When I read this again, perhaps tomorrow or in a few months or even years into the far future (unlikely), I might shed tears or force myself to hold them back. I may rip this up and block it out from my mind entirely, toss it to the back and try to forget its existence and purpose. Either way, now I will keep writing. If you’d rather not show vulnerability, the very least you can do for yourself is write down whatever words that come to your mind. I’ve never been good at expressing myself, I could write about the trajectories of others only so that I could pretend that my own aren’t real. My hand hurts already, perhaps it’s a sign to stop. I will keep going. I don’t understand how one can journal every thought they have. I can find the words for anything but how I really feel. I was 10 or 11 when I first got lost in the internet, when I became truly obsessed with it. I read the most vulgar words on pages of apps. I liked them, though I cannot imagine what I might have understood at the time. A child can get sucked into sexual media on the internet as easily as an adult could get sucked into smoking a pack of cigarettes— if not, more so. I never felt like a child, I was never clean again. I became better and I became worse in a repeated cycle until all of it ended abruptly. I longed to be pure. Did it really end if that child was me? If memories of her are still buried deep inside my soul? I touched myself and I felt pleasure, I kept going. I was 10 or 11 when I learned that people slit their wrists and hurt themselves. I understood why, I had learned enough and I was mature. I wanted to start myself. I wanted attention, clear as day. I started with scissors, and then grew brave enough for blades. They stung just so, but I had a high pain tolerance. I slit my arms and thighs and stomach until I didn’t anymore. It was easy to stop. One day, my mother asked if I had been doing that to myself. My entire family was home that day. Embarrassed, I said no. I wondered why, for this was the attention that I’d been craving for. They never asked again, and that hurt more than the deepest wound on my small body. I don’t blame them and I never have, but that shaped me. My parents were older than other childrens and I was their spoiled youngest princess. We were distant, but they gave me everything. Even so, they had more to worry about than me. My grades were bad in my first year of highschool, I didn’t expect to be alive long enough for it to ever matter. Maybe I had depression, maybe I was just another angsty teenager and still am. Afterall, I am on my period even now as I write. It’s just that I’m stupidly nostalgic. I was always aware of the world around me, I wanted to understand. I cared for social injustice. So I wonder now why I was so willing to show off my body the summer I was only 15, even when I knew it was oh so wrong. I felt like an idiot, with no passions or dreams or hobbies. Even in my young eyes, I had nothing going for me. I downloaded an app. I took pictures of myself bare, and I posted them for the world to see. I posted them for the eyes of the vilest men to get off on. I posted them for praise, and for attention. I longed for attention. These men didn’t see me as human. I talked to them and listened to their desires like I was a toy, no real thoughts or feelings going through my brainless head. I took weeks to delete the app, and yet I was never the same person again. During that period in time, I had nightmares of people in my life, learning about this new side of me. I lied that I was 19. In the eyes of the world, I was a monster— a crude wh0re, one that would grow up with no future ahead of her. When I dream now of the years that are still ahead of me— I catch myself hoping for a better life, and I wonder suddenly if I am still her. If I can never change and be normal again.
