The Story of a Little Girl

Person

Once upon a time there was a little girl. That little girl had no father but regardless for the most part she was happy. The little girl's family consisted of herself, her mother and her older brother. Throughout the little girls childhood they moved around from one place to another always low on money. With the pay of a single mother the little girl's family found it hard to survive by themselves. When the little girl entered preschool, life was finally going as planned. The little girl's mom had found a good boyfriend and started going back to college. From there on everything started to turn around for the little girl and her family. The family settled down in a cozy house in a pleasant neighborhood and all seemed well. For that little girl life was peaceful and the only worries she had were simple. For years that simple and happy life continued with only minimal bumps in the road. A few spurts of drama, or a rage fueled fight that was eventually resolved. In fifth grade the Little girl gained a new father. For her it seemed like her family was finally complete. When the little girl watched her mom walk down the aisle she couldn't help but be filled with joy. The groom and soon to be father was a kind man who took care of them, watching out for the little girl and her brother like a real father would. The little girl never knew that this event would be a turning point in her life, the last shred of happiness she felt before the despair. It wasn't long afterwards that the little girl entered into the sixth grade, moving up the school ladder into middle school. From there on the little girl's life changed. You see the little girl was really curious, and as the say curiosity killed the cat.

It all started one afternoon, on some long forgotten weekend. The little girl's mother was upset and yelling at someone over the phone in the bathroom by the little girl's room. The little girl, afraid and worried, crept around into the hallway pressing her unprepared ear to the wall, attempting to find out why her mother was so upset. Soon she could make out her mother's words, occasionally interrupted by brief pauses and sobs, "...I can't deal with this right now!... No you don't understand I just.. I can't do this!... GOD DAMMIT I MIGHT HAVE CANCER FOR GODS SAKE! ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!" The world around the little girl started to break. It seemed odd, what was once so firm and unmoving now seemed fragile like glass, breaking with every move the little girl made. With every breath the little girl took the world grew darker and darker. With every step the girl took the world shattered into millions of tiny pieces, threatening her with their sharp edges and dangerous realities. With desperation the little girl ran as far away as possible, but she couldn't hide from the truth of the words the little girl's mom had just said. Like a ricocheting bullets words bounced around in her head, she couldn't think, she couldn't breathe.

Days afterwards the girl moved around in a haze constantly thinking and debating. I must have heard wrong, the little girl said to herself. It can't be true, the little girl desperately hoped. Those days seemed like a living nightmare but eventually she convinced herself it was nothing. At most it was just a tumor on the skin that could be removed simply and without any worry. At least that's what she and her closest friends wanted to believe. After a few more days passed it seemed to be an unnecessary worry, a distant thought that the little girl managed to put behind her with uneasiness. Well that was until one day when the little girl's mother and father called a family meeting.

Together the four family members huddled into the living room and a tense mood was in the air. The little girl's mother was looking down at the floor and it was silent for a bit. The little girl's mother glanced up looking straight into the little girl's eyes and the little girl knew almost immediately what the mother was going to say. Suddenly struck by the urge to cover her ears and run away, the little girl prepared for the words that were to come next. Cancer. Big fat stinking cancer. The little girl's mother opened her mouth but the girl already knew what was going to happen. The mother talked for a while, filling everyone in. Breast cancer, and a rarer kind of inflammatory one at that. Luckily it seemed as though the doctors had caught it just in time so there was a big chance at recovery but to get there it would be a long journey.

Over the next month the little girl's family prepared for all the changes. The family went out shopping buying hard candies to deal with the metallic taste that the dreaded chemo would leave. The little girl's mother cut her hair short so that when she started to lose hair it wouldn't be as big of a deal. The mood changed drastically for the little girls family and soon there were no more jokes or happiness.
Soon chemotherapy started. The little girl's mother started losing hair by the hand full. She would comb through her hair with her hands and clumps would fall out. Bags of hair were tied next to the little girl's mother's chair. Eventually it came to the point that she decided to just shave off all of her hair. The little girl was terrified. To the little girl her mother had always been strong, always there to support her. Cutting of her mother's hair was a symbol of powerlessness to this merciless disease that ravaged even the strongest and bravest of people. With tears in her eyes the little girl watched as her mother's hair was shaved off bit by bit.

As the months past things grew worse and worse for the little girl's family. The little girl felt like a zombie, living a constant nightmare. At night the little girl wouldn't be able to sleep, either kept awake by the moans of pain or by the fears of what tomorrow may hold. The little girl was afraid of sleeping for she felt that when she opened her eyes her mom wouldn't be there anymore. The little girl couldn't take the pain and the pressure. She sealed herself off to the world, away from the pain and away from her family. She abandoned her mother and herself. The little girl drowned the moans of her mother in music, escaping from her helplessness. Months passed like this and the little girl began to hate the feeling of helplessness. She hated it so much that whenever she felt helpless she would become inexplicably angry and upset. This helplessness could be triggered by anything from being touched to even trusting someone.
In seventh grade the little girl's mother had her surgery done. A double mastectomy, which means she got both of her breasts removed. By this time the little girl was numb, she couldn't feel anything anymore and just wanted everything to be over with so she could be happy again. She wanted to wake up from the nightmare she was living. Unable to face her mother the little girl ignored her, locking herself away in her room. The little girl couldn't stand to see her mother in pain and couldn't bear look at her. But from that point on it only got worse.

At night the little girl was kept awake by the cries of her mother. Her mother who had lost everything, her hopes, her dreams, her future, cried during the night like a mournful ghost. Every now and then the little girl would hear parts of a conversation, "They were staring at me, some even pointed at me... I don't feel like a woman anymore... people avoid me and treat me like the plague... I DON'T FEEL LIKE A WOMAN". The only thing the little girl could do was pretend she didn't hear anything. After the surgery came radiation therapy which resulted in even more pain.

In eighth grade the little girl lost all of her motivation for everything. The little girls grade started to drop and she didn't care. Her friends started to drift away and she didn't do anything to stop them. It was around this time that the little girl started noticing a change in her mother. It was subtle at first. The little girl would come home and hide in her room, trying to get away from the yelling and anger. It seemed like the little girls mom was always angry now. The little girl's mother lashed out at anyone and everyone who walked by, making everything tense and nerve wracking.

The little girl's mother always had to have everything her way. If something wasn't the way she wanted it she would cause a scene. The little girl didn't know what to do. She felt guilty, always asking herself what if she hadn't turn her back on her mother? Would everyone be happy then? As the little girl's life changed more and more all of her friends left her. Soon the little girl noticed that none of her good friends were talking to her anymore. Alone and lost the little girl couldn't take it. The little girl broke even farther.
Eventually it was time to once again move up on the school ladder and the little girl became a freshmen in highschool. By then the little girl had lost all of her friends and barely spoke to her family. Her mother grew worse with each passing day and her stepdad started to side with the little girl's mother. One time the little girl was chased around the house in tears for accidentally dropping the hose on the car while cleaning off the gutters on top of the roof, even though if she hadn't had let the hose fall then she would've fallen off herself. Another time the little girl was almost strangled for losing her phone in a hotel room while on vacation. The mother took a more mental approach, downgrading everything the little girl had ever done or said. The mother would flip flop back and forth between caring and treating the little girl like air.

Soon the little girl couldn't take it and spiraled deeper and deeper into depression. She picked up bad habits and started cutting. With every cut she could forget the pain for a few seconds. In those few brief seconds she felt as if nothing mattered but that small cut on her thigh. To the little girl those brief moments were the highlights of her day. The little girl couldn't sleep at night and grew terrified of the dark. Her fear of helplessness grew with every passing month and soon she would get physically sick at simply being touched. The little girl took lots of sleeping pills every night, not caring if she ever woke up, the little girl just wanted some sleep. It wasn't long until the little girl decided it was time to end everything. Tired of all the pain and of just being tired she made a resolution. One month, the little girl said, if I am not better or on my way to getting better in one month then I will end it.

During that one month the little girl found some motivation. She decided that if she was truly going to end everything that she owed it to the world to try her hardest to get better first. Whenever it got hard all she had to do was think there's only one month left, just try. The little girl did what she could and went to talk to her councilor.

That point was the turning point. With the councilors help the little girl worked up the courage to talk to her parents about her depression and self harm. She was wary about what they would say but eventually she was able to do it. Alone with her mother the little girl was able to finally bring up the topic and after everything she wanted to say was said she waited for her mother's response. The little girl's mother just turned her head and asked one question, "You talked to your councilor first?" The little girl didn't know what to feel. She felt mad, sad, and numb at the same time. The little girl tried though, she continued trying to get the help she needed. She talked to her mother again, this time about therapy and treatment. The little girl's mother listened and helped look up a website that listed some of the local therapists for the little girl. The mother sat the little girl down in the chair in front of the computer and slowly, almost methodically, listed out the pricing of each and every one of the therapists listed. Almost absentmindedly, the mother wickedly commented about insurance not covering the therapy and complaining about how much it would cost. As if waking up from a daydream the little girl's mother snapped her head around with a sickly sweet smile on her face and asked one simple question, "So do you REALLY want a therapist?"

The little girl was enraged and finally after so long she gave up on her mother. The person who had been there her whole life was now gone. The only thing left of the person the little girl had once called her mother was a bitter monster stuck in the pain of the past. Shaking her head at the monster's question the little girl stood up and walked out of the room, never glancing back. Fueled by rage, the little girl learned that she didn't need her mother's approval to be happy and set out to achieve it on her own.

After a while the little girl was able to get some great new friends and finally started to heal. Two years later, the little girl still has issues with her family but with the help of her friends, the little girl is able to finally see the better parts of life again. Unfortunately though, the little girl still has a lot of problems and insecurities left to deal with, including the fear of helplessness. To this day the little girl cannot stand to be touched or loved but maybe even that will eventually be dealt with one day.

If you haven't realized by now the little girl is me and everything in this story is real. I am living proof that things can and will get better. I left some parts out of the story(like anorexia and some of the more recent events) because I just couldn't find a way to word them and I felt that the story was getting really long but these are the most major events in my life. This is unedited and a rough draft so sorry for any of the grammatical errors I probably made. I wrote this for many reasons, mainly because I can't stop thinking about this and because I feel like some people need to know that there is a better ending out there. This is my first and probably last post on this site since I found this place just to dump my thoughts. Thank you for reading and I wish you all a great and happy life.