My biggest fear was high school. I was scared of getting beaten just for being me. I remember seeing a beating on the “goat trails” that haunted me for years in every single dream. I was made to believe I was next and I learned to live in fear and found away to make myself disappear. I stayed with a boyfriend a little too long than I normally would as he was older and had the ability to take me away from there. At least it was the 90’s right? I couldn’t imagine having to deal with all that in today’s current timeline. There is no way I could have survived.

I was painfully shy. So much so I became an easy target. I was scared of pain, petrified of violence. After a year and a half of being tormented by a domestic partner I had no trust for our fellow men or ladies. I hated school. I was convinced they were going to get a hold of me and lay down some beats. I knew they were strong. There was no way I could possibly defend myself so while most kids were enjoying their senior year I was desperate to find a place to hide, so I dated somebody older. He would pick me up at lunch and any time I asked. So for the interim I was safe and my face would live another day.

I was just a scared little farm girl. Forced to grow up before my time. The fear at 13 hearing I was pregnant was the noose around my neck that I never needed. I didn’t know what I was doing. Sex was such a weird thing. I wanted to play baseball and hang out with my Dad but in doing so I would never have a chance at fitting in. Once the whole world believes the worst about you what hope do you have. You feel inferior to the rest of the world. You do. You lose what most teenage girls should have in common. Virtue, innocence and honesty…all those things getting lost by our children. Forcing each other to grow up to fast what choice do we have but to adapt to being mean?

My best friend at the time was awful. She sold me out faster then I could say hi. I was easily victimized throughout those 4 years that I spent most of my time at home crying counting down the days until I got to leave. I wanted a chance to fit in among strangers instead of everyone around me believing all these lies. You might wonder why I acted the way I did but I was terrified. I still remember the insults, the laughs, even the blood squirting out of her nose as they smashed her face into the tree. Then they picked her up by the hair and made her smile for the picture. The words echoing in my ears. Smile and we will stop. These are the women who dominated my school and these are the women who make me scared for my child to have to enter any school halls. What children are capable of and will excuse it away with their small brains should be horrifying. Alarming at best. A contrast to what life was supposed to be and how it was supposed to feel and what it was supposed to all mean. I couldn’t imagine surviving childhood in the wake of the pressures of social media. I would have been an easy target and there would have been nothing I could have done to keep my head above water. As it stands I tried to end my life at 14 and then again at 19. My issue I was too terrified of what would happen if I crossed over onto the other side so I stayed. I became a hollow version of myself in that I did what was needed in order to do to stay alive. Desensitize myself to the outside world and try to keep all outside cares at bay.

Now it is believed that you can not fully understand the behavior of another individual unless that behavior was alive somewhere inside of you. Maybe it has yet to be ignited in a similar fashion but the reality is those feelings are still there. Waiting for the right moment to bubble over so you have an excuse to lose control. There is no telling who might be the victim of your latest outburst. If you see somebody as being irrational, it is that irrationality that is coming alive in you. If you seethe with raw emotion and you can’t make heads or tale of it, it is that life’s passion and meaning that is coursing all the way through you. To feel alive fully even for a moment, isn’t that what the majority of us want. Nobody wants to feel like there life may have been for nothing and in the grasps of that reality is when we begin to lose all control. What if this time was what I was waiting for? In the end we will never know. We can spend our whole lives waiting for the right moment only to have it all coming to a crashing end. I let the way some treated me when I was a child dictate my whole life. I used it as an excuse to always appear broken instead of healing and learning to enjoy the night. It was better to keep my guard up and live in tentative fear. At least I thought. All I fully understand is that in the end you always get what you are willing to put in the effort to go get.