Just Being Me

Just Being Me Part 2

To be myself - Eight years before The First Step:

The clock on the wall above her is loud despite the noise of every other teenager all through the building, it seems to drown them out.

Tick. Her parents had been told about the fight that she had gotten into, not that she had started it but she was being blamed for it anyway because of how different she is from other teenagers in the school. Most of them anyway.

Tock. She was probably going to be nursing bruises later, more anyway. She had a few already from the fight when one of the larger boys had tried to drown her in one of the school bathrooms, had she not kicked out as hard as she could it was likely she would be dead by now, drowned in a toilet.

Tick. They had beaten her up instead, she had screamed as loud as she could while trying to defend herself but she wasn't a fighter, she had never wanted to be like her dad who talked with his fists, she didn't want to hurt anyone. But she fought regardless in order to defend herself.

Tock. She was dragged out of the bathroom by the boys bullying her, some of the girls laughed at seeing her so wet and hurt, they didn't care. No one cared. The boys had thrown her against a wall and continued with the beating until a teacher yelled at them.

Tick. All she could do was lay there on the ground, curled up, crying from the pain. Another day, another beating. One day she would simply not even cry, she wouldn't even breathe. Death was a welcoming alternative to this life.

Tock. The doors open and her dad walks in, she shrinks against the wall when he looks at her. Such a cold, unloving stare.

"Pathetic" He growls. "Why don't you man up for a change" She didn't want to man up, not if it meant being like him. She ached to be herself but no one cared to listen, no one cared to help. Trans youth are always ignored in this transphobic hell. Whenever religious people speak of hell they clearly don't realise that life is the actual hell, anywhere else has got to be an improvement.

Tick.

Tock.

The clock is so loud.

~

That night she lay in her bed cradling her aching body, her dad hadn't hit her surprisingly but he had yelled at her to the point where she had broken down in tears. She had run up to her room and has been here ever since, crying, nursing her wounds and praying, wishing, pleading for the pain of this living hell to end.

Sleep eventually takes her as she falls into a troubled sleep of nightmares and dreams of seeing herself trying so hard to live. She doesn't know that her bedroom door opens and her mum steps in quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bed and gently doing what she can to comfort her distressed sleeping daughter.

She longed to be able to do more but she had to heed the demands she was forced to adhere to, at least for now. One day, she hoped, one day she would break free of those demands and help her daughter to finally live.