Recovery (Book 2)

Me

25/1/2016

A kid of 11. Moving to a totally different location, place, house. From the country to the city.

It was hard for her to leave her old life behind. For months she cried herself to sleep every night, wishing for her old life back.

She was bullied for being different. She pulled her skirt down past her knees, whilst the other girls had them high. The short, tiny girl's shirt sagged down to her knees, a gazillion sizes too big.

She had barely any friends of the same gender. All the girls were stuck up, talking only about makeup and boys and clothes. The girl wanted to have fun and play, which she could do with the boys.

Home wasn't exactly fun for her. Her mum was at work from 5am, picking her children up from school every afternoon. Her father was at work till 8pm. She didn't see her parents at the same time very often.

But she would lay awake listening to their yelling all the time at night. The arguing had started ever since they'd moved. Then her mother would disappear for days, weeks, at a time, without an explanation. Twice she ran off with her two children. The girl and her sister.

But they always went back.

A year later. Eighth grade. The girl was 12. She was finally getting used to her new life. She had a best friend, she was starting to be happy again.

A week after school started, her mother showed up during class, telling her she had to go for a few hours. The girl was oblivious to what was really happening.

Her mother took the girl and her sister back to their old home. The one before they had moved.

The mother took her 12 year old child into the high school, intending to enrol her. The high school was for ninth grade to thirteenth grade, but the girl was only in eighth.

The girl sat the entrance exams, and miraculously passed with an above average percentage. She was passed off as a ninth grader.

She got some of her old friends back. But this was a new school. It wasn't the primary she'd gone to before she'd moved. This was highschool.

She was the smallest girl in the class. The youngest in the entire high school. Another reason to be picked on. She was a nerd.

She was a little kid stuck in a class with 13 and 14, even some 15 year olds.

She was too quiet to speak up. Constantly bullied and picked on for her size. She was short and skinny, nothing really special about her.

Home was worse. Her mum had a boyfriend. A boyfriend who was in and out of jail. A boyfriend who beat up the girls mother, a boyfriend who threatened to hurt the girl.

The girl was scared. She was upset. She wanted her father. She wanted to go back to her school in the city, with her best friend.

The girl developed depression and social anxiety.

She was close to a girl at the school. A girl she'd known from when she was 3.

There was four of them. The girl and her three friends. They hung out in school, out of school etc. She thought they were inseparable.

She thought wrong. The girls started leaving her out. Leaving her alone.

Friendless, upset, broken. Less than a month after her 13th birthday she cut for the first time. She didn't really understand what she was doing. She'd heard of people doing it before, saying it helped. She cut three times on her thigh, then twice on her wrist. She didn't want to die. She wanted a release.

It didn't help. She faked being sick for two days because she was too scared of going to school.

Only one girl noticed her cuts. Only one girl asked what happened. The only way she found out was when the girl's sleeve got scrunched up.

No one cared that she was wearing long sleeved shirts and jerseys in the summer. No one cared to ask her what was wrong.

A month after the first time she cut, her mother was arrested. For being on drugs. For having an illegal weapon. For threatening to kill someone. That someone was the girl's father. She planned on murdering him.

The girl and her sister were placed in care of their father. He had moved back, so they just had to move houses. They still went to the same school, lived in the same area.

Her mother was arrested the day before school was out. So the girl had enough time to get everything sorted.

But when she got back to school, the girl she'd once been friends with had told everyone about her mother. The girl got bullied even more.

She didn't know how it started again. It would've been around February or March, 2015. She broke a pencil sharpener and cut. This time she found her release. She cut on her thighs, in order to hide it.

Her grades dropped. She was no longer considered smart.

She kept forgiving the friend. The girl was broken, weak, vulnerable. She needed somebody to hang out with at school.

The girl tried to branch out and make new friends. But the girl had social issues. She found it extremely difficult to make friends. Eventually the girl was replaced by the person she'd considered a friend.

September. The person she'd considered a friend started cyber bullying her during her holiday break.

The girl'd had enough. She had a horrible relationship with her mother, no friends except for the one up in the city, and she was suicidal and depressed.

She took a bunch of pills, sick of living.

She woke up in hospital. But she managed to convince them it was an accidental overdose, as the girl was on medication for allergies and she often took strong headache medication.

She came back to school, life was worse. She only had two friends. The other girl had spread lies about her, so no one liked her.

No one knew about her suicide attempt.

Her 14th birthday. A lonely one. Her mother didn't get her a present. No one at school even said 'happy birthday'. They were just as nasty as usual.

But her dad decided to take her up to the city. To see her best friend. He made her happy again. She realised he was worth living for.

At this time, it was definite that they were moving back to the city. The girl was beyond excited, looking forward to a fresh start.

She still cut. In November, she was beaten up by a bunch of girls at school. She was so scared of being hurt again, she hid in the bathrooms and missed classes. She still went to school every single day though.

Then she got punched again. She went home and cried. She looked at her legs, the scars unforgiving. She decided to stop.

She lost one of the two girls that she was friends with at school, but made two more friends. Both boys. She had her three friends, a girl, two boys. They hung out at every chance they got.

After school ended, she relapsed. Her scars doubled, even tripled.

She started cutting on her arms. Tired of trying to hide it.

But no one asked.

She moved up to the city, January 2016. She saw a new start.

Two weeks clean. Trying not to cut, the hardest thing in the world.

But her eating disorder came back.

She wouldn't eat breakfast or lunch. Only having dinner because her family would question it otherwise.

She threw up her dinner in the bathroom every night.

Slowly becoming skinnier.

Slowly needing to cut more and more.

Haven't you realised??
That girl is me.