Pale white, 8 pounds 8 ounces. The skin of an angel yet to be touched and tainted by those around her. She is content because she is unaware.

The skin she is in does not begin being tainted until she is older. Between fifth and sixth grade, her twelfth year on Earth. At first, it is only her teeth that need fixed with wires and rubber bands--with that she is fine. Time moves on and the worries about the rest of her skin become all too much to "just let go".

Breakouts form clusters on her face, which she tries to tirelessly cover with potent creams that turn her face the brightest red around. As she realizes that maybe she can't fix that, her body weight becomes an issue. Suddenly the only "meal" that exists for her is once in the evening before practice.

Despite what she thinks of herself, her skin is touched and tainted, abused and ruined during this time. She won't stop until she is at the top of SOME list in her class. She needs to feel worthy of something.

Her skin is still holding on.

Seventh and eighth grade come along with more. Though her braces come off and her teeth are straight, she is still not thin enough. She eats less in the hopes that guys around her will begin showing her love. All she wants is someone there to tell her she's good enough.

Long nights after sports practices lead to more harm done to her body. She spends time in the bathroom afterwards, trying to scrub the feeling of his hands off of her skin and hoping that one day her body may feel like her own again. She obsesses over internet searches about pregnancy at her age, buying tests, and easy ways to abort.

She realizes then that her skin is no longer her own anymore.

High school brings along obsessions of covering herself with makeup while still searching for a boy to love her. Her skin still holds the secrets of things done to her...things still being done to her. Suddenly the depression takes her over and she is gone. She lost herself.

The first time she tried to harm her skin herself, she felt relief. She felt a pain that made all her emotional pain make sense.

As time went on, she began using the phrase "just one more day" to encourage her to keep moving forward. As the skin she lived in became feeling less and less like home to her, she looked for ways to escape it.

Junior and senior years of high school brought along nights of drinking and getting lost by herself. Her skin is holding on for the day when she can escape, and as one lonely October night in 2016 comes along, she attempts to leave her body behind. The police sirens woke her and despite how much she wanted to leave, others made her stay.

During her first year in college, her skin got so uncomfortable to be in that she had to begin trying to escape it once more. This time, though, she had to choose a temporary relief. Blades and glass shards from mirrors she broke herself pierced her skin with a painful screech. The crimson red proved she was still alive and still in her skin.

She tried once more to escape her skin permanently. The drops of red hopelessness left her veins and filled the space around her, just as her hands became attached to the bottles she hoped would seal her fate. Just as she attempted, she stopped herself because the phrase "keep hope alive" bleed through her mind and kept her alive just one more day.

From the moment she lost custody of her skin in her twelfth year of life, after losing her virginity to her familial rapist and her true living spirit right along with it, she believed her skin was custody of men around her. At different times during her college career, she got hurt again and again through both words and strikes to her body, by men she would never see again.

Her skin is not her home any longer. It is home to the physical, mental, and emotional abuse. It is home to her rapists' hands. It is home to the nights she starved herself, to the countless number of blades and glass shards she's punctured it with.

Though others tell her she is beautiful and worthy, she cannot believe it because the last time she felt that way was half her lifetime ago. Her skin is battered, bruised, broken.

She has lost custody of her body to those who've hurt her along the way. Though she tried to fight for it back, she grew tired of being hurt.

Pale white, 20 years old. The skin that's been touched and tainted, bruised and battered. She is paying rent for a walking apartment she doesn't like. She wonders.

Sincerely,

Her