Just another girl

She is sitting there hands over her face to hide her tears,

To hide her pain.

Everyone is walking past,

They don’t care,

To them, she is invisible,

To them, she is worthless,

A waste of space, a waste of time.

She goes home and there is yelling, screaming, crying.

She hides in her bedroom behind a locked door,

At home she tries to be invisible,

But no matter how hard she tries,

She is always the one to be blamed,

The one yelled at.

She is blamed by everyone,

Because her family is falling apart,

She is blamed for everything that goes wrong.

She doesn’t want to be here anymore,

She is afraid to ask a question, in fear of being humiliated,

She is afraid to ask for help, because she is meant to know everything,

She is falling behind in school, she doesn’t want to go anymore.

She had a future before her life started to crumble at the seams,

Before her sister got sick,

Before her family fell apart,

No one understands what she is going through.

She has a hidden past,

She is afraid to tell,

She just wants to be accepted!

To be a part of a group,

To have real friends who she can talk to.

She wants a ‘normal’ life.

But no one will talk to her,

Because she is quiet

Because she doesn’t show her emotions

Because she doesn’t trust anyone anymore,

She self-harms every night

Because to them she is just a “freak”.

She didn’t turn up to school today,

The school called home but she wasn’t there either,

Her parents start to worry.

Her siblings start to cry.

She took herself to the nature reserve behind her house

The insults running through her head, ‘freak’ ‘loner’  ‘slut’.

She was told ‘I hope you die’

She put the rope around her neck

They try to contact her,

She won’t answer her phone,

She won’t text back,

She is gone now.

The police found her body.

Yet no one cares,

No one but her family,

They close the door of her bedroom and never open it again,

She ended her life,

Because she felt so alone.

Because she didn’t have anyone to talk to.

They all told her to stop being stupid.

To ‘get over it’,

Because everyone has problems.

On her last day with us she wrote a note,

All it said was “I’m sorry “.

She never got the chance to share her side of the story,

How she felt about everything,

How it impacted her,

She never had anyone ask,

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t have the strength to continue on,

To keep the fake smile she wore on her better days,

She just couldn’t continue.

And now her family has to pay the price,

They feel guilty every day,

Her parents never said “I’m Proud of you”

Which is what she wanted to hear most of all,

She wanted to hear her parents say “I am proud of you”

They had so many opportunities but they never did,

And now they never can,

Now no one can,

Because no one cared when it mattered most,

No one cared when it mattered,

No one cared,

No one,

She had a future before her life started to crumble at the seams,

Before her sister got sick.

Before her family fell apart.