This time last year, I was wishing I was brave enough to end it all. If I was only brave enough to end my own life, that would make everything so much easier. I wouldn't be a burden on my family or dragging my friends down with my issues, I wouldn't be sick all the time and wondering what exactly was going on with my body.
I wouldn't have to wake up every single day wondering why I wasn't good enough and hating myself even more for letting one boy put me in this position. I wouldn't have to go to practice and watch people who had been here half the time I had and put in 1/4 of the effort I did still somehow be more talented than me.
I would lay in my room and stare at the ceiling for hours. I couldn't sleep, I developed horrible eating habits, I stopped caring at practice and sometimes I wouldn't even go, I pushed away from the people that had been there for me since the beginning and I blocked everything out entirely.
There was one day it got exceptionally bad, I remember crying and not just normal crying, like chest heaving, eyes puffy, can't breathe, sobbing so hard you can't get it out fast enough crying. Mom, while she tried her best to help me, often stayed out of it because she knew a lot of it were things I would have to deal with on my own.
I remember hearing my door open and wiping my eyes, trying to control my crying because I thought it was my little brother. Mom came in and she laid next to me, stroked my hair and just let me cry. I looked at her and said "Momma, it hurts so bad. I don't know what to do anymore. I put everything I had into practicing or him and they're both gone."
My mom is a very practical woman. She lives by her brain but is guided by her heart. With her head against mine and her arms around me, she said "the only way it's going to get better is if you let it. You go to sleep and get up for school tomorrow. Just like the sun, you get up and try again." So that's what I did.
And when I was driving to school the next morning, I had my music on shuffle. The song "Truce" by Twenty One Pilots came on. Out of the 1500 downloaded songs, this one comes on. There's a line in the opening verse, "The sun will rise and we will try again." I stopped driving and thought to myself, there is no way...everything in life was showing me that things could get better, but only if I let them.
Somehow, I did. I got school back on track and graduated one of the tops in my class. I got accepted to my dream school and every day when I walk to class I look down at my mom's reminder which now forever lives on my left arm (pictured below) I got those who were important to me back by my side and found people who are the best friends I could have ever asked for.
I fell in love with my body and learned to not only appreciate but admire every tiger stripe, every scar, every freckle, every inch of my body. I started eating again, feeding my body not only fruits, vegetables and things to nourish me physically but love, understanding, and compassion for my heart.
I learned to embrace things I feared, red lipstick became my best friend and I found a style that I not only looked good in but embraced who I am. I learned that I am absolutely beautiful and my opinion of myself is all that will ever matter.
I watched a girl's empire burn to the ground, everything she thought she stood for and everything she loved destroyed in front of her very eyes. From those ashes, she rebuilt the most beautiful kingdom anyone had ever seen. Like a phoenix, she herself was reborn from the rubble.