I'm going to tell you
a story.
Once upon a time.
there was a little girl
whose name was Smiley.
She was a healthy girl
who had both of her parents
and all of her grandparents
and even great-grandparents.
She had many toys,
but had had a bad habit
of accidentally breaking them.
She also had a bad habit
of getting in the way
and she had a tendency
to do things
that made her mother angry.
Her mother would occasionally
slap
or
spank
the little girl,
but never more than that.
Except for the times when
the slap was hard enough
to knock the little girl off her feet.
But those were very rare.
As the little girl grew older,
she decided that
she loved cats
she wanted to save the trees
she hated math
and she had a lot of friends.
The last thing is a lie.
She didn't have friends,
not real friends.
There were only the people
who were nice
to this strange, loud, annoying little girl
who had a pet water bottle in third grade
and hung up posters around the school that screamed
"Save the trees!"
The little girl who played soccer with the boys in fourth grade
even though she didn't really know how to play
The little girl who thought she made a friend in fifth grade
but instead learned what manipulation was.
And this little girl was easy to manipulate.
The girl didn't have a real friend
until sixth grade.
Then she met a girl
who was a lot like her in so many ways.
They became
inseparable.
In seventh grade,
these two friends
welcomed a third to the band
not knowing that their lives were about to change.
The new girl
had a dark secret
A dark past
And she was the victim of brutal bullies.
The demons in her head
told her to bring a knife to her wrist
and bleed.
She did.
But somehow, she survived.
And the two friends?
They never forgot the girl
with dark secrets
and a dark past.
In eighth grade,
the girl who was once nicknamed Smiley
experienced true grief
for the first time.
Her great-grandfather passed away,
shaking the girl to the core
Striking fear and sadness
into her bright heart.
She never stopped grieving.
How could she?
But life must go on.
In ninth grade, the girl entered the real world
The world of bad words in the halls
and cigarettes at the bus stop
and keg parties at so-and-so's house.
Of course, the girl would never touch a cig
or go to a keg party
even if she could.
And she couldn't
because of her ever-watchful mother.
Nothing slipped past that woman.
Nothing.
Except for one tiny thing.
In the spring of ninth grade,
the girl did something
that she never thought she would do:
she cut herself.
And she swore to her friends,
because she actually had more than one by then,
that she would never do it again.
Ninth grade was also the year
that she first felt the faint stirrings of live.
But that ended near the end of sophomore year,
and the beginning of that year
brought on a terrible habit:
she cut herself.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And she never told anyone.
And she never stopped.
Not even in the safety of summertime.
Not even away from her mother's choking grasp.
Not even surrounded by people
in a place that was both comforting and familiar.
And somehow her secret
still stayed safe.
It's still a secret to this day.
But every day,
the girl comes closer to falling apart.
i come closer to falling apart.
Because that little girl,
the girl who once had the nickname
of Smiley?
Yeah,
that's me.
This is actually supposed to be creative nonfiction, but I wrote it poetry form, so...I'm posting it.