They said things were better. The media lied to us.

Racism is gone! the headlines blared cheerfully. Sexism is no more! Gender equality for all!

It kind of hurt, knowing that there were people out there who believed that, who sat in their large houses and ate hors d'oeuvres and congratulated themselves on helping to obliterate discrimination in this world. They couldn't see past their perfect little noses to see us, the minorities, the outcast, weeping, clutching each other to ease the pain.

It was tragically beautiful. All these broken people coming from broken lives, all these damaged souls and hurting hearts, fitting themselves together in an attempt to make things better. To convince themselves that things weren't as bad as they seemed. To fool themselves into believing they lived in a beautiful utopia.

If anything, we lived in a dystopia. A rich, white man-ruled dystopia. Because no one else could really be truly happy, could they? The mindset that men were better. The belief that the poor were inferior. The conviction that white people were the best. The whispered lie that LGBT+ people belong in the dumps.

No, the headlines were wrong. Because if all those things were true, maybe I, a fourteen-year old so cruelly thrown into harsh reality at too young an age, wouldn't be sitting here sobbing in the pools of my parents' blood. Maybe I wouldn't be orphaned. Maybe I would be living a happy life.

Maybe I wouldn't be completely and utterly shattered.