A Tale Of Self Discovery (Sad)

She hadn't written in months, too consumed by self discovery to take the time and release her emotions onto a blank page, or maybe four.  Too busy, she explained to the inner writer that was screaming to be released, too occupied with the world that she so much wanted to be admired by.

Once, long before, she didn't care about trivial things like make up and style, preferring to wear jeans and a baggy shirt instead of mini skirts and tight shirts that fell so low they didn't count as clothing, revealing too much of nothing. But now she wears the scanty clothing and just like she ditched her old clothes, she ditched her old friends too; trading them for girls who got drunk on weekends and had sex on weekdays.  What once sickened her now drew her into its clutches while her friends and family stood by, unaware and helpless.

She fell to society and hated every minute of it, wishing that she could just walk away, but never able to. 

She lost her virginity at 13; too young to understand, too young to comprehend, too young to be anything yet.  Years of scanty clothing and getting drunk on weekends changed her, made her unrecognizable from the 12-year-old nerd that she used to be.

And she became the girl who everyone worshipped to her face and called a slut behind her back.  The Queen of broken hearts and stolen innocence.  She became nothing but drugs, sex, and alcohol and nobody seemed to care.

I did.

I used to watch her in class while she passed notes and giggled under her breath, making jokes that only the victims like me could hear and the teacher couldn't.  I didn't care, I could see the broken girl inside and I wanted to fix her, mend her, bring back the girl that she once was, the girl that still was screaming inside to be let free. I was told that it was impossible, but I never gave up.

I tutored her in math and said "hello" in the halls and placed notes in her locker about her beauty and strength.  In the end she told me everything and I listened, determined to fix the broken girl that stood in front of me.

It was an obsession, a thought that consumed my mind every day and night until one day when I woke up to birds singing and a sun shining and a hole in my heart.

She had comitted suicide the night before.

I went to her funeral dressed all in black, but not shedding a single tear.  I stared at her smiling picture and wished that I could have fixed that broken girl who had only wanted to find herself. I paid my respects in silence and turned to leave, but someone stopped me.  I looked into the red, tear stained, and empty eyes of her mother who handed me an envelope addressed to me in her neat, curly handwriting that I had grown to love. 

I didn't read what she had written for weeks to come and when I finally opened that neatly addressed envelope I held the pages and pages of her last outpourings of her heart and read every word on every page until my eyes blurred with tears and I cried for the first time.  I unfolded the last page of her writing that held only a few lines and then I let myself sob and mourn the girl who I had tried so hard to fix. 

You tried to fix me when I was too broken,

the only one who ever tried,

and I thank you.

I still find myself, years later, opening that envelope and shuffling through the pages until that one, short poem and I read it over and over again, never failing to shed a few tears over my lost and broken friend. The girl who though she was nothing, but really was everything.

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sorry it's depressing and sorry that I haven't posted in FOREVER!!! i wasn't getting comments so i didn't take the time, but then i figured that no comments didn't matter to me, but writing did, so i'm BACK :)

~AT