be in now. It is terrifying knowing that this is the only place I could ever be alone with only my thoughts and inner self. Past anger, past aggression formed careful into repercussions to the morning after.

It may not be the exact dream I can remember, or little snippets from them themselves. Yet it is the feeling of it all. The heavy beating in my chest or pain bubbling on an open fire I had thought to put the lid on from even years before that. Lonely days turned into former insults from childhood bullies. I can still remember the most recent one, one that had sent me crying for the third time since it.

I can not seem to remember for the life of me what had led up to the moment that had happened. Though still even from two weeks now from it can I remember the pain. The suffering from waking up the next morning from it. Not wanting to wake up, move, or adjust.

I laid there with tears streaming down my face in silence of what had happened. Terrified into finding answers yet so curious that I knew inside myself I had to, for the sake of closure I guess.

There I was, on one half of the room there was this odd portal I had  walked through. With shadows of puppets and toys and people from my childhood. Like my great grandmother Weed standing there, waiting with anticipation. On the other half it was still bright yet dim still from complete darkness it was once so suppressed in.

I can’t seem to remember what there had been in that room. Only  lit boxes and toys, sitting with death inside of it all. None of it was moving, only standing flat on the dark floor that had no print or pattern. A black, open box that could shatter into a million pieces if tapping it, fragile with what it may or may not hear.

In the middle though standing between each world was a little girl. That I could remember from pictures, and from the past.

It was me.

The former, more innocent, less traumatized of the world that stood around version. A halo could have sat on top of that little girls head and I still could recognize the former version that I loved.  Though yes, I knew by the honey brown long hair sitting on top of her head that it must have been the best part of me. Very little childhood.

From before the mess of life came. Before loneliness from such a young age fractured the ability to make friends. To be a social person of society.

Though steps ahead brought me to tears. Knowing I was not that same girl anymore. But still strength is what I had to show for the little girl, for me to know that it was going to be okay. I approached her, with sweet words and a higher tone that I would ever talk in. Walking towards her I knew in my heart that the immense pain I was feeling meant it was now or never.

I took that girls hand and tried to ask her all the questions that I could. All the things that I have feared so intense I knew is what led me to her. I got on my knees to reach her height, short in feet yet tall and mighty within.

I asked her if she's scared for the future, she replied no. Asked her if she's scared of who she had become, again replying no. I asked her if she thought I was pretty, she told me yes. It was the weight lifting off my shoulders. Previous fear about it all that made me focus on her than everything surrounded.

Yet it was only build up to the question I knew I would need answered. For the full fledged relief inside of my breaking chest. That even in the dream I knew was sad because the knowledge I knew. Of her never becoming her dreams, never giving an Oscar speech. Never marrying a prince, or become royalty. Never write deep enough music for the world to get inspired.

My heart was only heavy because I knew how her story was going to end. I knew what the future was going to hold for such an optimistic, yet gullible little girl.

I asked her with intent of hearing her answer word for word, “Do you think I’m a disappointment?” What terrified me was that she  stood there. Only taking my presence in yet not actually hearing. She stared at me with the blankest, most emotionless expression yet inside I felt the pain. I knew what the answer was going to be.

Then I woke up. Though it was the oddest thing, the weirdest way to spin this. I woke in terror, in fear of what I had dreamed. It was terrifying knowing inside your brain what you had turned into. The perception of your younger selves mind to flip tables. To turn the scenario into something golden, something time consuming. I was in a dead sleep until I got to that question.

Woke up with wide eyes instead of sleepy, crusty ones. All I could do was picture what had happened. And although there were so many questions that I asked it was only the last one I can feel the emotion in. I can feel the fear and desperation in my heart, in the pit of my stomach to where I needed to know her answer. For peace, for restoration of the soul and my spirit.

Though I knew she could not have said another word. She had no choice but to sit on the sidelines and talk to the weird girl wanting to know such personal things. Yet she knew who I was, she knew it was me. She felt safe, and I could feel peace and honesty in the words that she had said.

So without the pain, without the regret of never hearing the final answer I instead felt that weight. The weight of not knowing off my shoulders. Cold of night turned to warm winter morning. Yet fear like a switch, fear flipping to full peace of the soul. It was comfort in the words that she spoke.

The background, the place she was staying felt exactly like heaven and hell. Where the spirit of my childhood would go if finding the answers that I needed. For her future self to be at tranquility more than anything. Build up of anticipation, planning for months what would happen if my younger self slipped up.

Though I know it was only a dream, only my subconscious digging in on my insecurity of what my younger self thinks. Yet it still meant so much more than you could know. Answers in a world full of corrupt people trying to hide everything. Answers for myself to know what was happening in the realm and dimension that can only hold memories. Yet can't seem to figure out how the time flies while having fun.

I needed to know because the person I am now would not be the same without the dream. Although I could not answer for myself. The disappointment I had most likely become to her it made me change something. It made me look at the past, look at the mistakes made, every little mistake and accident in this book and change. Like the switch she took on emotions it was my turn to crawl to her for forgiveness. Crouch in her presence and forget the past.

That was the real dream, forgiveness for who I had become. Giving up on the things I wanted to do the most became so much more than regret. It became an opportunity to find  a new and different one.

So until the day where I can sit in my apartment with the brick wall full of words. Like a piece of paper staring back at me this is where I sit. This is where I will stay and although this small town was never meant for me for now. I know that it will be okay until I move onto something else.

I forgave the people in my past on that day. And although I still write from a place of that pain it means so much more knowing that for now. Though with the support of my former spirit that I will be alright.

It came to me in a dream, and until it says opposite I’m okay with how the information is presented for now. Though never did I get to ask what she missed the most. Strict yes or no questions I guess, yet I know what she would have said. I know she misses Mackinaw about the most out of so many lost memories.

Home was wherever the beach was when I was a child. In that home, in my heart stood the bridge over mackinaw. It was the first place where I ran away screaming from fruit bats, though also the only place I had ever done that. Days got spent swimming in the lake water, high or low conspiring with the tides. One week every year with my best friend since kindergarten and his family. Going on adventures out in Mackinaw.

This is the place where I found my new stricken confidence and rode it all the way home. Bravery in the form of a stage. In all honesty if I had not become a singer then it was okay. Because the way I felt after doing what I did made up for the inconvenience of shyness for two lifetimes.

I had stood high and mighty on that stage, inside I felt the fear, I felt everybody staring at me. Though most of them were either teens or drunk adults. But I had to go on after three different karaoke songs. First, by the biggest teenage Taylor Swift fan and a drunk man singing.

Yet I stood on that stage with the fear corrupting my pulse. And infecting the blood that used to flow through music instead of excuses around it. I took my hand, wrapped it around the microphone, and stared at the TV screen giving me the lyrics the whole time.

Through the song that shy, terrified little girl turned into a whole other being.

Somebody not afraid of the world around, or of the people listening. With both hand on the stand I felt the blood coursing for the music again. Even though the song was so simple, so sweet with the words it was gentle. My eyes kept on the screen in fear of a voice crack or of the wrong lyrics. Yet when it's done and over I could feel the spotlight lift off.

The world was no longer black, but the audience was in sight. I stood on their for too long of a time yet I took every clap and cheer from adults in. It was so invigorating, such a detrimental blow to the fear. The fear that in that moment had not controlled my mind anymore.

Though that was only the beginning of the person I grew into from trips to Mackinac. I have not been to there in years yet I can still feel the water rush against my skin. Gentle waves from far away boats, the lack of sunscreen and always being burnt. The terrible fashion sense from a ten year old girl. Yet the confidence those clothes brought me during heat in summer.

Casual blows of wind and constant air conditioning to keep cool. From the chilly spring and freezing winter I had  been through. It was change, my own little universe. Where nothing but relaxation and a little taste of freedom meant so much more.

The representation that summer did not always have to mean getting trapped. Behind the gate staring straight in front of my shitty street. I loved Mackinaw because my mom always planned something to do. Like a mystery shack with twisted floors and chairs on ceilings. Ice cream across the street from our hotel. And nice though cheap dinners from restaurants we always would go to. Travelling across the bridge for a day and doing whatever appealed to us. Like zip lining though over everything talking with friends.

It was a hell of a drive, shocked now that my parents could even get off of work for that long. Though it is the memories, the lack of anger that is all I can remember. The day that we would go shopping from tourist spots was always what I had looked forward to the most. For a whole year the only thing that I would even wear was two oversized sweatshirts from Mackinaw.

I can not kid to you when I said that leggings and those two sweatshirts was all I would ever wear. It was desperate for warmth, though also remembrance. Remembrance that when life gets bad there was always a place I could escape to.

Even if that escape was only in my mind.

This was the place where I built relationships with the closest people I had around me at that time. Where my second mom would take care of me, the daughter she had never had. And where me and my mom would bond with each other the most.

It is precious, knowing that lost time could get made up with photos and videos. But it’s also a matter that it was the time I lost in Mackinaw could never get restored. Although it was a place with the greatest memories, it was also that place where I saw the flaws within my grandma.

One year, only one year had I been there with the whole side of my moms side of the family. They are the people I loved the most, and of course being this naive at twelve. And what my family was I was more excited than nervous for it all. It was one year for a reason folks.

The point being this is why we see each other only once every few months. Worth it for the charm that the beach and water brought, yet the fights and anger. How we ignored each other if having quarrels. Forgiveness did not come easy to any of the parents, this I knew.

Yet Mackinaw although would not completely break us was the only place that had strained us. The only place that brought me comfort in the world tainted from anger and curious to know what they are now. Yet nobody knows, I am sure nobody could even remember.

We all snapped in different ways on that vacation. I snapped from the misconception that everything would be perfect. I got bored more than anything because there was nothing to do. It ruined the perception that in a world where most things are shallow to me, this was the place I could go to escape it.

A little hide away, a pocket of a little town with hotels and chains lining down the strip for miles. I wish I could go back in time, fix my family. Tie rubber bands around and put a tab on all us, to keep us all on the same page.

Yet even if I did, even if I had managed to do that without the help of anybody else. Even if I could have kept it on the same page that would be even more ignorant.

Because without a snap to send you in a different direction everything in a heartbeat can change. For the worse or change for the better.

Nobody can predict the next line without looking ahead. Nobody can tell what would happen if we kept moving forward and there was this hiccup. It is only one page I could have kept us all on, though I could not have the power to create miracles. To keep us balanced when the world was spiraling out of all our controls.

It was okay to let go god dammit, because this was my vacation. Nobody knew, I did not let anybody know how much it meant to me. This was my place of f'ing solitude and I could feel everybody stomping on top of it as if it were my f'ing grave.

Instead of wanting to change the past it brought me here, it brought me to now. Made me realize the summer that started to sink the ship. That had only stayed floating for such a small amount of time.

It was quarrels against arguments against “where are we going to eat tonight? What are we going to do today?” Could be the same thing we did yesterday and the day before that. Right? Right? Did I get it right this time? Why did you all have to ruin it? Why did you have to go and cause the war inside my mind?

It’s forgiveness for family yes but I’m still angry of the position that they put us all in. Left us kids in the dark yet made us more angry to not know exactly what the hell they were fighting about. It is not that big of a problem I swear. It was Mackinaw for god’s sake, yet at the same time my peace was about running out.

How could I be so unhappy with where I was? When the storms crafted over calm waters what had made me regret even coming? I  wanted everybody to be silent, needed everybody to shut their mouths so I could think. Though they never did, never had I let them know I felt that way.

I wanted so bad to make me and my cousins presences known, even my brothers too I suppose. I needed to let them know that they were f'ing up something I had been so excited about for a whole month.

Yet never did I let anybody know till now I suppose.

You ask me what was different, you ask me what had changed. I would have said nothing my dear everything is dandy I promise you. Yet things that became unraveled also started to reverse. In slow motion had those thoughts traveled down a pipe full of bullshit excuses.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I did not want to disrupt your harmony. They may say that with sarcasm. Yet could not realize how tainted everything became in the end. It was peace and fine and the coastline with shopping on top of it.

Though for the rest of the trip did I stay in fear of what could have happened next. I stayed worried that the next sentence out of any adults mouths could have caused such a ruckus again. I stayed as far away from it all as possible, yet still so curious on what the point of it all was.

They still had time to bring it up in any conversation now that I am older, more mature than I was when I was twelve. They have learned to forgive and forget I suppose. Yet still I hold onto times where Mackinaw had not caused the anger and rivalry inside of my family. The people that meant the absolute most to me while others stared in confusion. And talked in silence with my presence.

I still remember when beach days would turn into full fledged storms. Although I could not see it I could sense the unhappiness inside their beings. I remember the cold touch of water when claimed to be warm.

Yet still prevailing through because that was the only opportunity I had to not swim in a tiny kitty pool. Frustration from my mother always screaming to come back in closer to where she could see me. Yet getting nicknamed as the mermaid I would always find myself back to where the water reached up to my neck.

Where I had to stand right on the tip of my toes to reach the wet, smooth sand. Cold yet velvety almost from the rocks and seashells. Brought closer to where the water and sand meet from gentle waves.

Waves that would splash my face, waves that brought me closer to my mother. I always commanded her wishes as long as there was something to look forward to. Another splash, or the sun peeking behind clouds and warmth to hit my stress free, round chubby face as a child.

My dad and his friend would drink like the men that they were. Always laughing at how loud my mom had to yell only to try and reach my head, swishing underwater. Ears clogged with salt free water. It was the way the lake always catered to me. Even when freezing I had always found myself floating. Laughing, singing with my best friend of eleven years.

I hate the beach now.

I hate the wind, with people crowding. The fact that the water is always cold and nasty. How the sand will burn your feet from the passion of all seven layers of hell. And even with sandals it always creeps onto you. Forced to swim in front of strangers and without a friend looking lame as hell.

It’s never as great as people make it. Sand in crevices you can not, and shouldn’t explain. Frustrated with the constant pressures of not looking as great as that girl, or the girl right next to you. Finding people that you know and don’t like grinds every one of my gears even more.

You can feel the presence of them judging, trying to find your flaws and insecurities. I can sense them crawling all over, like parasites begging for a photo shoot and attention. It’s draining, tiring, the side effect of growing away from it. Growing apart from the comfort you once knew so well.

It’s the sign of the times, a sign that you are finally growing up. I have not been to Mackinaw in years, I have not gone since what my family would have stated as an explosion of the soul. Real colors to peek through stupid shit like where we are going to eat out tonight.

I wish they knew that this feeling was only because of the fact I am growing older.

Mackinaw was my safe haven, the only place to look forward to. Only when months of shit and participation and work goes down the drain due to summer. I wish I could feel the rays hit my skin again while upon the stage. Walking everywhere, being with people I love so much.

I wish I could say that I am going back again. Yet times are more difficult, the circumstances have changed. It is so much harder working out things. The little details in it all.

Yet I can feel the hotel sheets as they wrapped around me. The balcony with a view of the water. So excited to go down and float in the water. Play games and feel the waves crash against me. Dress up for dinner, and take time to explore everything. Historical monuments and antiques.

I wish I could say I will be going back to my childhood. Yet there is no promise, no sense of guarantee. Only hopeless wishing for a dream. An opportunity. The chance to spark a light inside my dark days of childhood again.

So this is it. This is what brings me to what might be my final days. There is no guarantee in life that anything has changed me more than this experience. Sitting in my basement for months confusing the hell out of my parents. Months of lying to my friends about it yet I am finally here.

Career in the making.

I had only let five people know, five amazing people in my life. It could not have gotten said, the words would not have been right without their help some of the time. Because from the fear of everybody knowing also came this. The fact that the product would not have been great if everybody knew what was happening.

Might have been a devious trick, a passionate lie though it was only from the creation of passion did it come to this. I will miss the school nights I forced myself to stay up late. Weekends I took off and even thirteen days led away from the point of it all. The purpose of writing this.

It was the fear of failing that kept me going in all reality. The fear of not finishing that caused such a dilemma. I forced myself to stay grounded, forced upon myself calmness from it all. It was the fact that my father saw me as a disappointment from such an early age that made me write it. The fact he thought I was a failure persuaded the art of writing in the first place.

People say they don’t want to read autobiographies about people that they don’t know. Though it is because you don’t know me that inspires me to keep going. Why would you ever want to read a book on a person you know well enough?

There is no reason then, there is no purpose. People want to hear a sob story, yet before they know that I grew from the story is what hooks them to read more. A celebrity can talk about fame, yet nobody could have ever written my life for me. Or the exact way that I felt during it.

Oh gosh I already feel so scattered, so many more things I need to say. Yet the capability of me writing them is what takes me to the darkest place. Even though I have made my piece with everything after every chapter it’s the thrill of it all. The fact that my life isn’t  cardboard and stale splashed with bitter vanilla.

I still have so many things to say, so many messages needing to get released. Although I have much more forgiveness, so much less bitterness. It is also the fact that it happened that I will never forget.

How my body got violated from a boy that I trusted the most. The fact that my dreams got torn at the seams only by the undoing of magic by myself. How my parents rooted so many insecurities inside the depths of my soul. The fact the depression had taken over every factor in the life I lived.

Though I do not, and would never act like a victim of it all to know where I have come from. Never would I make the sadness inside myself turn into somebody else's pity for me. I don’t need an ‘Oh I’m so sorry,” to know that my life had put off the right track for a while now.

God might work in mysterious ways yet all I can do is maneuver plans in situations that are not preferable. All I have is dodging bullets from the unexplained truth that life never pans out the way you want it to. It is only picked at random in all honesty what happens next. One wheel for misfortunes and another picked from great luck. Of things that can happen.

Although it might now be a matter of making my own luck as it comes pouring down on my then so be it. So all the little details that controls me to be that way that I am. Making up the rules along the way were never stated to be an incorrect method. Or to be a bad way to cope with childhood problems.

Passion over persistence, motivation over the fact that it may never finish. On the days where suffering was the only thing I could ever come to terms with also came this thought. That letting it be was much better than letting it go.

Though now that it's done and over, now that the reason I sit in this dingy basement is gone it has turned the tables. Letting it be is the cure to letting old trauma stir up. Yet never does it get solved, never are those problems allowed to be completely gone. Let it be I preach now to you great people.

Let it be, yet your heart does not actually listen. Your soul is still holding on to it.

Let it go, let it go, all you need to do is release the opportunity of  letting it be, Conjure it, write about it. Get so angry that all you can do is blurt it. Let it go sweet instead of sour, let it go.

Because tears are not what I need anymore, it is motivation.

Moving on from it all with the help of those that know what I have been doing for months now. It’s never easy facing the truth and telling it to the people that you love. It’s a matter of saying it all to let them comprehend who you are. The life you have faced and the lies that have gotten handed down from generation to generation in my family. It is coming clean.

I used to stare out the window at the midnight moon comprehending the feelings I had for the guys that I liked. It all seemed so real, the reality of it all caused me to sit in some silver moonlight only to think. Think of him and me together. Though it is a fib, everything seems real until you put a microscope under it.

That the little girl with the biggest feelings is not who I choose to be anymore.

Examining the life, measuring the small details. And then squeezing every string in my heart for it has released everything. Life is a restart now, scrambling pages together to make something so wonderful. Endearing with the lightest touch of comedy and sarcasm. Sadistic in the sense that not every person will want to read my life.

Though I will come to terms with that, challenge the knowledge that there can only be one way to tell the story.

Even though never have I stated that my life is so much worse than anybody else's. Because life would never be what it is without our struggles, and passions, and fire. Igniting life inside the words said. Nobody can take those problems away, nobody can escape the trauma.

I know that though, the only thing I can actually write about and write about it well is the pain inside. The memories and heartbreak. Tearing to pieces the trust that has needed rekindling for four or more years.

Life sucks for us all. Though it would suck a little less if we stop comparing problems. Analyzing and inspiring others would be fine. But not if acting better than anyone or their problems is the only reason you talk about it.

It is more so power in the words that were spoken, words that don’t need explaining. Sitting quiet with those that mourn conjures so much power, so much wisdom than you could ever know.

Comforting my mother when her dad died was the least I could do for her. It was me being their and in the moment and not needing to say anything that makes her feel the way she does. My mother calls me mature. Even compares me to a forty year old woman, without knowing it was because I had to grow up so much faster.

My emotions had to develop so quick too because I knew I could not let the depression catch up to me. The sadness that consumed me alive. It was only realization of immaturity in dire situations.

I had to grow up so much quicker than everyone else. There is this big hole where impulsive decisions from bad choices in childhood lays. Always did what was right, always kept pushing past the things that didn't seem right only to make them. To make them okay, for my parents to still accept me if I went through with them. Yet it was much less fun than playing with mud.

Playing in the sand and molding castles while my jean pockets get filled with little grains of it. Running through the woods without fear of tripping or falling. Or always in fear of what my parents would do if they found out.

Sneak out of the house on a Friday night to go drink and smoke with all my friends without ever getting caught.

Yet Friday nights I still leave dedicated to the fact that I love to watch movies with my cats.

Only with looking at me nobody could have guessed about the things that have happened to me and I know it. The shock factor comes to everyone if telling them about the life I have lived.

In reality how crazy it is,

yet I don’t see it that way. Because you never know a person only by looking at them. There are layers of fears and doubts and worries. Layers of what's to come? The world around and colors they see it in?

Though most important, the levels of childhood trauma it took to make them who they are as an individual.

Nobody can live the same life as you did. Nobody can feel love the same as you do. More passionate in the pursuit of finding the truth in who they are or their future career. Take a look I say, take a shot when I mention how depressed I am.

Nobody can take that for advantage though, nobody takes it as seriously as I do. The fact that my childhood got wasted on the perception of it all if I came out and told someone what happened to me.

Yesterday, it was only yesterday, five years after it happened I finally told my mom something. Finally did I build the unwanted courage to tell my mother what was going on. I did not tell her everything well because in all honesty it was because we were in public. But I told her about my dad.

The fact that he used to call me fat, a disappointment as a child, the fact that he did not raise me the way he wanted to.

How I felt like something to get examined in evil scientists tank. Shocked yet again of how terrible his little lab rat project turned out to be. Down the trash shoot he would have screamed if he could, yet he could not get rid of me. I was there because I had to be and not because he wanted me.

I told her that I know he loves me now, I know he would do anything for me. Yet at the age of ten I did not feel like hearing about the tragedy that turned into a teenage girl. With rushing hormones yet raging insecurity.

I told her about it in front of my little brother too, and started crying at the dinner table. I was so surprised at myself. I had not cried about it for years, hadn’t thought about it until I had to write it.

Yet there I was sitting in a shitty wooden chair crying to my mother and brother about it all. I let go from it. Even if only for a little bit I can still feel the heavy weight in my chest release. And fluctuate into somebody who is free.

A scary thought in the making, yet still a dream.

I was finally free from feeling like I should have this giant grudge against my dad. I knew he was trying his best it was the way he showed it. Although it pissed me off the fact my mom was shoving him a pass after saying she was on my side of the dilemma. Proving she would always take his side made me mad. I forgave her, I forgave her for taking what he said and running with it. Because for once it was the fact that she was listening in the first place.

The fact that I had finally built up enough courage to tell her. I was not planning on it, not planning on ever telling her in reality. It was  the release of so many suppressed `emotions. So many erupting feelings.

Tight knots in my chest finally decompressed long enough to know that I had grown as a person. It’s a matter of confessing it yes, though I only talked about letting everything go because I did. I completely erased the stress of it all.

It might not last forever this happiness I know yet it is relief before it coming up again that it is possible for me. I’m not afraid anymore of everything that ended up happening. A dinner for the books I would call it. Crying, tears streaming down my face yet my mom finally opened up and listening. Without muttering; "you're embarrassing me."

My brother listened with intent of keeping focus without pretending to falling asleep. Yet in reality this is what this whole book was. This was the purpose of it all. To release, to let go, although my stubborn ass said I was not in the first chapter I was only thinking it because I knew I was.

I say goodbye to the raindrops that fall against my window at three in the morning. I say goodbye to the tears that stream for relief, it is the feeling of finally telling somebody what my life was.

Finally coming to peace with who I am yet again.

Goodbyes are for the best, this I will know time and time again. Goodbyes are only sad if you are not seeing it again. Yet this is what life is, this is what life turned out to be.

Down the roads that I lost the path on there was the will to find it again. The motivation that toppled over everything to make it on time anywhere I was going. The road won’t say goodbye, this I know.

So if you want to know me in the next life, or know me in this one you know where I’ll be.

Somewhere lost, I guess.