she handed me a chopping board
wrapped in cheap red paper,
with a card tucked neatly inside:
“since you like to slice yourself,
why not make it useful?”

merry christmas.

i stared at it—
wooden, plain,
cleaner than i’ve ever felt.
everyone else
pretended to laugh.
or worse—
pretended nothing happened.

no one stopped her.
no one looked at me.
i was thirteen
and bleeding invisibly.

she jokes like i’m not alive,
like my pain is some inside gag
she shares with herself
while i sit there,
swallowing the sound of my own heartbeat
because it’s the only thing i know
that hasn’t turned against me.

i started hurting myself
when she moved in.
not for drama.
not for show.
but because the ache in my chest
had nowhere else to go.

my skin became
a secret diary
she somehow still read.

they won’t let me get help.
say i’m too young,
too fragile,
too… dramatic.

but i’m old enough
to wake up alone in a dorm bed,
wanting to disappear
before the day even begins.

i pay for my own classes
because she says i’m too stupid
to waste money on.
i win races
because running is the only time
i feel like i’m moving away from her
fast enough.

sometimes i run
until my lungs burn.
until my legs forget
they belong to a girl
who flinches at kindness
because it feels like a setup.

i don’t want revenge.
i don’t want her to hurt.

i just want a birthday
without fear.
a christmas
without cruelty.
a life
where love doesn’t come with teeth.

and maybe—
just maybe—
a version of myself
who can look in the mirror
and see more
than what she tried to carve out of me.

I live at school.
Not because I love it,
but because home is a war I got tired of losing.

Boarding school was supposed to be an escape.
But turns out, monsters don’t need addresses
they travel in texts, in voicemails
in the mouth of teachers
who were supposed to be grown ups,
but act like mean girls in blazers.

My stepmother doesn’t have to be near me
to make my skin crawl.
Her words arrive on screens.
Her voice leaks through the phone.
“You’re a disappointment.”
“An embarrassment.”
“She thinks she’s better than everyone else.”

She weaponizes my silence.
Twists my distance into guilt.
And the teachers?
They carry her messages like loyal dogs.
Repeat her insults with that tight-lipped smile
like they’re reading bible verses
instead of abuse.

And when I crack—
when the rage explodes out of my chest
because no one listens until I yell—
I’m the problem.
“She’s aggressive.”
“She has anger issues.”
“Unstable.”

But tell me—
what do you become
when you’re poked, poked, poked
every single day
by girls who think pain is a game
and teachers stand by
like broken statues?

What do you become
when every voice you hear
is one telling you you’re too loud,
too bold,
too much—
when all you’ve ever been
is trying to survive
a world that chews you up for breathing wrong?

I never wanted to be the girl who fights.
But kindness never stopped the bleeding.
And fists speak louder in a world
that turns its back when you whisper “help.”

All I want is peace.
Not your false calm—
not the silence that chokes me.
I mean peace where I can exist,
unafraid of my own name
coming out of someone else’s mouth.

I want to walk through these halls
and not flinch at the sound of my phone.
I want teachers to teach,
not take sides in wars I never started.

I want to feel safe
somewhere.
Anywhere.
I’m tired of being told I’m too much
by people who give too little.
I’ve bled in places you’ll never see
and still managed to be kind.
Do you know how strong that makes me?

So if you’re reading this,
and you’ve ever made someone feel small
just because you could—
congratulations.
But I’m still here.
And your hate?
It ends with me.

Because I will fight,
if I have to.
But all I ever wanted
was to be left
the hell
alone.

I stopped naming days a while ago—
they blur like raindrops on a cracked lens.
Everything feels like an echo
of a moment that never begins.

I’m not living — I’m leftover.
A half-thought someone left behind.
Just a whisper under locked doors,
a glitch they pretend not to find.

My mirror forgets my face now.
It fogs up, refuses to see.
I trace a smile in the steam,
then wipe it off carefully.

My body’s a punishment I wake up in,
every curve a curse, every breath a dare.
They say “You’ll grow into yourself,”
but I’m scared of what’s even there.

My bedroom light flickers like it pities me.
I don’t turn it off—it feels like a friend.
Sometimes I stare at the ceiling
and wonder when all this will end.

School is a stage I perform at.
My backpack holds more secrets than books.
Teachers read me like I’m blank paper,
like I’m nothing more than looks.

I speak less every week.
Even the silence feels bored of me.
I try to write myself into poems,
but the paper just stares blankly.

I write suicide notes in my head
like lullabies when I can’t sleep.
I imagine a world without me
and it doesn’t even weep.  

No one knocks on my door anymore.
They say I’m “just going through a phase.”
But I’m not going anywhere—
just sinking in quieter ways.

I think the stars forgot my name.
I don’t even wish on them now.
What’s the point in asking for light
when you’ve never been shown how?

I keep my razor in a pencil case—
It makes more sense that way.
At least it writes something real
when my words won’t stay.

Tell me—what’s worse:
To scream and be silenced,
or to whisper your last goodbye
and still be unseen in the silence?

I don’t want a grave or flowers.
Just maybe a song without my name.
Let me go like a breath you didn’t mean—
quick, quiet, forgotten.
No blame.

I lie awake when night gets loud,
Inside my head, a thundercloud.
Thoughts repeat like broken tape,
No exit sign, no sweet escape.

I ask myself the same old "why,"
Until my chest forgets to cry.
The ceiling stares, it knows my face—
A ghost who can't leave her own place.

I scroll through laughs I didn’t feel,
A screen between me and what's real.
They say, "You're young, you've got the time,"
But time just loops—no climb, no climb.

I think too much, I feel too deep,
And all I want is just to sleep.
Not dreams, not light, just black and still,
To shut the mind I cannot will.

A quiet war behind my eyes,
A smile rehearsed, a thousand lies.
They wouldn’t get it if I tried—
How do you explain a landslide?

But maybe one day I’ll be free,
From all the thoughts that bury me.
And if I write them down tonight,
Maybe I’ll wake with less to fight.

I was 11 when he married her.
I remember thinking I’d be fine.
I thought I could handle it—
handle her, handle him.
But that’s the thing about 11—
you still believe things are supposed to work out.
That people who say they love you,
actually do.

I left for boarding school a few months later.
Not because I wanted to,
but because she said it was better that way.
She said it would be easier
if I wasn’t around,
if I wasn’t so complicated.

They never called me.
Never came to visit.
When they did, it was always her—
her smile too tight,
her love too sweet,
like she was trying to convince herself
that I wasn’t a problem.
And I knew—I always knew—
I wasn’t wanted.

At first, I pretended like nothing had changed.
I pretended to still be part of the family,
like I wasn’t living in a house
full of people who weren’t really mine.
But then she started making rules—
rules about what I could say, what I could do.
“Don’t make things awkward,” she’d tell me,
when I just sat there,
shaking.

I could feel the panic growing,
a buzz in my head that wouldn’t stop,
like my skin was too tight
and my chest was too small
to hold everything inside.

At first, I ate because I had to,
because it was expected.
But then I started skipping meals.
Then it became easier not to eat at all.
The hunger felt like control—
something to grab onto when everything else was slipping away.
It wasn’t about being thin.
It was about being nothing.
Because nothing felt better than this constant, gnawing emptiness.

When I came home on holidays,
I barely touched the food.
I’d sit at the table,
pick at my plate
like I wasn’t starving inside.
I told myself I didn’t need it—
I didn’t need anything.
But my stomach would ache,
and my skin felt too tight,
like I was holding onto everything I wasn’t
and trying to keep it inside.

Her kids would call him “Dad”
and I wouldn’t say a word.
I wouldn’t say anything.
Because everything I wanted to say
would sound like a desperate plea—
please don’t leave me out,
please notice me,
please love me—
but I couldn’t make it stop.
I couldn’t stop needing him.

I remember walking through the door at Christmas,
bags still heavy with the weight of the drive,
and the smell of their dinner
sickly sweet in the air.
Her kids were already at the table,
laughing about something I didn’t know,
something I wasn’t part of.
They didn’t even look at me.
And I didn’t look at them,
because I knew what would happen—
they’d say something,
and I’d say nothing,
and she’d get mad
because I was “too distant.”

So I sat in the corner,
fading into the background,
just another shadow in the house
that wasn’t mine anymore.
I wanted to scream,
but I couldn’t.
Because if I did,
he’d look at me with that sad, apologetic look,
and she’d stand behind him,
looking at me like I was the problem.
She always did.

I stopped eating again.
I stopped feeling hunger—
just this emptiness
that felt like it was made of nothing
but air and anxiety.
It was like everything in me
was too loud,
too much,
and I had to turn it off.
I wanted to disappear
because being here,
being visible,
hurts too much.

When I went back to school,
I didn’t even feel like I was leaving home.
Home wasn’t something I had anymore.
I had a room with my name on it,
but it wasn’t my home.
I had a body that didn’t fit,
a mind that never stopped screaming,
and a heart that couldn’t stop wanting
someone who would never choose me.

The only time I felt like I was wanted
was when I wasn’t there at all.
When I was invisible.
When I didn’t have to be anything
but the silence in the room.