Pain

Prologue.

It was 6:00 am on a midsummer London morning. Poppy woke up feeling refreshed and excited for the day ahead. Her hand limply felt around her bedside cabinet to find her iPhone. As she got out of bed, she checked her phone messages and saw she had twenty-five Instagram notices but she didn't have time to check them because her mum was already calling that breakfast was ready.

After Poppy had eaten breakfast, changed into her school uniform and braided her hair she went to school. As she walked into the school canteen, it felt as though all of Year 7 were staring at her.
Had Poppy done her makeup wrong? Was there some Ketchup around her mouth from breakfast?

She headed over to her best friends Lottie and Dani and asked them:
'Why is everyone staring at me?'
To which they laughed and said:
'Have you not even checked your Instagram you dweeb?'
That was harsh, Poppy thought and marched off to the toilets. Once in a cubicle, Poppy pulled the toilet seat down and sat on it so she could check her messages. She pulled her iPhone out of her blazer pocket and opened up Instagram. Looking at all of the messages, Poppy found that they were all horrific insults on one specific post.

She scrolled up to the first two comments which read:
_lottiexx - Hey did u no that Pops is actally bi and she has a crush on @xxlily_martinxx
d_dog_dani - yeah ye its tru she told us and she proper finks were best m8s as well

Before she could stop herself, Poppy was crying her eyes out. Thanks to who she thought were her best friends, she had twenty Instagram comments calling her a 'skanky bitch' or a 'dirty faggot' or just generally a 'fucking wanker'.

She managed to sit through Biology and Spanish with everyone looking at her:
So what if I like a girl, who are you to judge my feelings towards another individual?
By breaktime she simply couldn't take it. She went into the school yard and jumped over the wall, crying all the way home.

Poppy got home, unlocked the front door, slammed it behind her and ran straight upstairs to her bedroom. Curled up in a ball on her bed, Poppy reflected on all of her imperfections. Her strong thoughts from earlier had vanished, now she was just a girl.

Her head was filled with a voice which had always been nagging at the back of her mind, saying:
'You're not perfect, you're a mess.'
But now the voice was booming, it was filling her whole body, it was controlling her. She ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, opening the bottom drawer.

Without thinking, Poppy pulled the sharpest knife that she could find out of the drawer. She took it to her wrist and carved. The sharp edge cut her hand, and made three large slits on her wrist. Poppy cried out in pain, alone.