I'm Kara Janjisten.
Hi, I hope there is someone out there hearing this.
Everything started just two months ago, when things started to change in my world.
I started to feel differently, and my views and the way I acted changed. More than the average teenager in my village.
I live in Israel, in a small, old, dirty town somewhere in-between Beersheba and Dimona. Exact location disclosed in case either of my parents find this.
This is my message-in-a-bottle-thrown-in-the-water.
And nobody gets it.
I tried talking with my mom, and she doesn't.
I've been hearing about America in class, and think about if I had any relatives there. I'd call him Uncle John. I doubt he'd get it either.
Every time I try and talk, they brush it off. 'Teenager habits', they tell me. 'You'll figure it out and be fine.'
And my poor grandmother whom I love so much. She's a classic. Old fashioned and follows our religion to the bare dirt of it. If I tell her I think things not anything along the lines of what she, we, believe, she would die on the spot.
They listen, sure, but they don't give you what you desire most.
And that causes me to not talk to them. It's better that way. Nobody knows, so I don't tell. They don't see, I don't tell. They can't understand. I don't tell.
A couple weeks later, I was what I'd describe a dark place. I felt low, and it was dangerous, I knew. I was alone. My friends dropped away the previous year. Found new and supposedly better ones. Ones who'd be willing to go to 'amazing' parties, and do all the stuff teenagers do that my parents would kill me if I ever stepped near.
I didn't want to do that, though, even if I could. I was good with the life I had.
Had.
And now I don't know why I feel like this, my life is good. But I am not. It's not just that. I can look at people differently too. I'm a cast out to society without anyone saying a word. I know.
And I couldn't take it anymore. I just had to make a change from the way I was before, because I was not different. These feelings and thoughts had made me someone different, and I was tired of the regular, monotone life.
So I grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and ran to the bathroom, where I hacked off my hair.
I always wanted long hair. I wanted to have it longer, as I had when I was younger. But I had only let it grow so long before now, and I hacked it.
It was just below my shoulder blades.
I hacked it halfway down my neck, the scissors giving me a sense of security. I could control something in my life. The sound was soothing, in a way.
Snip, snip. My dark hair falling to the ground around me.
I had no mirror, I was my judge. The back was no problem, I guessed. I didn't want to have someone do it. It was me.
I kind of wanted to do it shorter, as soon as I started, but this way it couldn't be covered up as easily.
And I would not let anyone fix my screwed job.
And then my older brother came into the room, words dying on his lips as he spotted me sitting criss-cross on the floor in the middle of the room, my hair falling around me.
