Innocence is something pure and something delicate. It can take only a few words to break someone who thought they stood so tall. There's something about that word that almost makes me cringe in fear. I guess it's all about thinking back to a time when I was innocent and how different of a person I was before it all happened.

I was once so innocent before I joined social media. I believed that miracles could happen and that only the bad was almost a horrible nightmare or something that happened to people who made bad decisions. But we face these moments in life where we are forced down and have to stand back up on our own. And my first love was just one of those moments.

In the eighth grade, I got into twitter. It was one of those rebellious moments where it was some new app and my parents didn't know about it and once I said I made one, it was "too late" to delete. When really, I was too excited about being on an app before all of my classmates that there was now way I was going to delete my twitter.

By now I think you can guess where my point is going. I met a group of kids, some around my age and some a little younger - but we all clicked. And within this group of people there was a boy, Tyler, your typical, misunderstood, deep, caring, skater boy. The kind of guy every girl somehow manages to fall for.

And we grew closer and sooner than later feelings were admitted.

We talked about our desires in the world, what we want to see if we traveled to different countries, we want to experience once we moved out of our houses. We talked about our strengths, our weaknesses, our biggest fears, and our darkest secrets. We confined in each other about everything and anything.

At least, I thought we did.

Tyler and I were on and off for almost 3 years. Until one day we just decided no more - we weren't the same people we once were when we first started to get to know each other. As much as it killed me at the time, I took one for the team and kept in all my emotions, I let him go.

Two months later, something just clicked and one of the friends in our small group called me and told me that these past few years had been all a lie. That the people we once confided into at two in the morning when we couldn't go to anyone else, weren't who they said they were.

And without warning - they vanished. It was like a wildfire, everything we had to figure out who they were was gone. We had nothing but memories and anger.

How can you go every day with talking to someone to them disappearing in a matter of seconds? And how can you ever move on without knowing who was on the other end listening to all your dreams, all your secrets, all your problems? How can you find closure?

At first, I was ashamed about those years of my life. Everyone blamed me for being so innocent and naive. But how can you tell when someone has offered to give you the world? You're blinded by them and everything they plan to offer.

You talk about your future and how one day there will be a time when everything plays out so perfectly it's almost a dream come true.

And then one day - you're alone and the person you were so use to crying to isn't there anymore and everyone blames you and sooner rather than later you start to blame yourself too.

You wonder why you were so stupid in the first place to trust someone you've never met and only conversed with through a messaging app.

You wonder why it happened to you.

You wonder who has the heart to do something so sinister.

And you wonder where they are today and who you shared everything with.

It really does change a person to be manipulated like that and I think that's where I lost people. Nobody could understand. But I never expected anyone to understand how that felt.

And if we're being honest, sometimes I still cringe at the word "catfish." I feel sick when people make comments on how stupid it is for people to believe that kind of thing. They don't know how that feels like.

I mean.. It happens, sometimes you get so sucked into this virtual world where someone gives you just a little amount of attention that you want more and then feelings start to develop and then you become blindsided by anything that seemed off.

Then there you are, crying on your bathroom floor at the age of 16 because it's too much to handle and everyone is pointing their fingers at you. Nobody is asking if you're okay, or how you're handling it. They just say, "I knew it," or the worst four words you could ever hear, "I told you so."

I kept it bottled up for two years and that's when a teacher noticed I wasn't myself and she told me that if I didn't go to my parents and talk about this, she would call them and tell them herself. At first, I hated her for that.

But now, I have grown. I may not have any sense of closure but I know more about mental health, I know more about my surroundings and when saying too much is enough. I learned that bad things happen to good people but everything happens for a reason.

And I always wondered what my life would be like if I made my twitter a year later, or if I stopped talking to him the first time we broke up, or if we never found out that they were all a one big lie. Where would I be? Would I have the same connections with people that I do now? Would certain people still be in my life or would they be complete strangers?

I have come to terms with how everything happened and I think it's important to be open about this. It was a mentally abusive relationship, something I don't expect anyone to understand. But I have grown from it. And it truly is an issue when it comes to being online. It's a complicated story which I still don't know all the pieces too but it's a story that I share with people.

I'm not ashamed, I have accepted my past and instead of letting it define me, I reach out to people who have had the same experience that I have had. Because going from talking to someone every day to one day having everything vanished is hard and instead of having to be alone like I felt, I talk to people about their experiences. I tell them how to define it instead of it defining them.

And if we're being honest here, I like who I am today verses who I was when he was in my life. I'm strong, I'm gaining my confidence back, I'm doing so much better than I ever did when he was around. I don't depend on anyone anymore because I have myself and at the end of the day I think thats all that really matters, that I have myself and that I have grown into someone better than I was 4 years ago.