If somebody screams but nobody listens, did they even make a sound? Did they just echo out into the void for nothing? Did they make their throats burn with a fiery pain for naught?

She… she was “okay”.

She wasn’t like most girls.

A hopeless romantic.

A strong mind.

A chaotic nature.

A delighted persona.

But that’s all it was, wasn’t it? Just a persona…

Her image to others, the person she was on the outside. She built a wall around herself, keeping everybody and everything out of the most delicate parts of her mind, the ones that made her her. Everybody tried to get through: “What’s wrong?” “You alright?”

To which she would reply, “I’m okay.”

Generally she wasn’t that great a liar, but this phrase rolled off her tongue and danced into the ears of her audience, as if it was true. So easily it drifted from her lips to be transferred to the other person, the one who tried to break down her walls.

Obviously, they weren’t as smart as they thought. If they could believe something so clearly fake, how did they think they were going to get through her barrier?

But she hid her pain. She locked away her tears, plastered a pretty little smile on her pretty little face and that was good enough… good enough for her, for her friends, for her family, teachers, enemies, even strangers. As long as she kept up her act, everybody automatically assumed that she was well enough to be defined as “okay”.

But she wasn’t. Tears would well up in those green eyes of hers over something so stupid, like a joke that didn’t really mean to hurt her, but did. Somebody could speak to her--not even yell--in a voice so cold that her frame trembled with fear and anxiety.
Once they found this weakness, once they found their way up and over her walls, they used it brutally against her. They called her names, they talked behind her back, they teased her; anything you can think of that would hurt a little girl, they did it.

And then she would break down. Her walls would fall each and every time somebody called her “stupid” or “ugly” and she would collapse on the floor in an exhausted heap, rivers streaming from her emerald irises, and she would let them through.

She couldn’t keep them out after all.

Time passed, years, and she slowly began to put up her walls again. They broke them down sometimes, but building productions grew further advanced, quicker, more efficient. Brick by broken brick, she would fit pieces of her shattered puzzle back together and add a layer of pain to make it more resistant to their insults, to their jokes, to their games.

But why the hell should she have to put up with that? Why should she of all people, have to suffer just so somebody could get a good laugh from her misery? She’s beautiful and perfect and because of all those things they told her when she was younger, she doesn’t believe that! She’s stuck in the mindset that she’s worthless and it makes her blind when she looks in the mirror! She sees a girl who’s not good enough! She sees a girl who’s never going to be the love of somebody’s life, she sees a girl who will always end up hurting those around her, because of those things they so cruelly rehearsed and chorused to her! When somebody tells her they’re wrong, she doesn’t believe it.

Her pain is a thing of beauty, but it eats her alive. It leaves her wrists bleeding and her heart aching, her chest constricting to a point that nearly tips her over the edge, agony and torment so deep they cut her down into thousands of splinters that used to resemble her heart, pain so terrible, nobody understands!

That rhyme of sticks and stones... How do you believe that? How can you think that words hurt less than a broken bone?

This isn’t just a PSA about bullying.

This isn’t just an announcement about heartache…

This is my story.

And next time you hear me say that I’m okay?

Look a little closer, because it’s probably a lie.