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Creative narrative I wrote from my English class

2nd Grade
There was nothing more terrifying than standing in front of a crowd of people when you're stripped naked and crying.

I really wasn't, of course but that's how I felt. I was dressed and only standing in the very front of a classroom that barely held the 15 kids who stared me down. I could feel their made-up thoughts burning my skin, taunting and mocking.

"She's so dumb"

"Crybaby"

"She's so stupid"

"It's not that hard"

"Grow up"

It's nothing more than a young mind running on a hamster wheel, never stopping to eat or drink, running until it's practically insane. Until it's hallucinating things that probably never happened. But to a young girl who knows nothing more than how to think things such as these, it happened and it was more than terrifying. It was damaging to the self confidence that hadn't ever sunk in.

4th Grade
I cried a puddle.

The puddle grew to a pond.

Which grew to a lake.

Then grew to the ocean, flooding my bedroom and all the homework due Friday. I spent a month drying the soaked work, constantly trying to iron out the crumples that remained.

"It has to be PERFECT!"

Perfect.

I pressed harder on the iron. I put in between book pages.

Perfect.

I put the paper in the dryer. I set it out on the clothes line.

I taped torn sides, rewrote letters that faded and wrapped it neatly in a box. I held it tightly to me as I made my way to the front of the class and handed it in.

The next day it said to try harder in deep red ink.

The next day I cried and stayed 15 miles away from the entrance.

5th Grade
The class was assigned to write a poem. As soon as I touched pencil to paper, the words flowed out so easily, it was like breathing. The words came pouring out of the pencil like that day in the fall when it rained and rained, all tumbling over each other trying to win the race of being put on paper.

There was no other way in the world to describe something beautifully rather than in verses and rhythms.

I held onto this creative side I never thought I could ever possibly have and took it with me through the rest of months I would barely get my limbs to move.

8th Grade
There was nothing beautiful about the way my thighs hugged each other when I sat down. Or the way they rubbed together when I walked.

There was nothing pretty about the way my arms, pressed ever so tightly against my sides, still stuck 10 inches outward.

There was nothing stunning about the way my stomach bulged out even when I sucked in all my organs to try and create the flattest surface ever seen by man.
My body wasn't thin enough nor flat. My bones didn't show. It wasn't even the lovely kind, with perfect curves and legs that made men stop and stare.

My body was a waste to be thrown in the dump and left to rot. And I knew this but I suppose he just wanted to make sure I had it right. "Fat"

That's what the boy hidden behind a glowing screen said to me one night when I couldn't get the voices to hush for one millisecond. It punched me in the face and tore me apart like a ravenous dog going after its prey.

It took me down the dark, damp well and along the way, my ankle hit against the stones and took on 3 rips in my skin.

9th Grade
Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the ugliest of them all? It didn't answer of course, so I did the talking.

"You definitely are, dear. You have the thighs of continents all tightly combine. Your collar bones are concealed under miles and miles of blubber and your hip bones don't jut out like words that push at the walls of your brain. You know it's true so don't try to lift yourself up. Really, I'm just telling you the truth so please don't take it out on me."

And I didn't. I took my little ol' friend that had a shiny, bright smile and cold, stif hand. It helped me write on paper skin the first word that clawed its way into my head.

Fat.

And with that lead to 23 more reminders of how my body was nothing more than wasted space that barely occupied the ground.

10th Grade
Is there anything more wrong than a mind beating up itself for no particular reason?

Well yes, there is but this is definitely up there with divorces and wars without solid purposes.

Why would a beautiful mind tear apart itself, cell by cell and tissue by tissue? No one has ever injected sour words into it's system but yourself. You are your own worst enemy, treating yourself like s**t because you believe it's what everyone else thinks. But they really don't.

They love you and they loved you through the hurricanes that tore through your body that Thursday when you couldn't function properly. When you couldn't find any hope in the humans surrounding the castle of your body.

When you cried in the bathroom with two girls you barely knew but knew well enough yo trust them with your shattering heart and bleeding skin. They held you up and carried you to the room with the "doctor" who's job it was to unzip you and empty the sand that filled you in. They didn't leave when they lady told them class was more important than their friend who was clinging by a finger to the edge of hope.

And they loved you that night when you couldn't even muster up the strength to cut out the feeling that flowed right beneath your flesh. Or even unable to cry out because the earth was laying heavy on your lungs, compressing them. They loved you through the endless hours you slept to keep away from the fire that raged outside your bedroom door.

And they loved you through the very first day they saw you break.

But even after, I still burn my brain with the ideas that no one ever cared.

11th Grade
If anything, the flowers in my chest have fought strong through the tornado months but the season is winter and the razor danced in with the pills.

Winter brings tinted clouds and numbing temperatures along with grey skies in my head. But somewhere inside there's a small peek of sunlight I hold close to. Though I'm just beginning to freeze, I hope to Whatever Happens Lurks in the Clouds that I thaw in the spring because there's new mountains to climb and surfaces to breach.

For now, I will keep doing what I have been for the last 3 years.

Reading -- to escape the reality that never truly interested me for it has brought me nothing more than a fire that burns my skin. Writing -- to empty my insides of all the tainted thoughts that live under my bed, to keep me from drowning in the misery that fills my lungs. And filling my head with a range of music that begins from voices that scream the truth about the low roads to voiceless melodies that mend the wounds.

And I'll hope.

Hope that one day this curse will end and peace will finally claw its way into my body; that one day there wont be this gaping whole where self-love used to live.

For now, I will turn to ice, be buried 6 feet beneath snow, and wait for spring to warm my veins.