Well, let me paint a picture for you. My strokes will be broken and uneven, my lines wavering, but the words, the words will hit you like a speeding bullet.
Picture a happy teenager, living a life many would want. A life seemingly full of cheer and happiness. With friends that truely cared and beautiful looks that came naturally.
If this sounds like a fairy tale, it's not. All of it can happen, will happen, and even worse, does happen.
This cheeful, friendly, helpful girl who lived the life of a star was the perfect example that you should never judge a book by its cover.
Buried beneath her carefree disguise were feelings that she wasn't living life the way it was meant to be. Something was missing. But the girl never could find out what. Perhaps that might have saved her.
Picture the deepest hunger you've ever felt. With its ferocious clawing in the darkest pit of your soul, clawing to satisfy its needs. Take that feeling and multiply it by ten. Live with it constantly overshadowing you. Constantly drawing down your optomism, ruining your life, shredding your soul.
But the disguise never was shed. No one suspected the girl's true nature or feelings. She was the same old person as always, doing everything for her friends; spoiling them the way a grandmother spoils her grandchildren. Never letting her friends know the truth.
The truth is the hardest thing to live up to. Kicking you while you're down, grabbing you from behind, laughing in your face, all while it gnaws away at your insides, relentlessly trying to expose your errors, your mistakes.
The truth for this girl was that she was killing herself slowing by keeping silent. Silence was her only haven, but a dangerous one nonetheless. Whether it was planned or not, this girl was dying, and no one was helping because no one knew. Fear, fear of the unknown, of the truth, kept this girl quiet and secretive. No one would ever know, unless she flat out told them. To everyone she was still the same pesron that they knew a month ago. Still the same book cover, but the story inside was much more brutal than it seemed.
No one guessed what was going on in this girl's head until the marks appeared. One or two at first, the more. Cuts that had been inflicted with such hate and vengance that one could only wonder what kind of pain had been caused. People stared and whispered. They asked the girl how she had recieved the wounds, and they recieved lies.
The truth was too dangerous to let wander free, unattended.
The pain inside the girl had grown to the point where it was pushing her slowly into the foreboding depths of despair and depression. She felt ignored, unloved, and even dead. She felt that hope was useless; there was no where to turn, no one to trust. No matter what she said while telling herself she was wrong, the dismal side of her always pervailed. the dark shadow of helplessness and hopelessness overcame her like a storm, washing away the sunlight into oblivion.
Nothing hurt anymore, only herself. Her own words cut like daggers into her fragile heart. The marks and scars on her arms didn't impact her at all. When she took her cold blade and carved away her fears, turning them into clean, red blood, she was relieved.
Bleeding was good. Blood meant life. She was relieved that she was alive, not dead as she had thought. In a way she was right. On the outside she was a living, breathing human being. On the inside, her soul had been washed away, bleached out, removed. Nothing was left of her except her pain. It had been that way for a long time now.
Days and months melted into one. Time stretched on endlessly as her mood disintegrated. She tried pushing her friends away. No need to bring them into this. They don't deserve my life. I do. Thoughts like these flooded her head, searching for an outlet to escape from. Instead of freeing them, the girl just bottled them up, stored them away, and slipped into denial.
Once or twice her friends cornered her, asking her what was wrong, how they could help, if she needed something. There were times when she wanted to screamt that they were full of bull, that all she needed wasa new life, but she restrained herself. Sure you want to help. I'm sure my feelings will fall straight into the hands of gossip hungry preps who care about themselves and only themselves. You don't care at all. The girl ignored their pleas, pretending she was fine, pretending that they didn't really care. It was easier to justify her feelings if she felt that no one loved her. It is easier to do anything when you feel alone. The world is a cruel place to the lonely.
Her family didn't suspect much. She was almost always left home alone to brood, cry, cut herself, or do anything that she wanted to do. Dad was always in some distant country, Mom was constantly out with friends, and her older brother was fooling around with his girlfriend in the backseat of his car. No one at home ever noticed much of a change in her. Like they'd even care. They'd never care about me. I'm their mistake.
School was a different matter altogether. Once, the truth nearly came gushing out of her like water spewing from a destroyed dam.
"We care. I care. We're always here for you, we don't want to see you like this, or lose you." It was lunchtime at the far end of the cafeteria, the deserted part. A friend had forced the girl back there and was attempting to get her to shed some light on the situation.
"No, you don't care." the girl spoke softly, almost in tears. Her own voice surprised her. When was the last time she had spoken? "I don't care. Life isn't right. Mine I mean. Yours is fine. Look at you." The girl started to choke up. "It's, well, death would be better." Then the girl stood up to walk away. She had said too much.
"Wait, come back! I can get you help. I can talk to someone for you. There are plenty of nice teachers here..." The girl's friend grabbed her arm and looked at her pleadingly.
"I don't need any help." Her voice was ster. A lone tear spilled out of her eye and she brushed it away quickly. Then she pulled away from her friend and left. It was the last time that she would ever see her friend, and that her friend would ever see her.
Night came and the girl couldn't sleep. There was a nagging in her stomach that annoyed her. She cried for hours on end, trying to make it stop, but, like the incessant whine of a fruit fly, it couldn't be ignored or forced away. Finally, she knew how to make it end, forever.
Her bedside lamp flicked on with a snap. Darkness was shattered suddenly as the bean penetrated the corners of the room and cast long shadow's on the girl's weary face.
A piece of paper was produced like magic. Words, emotionless words, filled the paper, sprawling across it aimlessly, searching for direction and definition.
Morning came; the alarm went off. The girl did not wake. A terrible blackness had surmounted her. She had struggled at first, but the battle had ended in the night, and she had lost.
Her mother, enraged that the girl's alarm had woken her, barged into the girl's room, curses ejaculating from her mouth.
Still and cold, the girl stared at her mother. Staring from empty eyes was a souless body, the result of her bottled up emotions suddenly exploding outwards.
Hanging from a rope that was attached to a hook on the ceiling was her lifeless body. A hangman's noose had been tied perfectly around the girl's neck. She swung limply and her mother faltered in her tirade, falling to her knees in tears.
The older brother, hearing his mother's cries, dashed into the room, only to join his mother on the ground. Dad was in some remote part of Africa on business. He wouldn't find out for another week.
The only ones who understood the girl's note were her friends, the only ones who were really there for her and showed her concern.
I DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU DID CARE, BUT I DIDN'T. LIVE YOUR LIVES WITHOUT MY PAIN; IT WILL BE BETTER.
More people came to the funeral than any other held in the small town. Each mourner bore his or her own guilt as they muttered their sympathies and goodbyes.
The harsh truth had hit them as well, this could be anyone. Their indifference had made another child a victim. Their unwillingness to look under the outside appearance had made this girl, once happy and innocent, one of the hundreds of teenagers that commit suicide each year. They had turned her into a statistic. But they did learn. They learned that they had to know people, to try to help people, and to do more than needed when someone is in trouble.
It's not a pretty picture that I've painted, not a pretty story told. But it is the truth. And it has to be told.
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