I remember being friends with a girl who spoke like a fawn and was as thin as a stick. Her face naturally beautiful, her eyes gleaming with happiness. A pageant queen. A cheerleader. But when she told me about protein shakes as fillers for meals I learnt that the happiness was fake. No matter how much she got, who she saw and met, no matter how many "Miss Teen Canada" titled she won, she would be unhappy. She has constant girlfriends come and go, each her own lovely and unique thinspiration; a collage of limbs and bones she aspired to be. Her obsessions took a hold of her for six years, making her sad, delusional, crazy, until the point she hit the 89 pound mark. Until she ended back up in a hospital. I told her I cared. I meant it, too, but I knew the voices in her head were all too loud to hear my truth of her. The truth of a brilliant, talented girl. Sometimes being called "beautiful" is not always a compliment"

I know a boy of european descent. Born in Bulgaria, raised in Canada for just a couple of years. His English got really good after sixth grade, and that's when we finally became friends. I guess now you can say we're best friends. To my expected surprise he turned out to be gay. And to my surprise, it seemed like there was something deeper. He recently sold himself, something that can now only be a shell or a casket. His parents didn't know he was 29. Or that he was gay. i thought about all the fun times- all the sassiness, the dumb jokes, the radio job- and it made me think how much of that was for show. A fake smile. A talented, lively comedian. One that hid behind crude jokes that portrayed a reality all too real to him. Someone who has silently suffered for far too long. I wish he didn't. I wish he didn't have to hide. I am always scared that his last word he hears will be a derogatory one.

There was a girl I was very jealous of. She was my best friend, and creativity flowed through her like a waterfall starting at her heart. She was everything I wanted to be- intelligent, beautiful(in the natural stunning way) and thin. She was so thin. She had impeccable music taste, and we bonded over that. Despite the ******* rock we use to hit the **** to, she enjoyed classical music. She liked being alone. And although she was a self proclaimed optimist, she would hide away her guilt and sadness. I knew she was like me. We both took cold showers while we layed on the bath floor, hoping our hearts would freeze. We would walk the streets of downtown Toronto, praying that the night would swallow us whole. We would *** smokes off of older men in hot leather that rode Harley Davidson's that secretly wanted to **** us. And our cigarette smoke would stick to our summer-kissed skin, and id be even more jealous of how she became tanner and I began to look like a pale little ghost. She was lovely but cheated on. A young looking boy with a galaxy of freckles on this universal boy-band face. He ended up being wrong. The galaxy turned dark black, the boy-band tunes into soft, somber cries. Her cries. I remember having to sit back and watch while I rolled a spliff; I thought about it when I was being caressed too. Optimism can make you see brighter days, but it doesn't stop the hurting your heart will face.

There was a boy I knew who use to smoke his lungs away with **** and french kissed death with pills drowning in alcohol. There was a boy I knew who always use to skip class, but came every once in a while to let the teacher know he was alive. The boy grew too fast, or maybe too slow, or both. One part to reliable and the other too aware. He knew all the causes but never the solutions. He would always fight with anger because he never knew love. No one ever loved him. Instead, i picture him going home, parents neglecting him as he, the lost boy, goes up to his room. Closes the door, drops the blinds, cries. "Be a man" the voices say, but he can't tonight. He focusses too ******* the pain (it's finally something he can focus on). And there was this boy, who dug his nails into his palms, drank until he couldn't see; swinging punches and hitting air as his opponent was strung out on the other side of the room. I never knew if lost boy would cut himself to drain out his sadness or if he snorted more lines to forget what was lying in front of him. I wondered show long it would take lost boy to put the gun to his head and call it quits, how long till his name flashed on the news. Lost boy eventually drowned himself in the bottle, finished the pills, ran out of money and now we don't ever hear from him. He's just lost.

-teenage experience

conceptcollection

In high school, I used to crawl
past my dad’s side of the bed so I could whisper,
at midnight, to my mom that I was leaving
and going to your place, and that I’d be back
by five in the morning, because I was that good girl
in the knee-high socks with the headband
that matched my uniform. So, I told my mom
that I was going over, watched her sleepy eyes
drift back to her pillow corner. I’d start my car,
put on that sappy John Mayer song you hate,
but know I love, and head through the center of town
on the ghost roads, driving like a memory
with four wheels and only three more miles to go.
You’d let me in the back door, careful not to shut the door
to the kitchen too tight, and we’d kiss
under the aquarium light.

I’d watch the shatters
of light split with the blades of your ceiling fan
as you’d remind me over and over again
with your words that I couldn’t stay long
while your hands pulled me in closer to your chest.

You were the first bad thing I let myself have.

I’d have to leave before your dad would get up for work,
so I’d pull on my sweatpants, wipe the makeup
from beneath the crease of my eyes, kiss you goodbye
for who knew how long it would be that time, and I’d cry
in the car the whole way home
because I knew that we were like grains of sand
in an hourglass
just waiting for our turn to fall.

We were two severely broken things
and though I was promised someone to mend me
I couldn't bear to get better before you.
so I replaced all your lost pieces with my own
and glued you back together with the blood I lost from slicing my hands when I touched you.
And when you were whole again
you decided there weren't enough parts in the world to fix me
and even if there were, I wasn't worth the effort.
And now I am even more broken than before
and there aren't enough pieces  for anyone else to mend me with
and I wonder if you ever touch your wrist and feel my veins under your skin
or look at your eyes and see my glass shining through.
Because I can feel every piece I lost
and every time my mother hugs me she asks me about the crater between my shoulder blades
that piece went to your ribs i think
and every ******* time you get hurt I know
because I can ******* feel it
and I can feel her cold fingers on my neck every time she touches your leg and I just want my ******* pieces back.

instead of saying
do
instead of judging
help
instead of worrying
be
instead of hating
love
instead of hurting
heal
instead of taking
give
instead of crawling
FLY

I used to believe that humans
were beautiful creatures,
meant to be admired.
There was a wall
between them and I
I loved them so,
But could never be like them.
Until the day I realized,
That I was the one in the cage,
Kept to be gawked at.
I was the one who
could never be free.