I feel like I haven’t been very real lately.

Like no one knows who I truly am.

The scars that created the very existence of who I am

have been kept a secret.

I fear that strangers can see through to my soul,

but when they are no longer strangers,

I worry that my soul may be just a book of lies anyway.

When I try to hide my nightmares, they eat away at who I am.

I want to forget what has happened, but I cannot.

If not for my pain, my fate would be deceiving smiles and secrets that kill.

Last April, you heard it on the news. A senior at Prairie High School

had raped a fourteen year old girl. A freshman at that very school.

The reports ended there, but the suffering did not.

Never on the news did it tell you how painfully the girl broke.

It didn’t share the nightmares and the flashbacks,

nor the constant fear of being hurt yet again.

It didn’t share the endless nights of tears,

and the abandonment from the ones she loved.

You won’t find it say that almost a year later,

the memory still haunts her entire being,

but I can assure you that it does.

It replays in her mind like a never-ending movie.

She couldn’t make it stop. It became her life,

and so she decided to end it.

Only by killing herself could she kill the memory,

but she could not. Over and over again, she failed.

Still alive, the sadness controlled her.

An idea came to mind.

She thought that maybe by offering her body as slave to sex,

the memory of it being stolen from her wouldn’t hurt so bad.

She was wrong.

The pain went on, and to this day, it still continues.

I tell you this now because I want you to get to know me,

the real me.

And I want to get to know the real you,

but I need you to understand that I am still fragile,

and I hate to admit it.

I don’t know how normal people live I didn’t grow up with friends.

I felt that neither of my parents wanted me.

I got thrown between parents and

I felt like a stranger in my own house.

I became a teenager while in rehab.

Not the best way to spend my thirteenth birthday.

Or my fifteenth for that matter.

Definitely not the ”birthday party” I was hoping for.

In fact, the last ”party” I attended

was my eleventh birthday party.

Just a birthday present from my mom

would have been nice.

I haven’t spoken to my own mother in

over nine months.

I can’t take the horrible things she tells me.

She calls me ”cold-hearted”,

“f***ed up”,

“mentally diseased”,

and ”a selfish b****”.

She tells me that nobody wants me,

then tries her best to go on and prove it.

Then she tells me she loves me

and that she would do anything to just see me smile.

I want so badly to believe her,

but I know that it’s only lies.

I like to believe that I know what love feels like.

I can only wish that it won’t always be so temporary.