There’s always that one girl nobody ever sees crying but sometimes deep down she is dying on the inside. She is always a shoulder to lean for her friends and family but when she really needs it, she doesn't even trust her best friend enough to just let loose. A troubled past has shaped her; terrible experiences have made her the ‘emotionless’ person she is. People joke and call her Wednesday (The Addams Family) and although she laughs with them, it hurts.

Why can’t she be normal? Why? Some girls are so confident and have had such easy lives and yet they still complain about why they don’t have the latest shoes or some other useless materialistic item. This girl…let’s call her girl x. This girl sometimes feels bad because she has enough food while people starve in the world. She always gives to the men with the charity boxes even if her friends don’t have the heart to. By the time she was four, her mother had finally escaped from the abusive husband. A rapist, a man who had broken his own mothers fingers in the past. A man who everyone he has just met adores him-handsome, charming and manipulative. A man she still has nightmares about almost every single week. “He crawls through an open window and attacks us all. We try to stop him with whatever we can. Vases over his head, anything but he keeps getting up. He never stops.” He has recently came back into her family’s life and it has been hell. They moved over 300 miles to get away from him and now with social services involved, he won’t back down. Girl x see’s the dream as a terrible foreshadowing: he may have lost the battle, but he will never lose a war. Memories of him haunt her. The night when he choked her mom. Little brother was too young to remember any of it but the two sisters saw it all. Mom started begging him to stop and not for her- thanks to him, she constantly thought about death but she stayed for her children. Eventually, he had drained all of the energy out of her. As an ex police officer, he knew tricks. He would strangle her until she was on the brink of death and then let go. This was repeated for about five minutes while the three and five year old girls sobbed and begged him to spare their mothers life. All he could do was carry them out of the room. The next day, the mom finally got out of there.

After this, the whole family faced many more difficulties. By the time girl x was 8, they had moved further down south because there was some family nearby. They went to stay with an uncle. She loved him. He was so nice to her. But one day something terrible happened. He kissed her and when she told him not to, he carried on. She became withdrawn for a while and suddenly stayed away. Her mom wondered why but she assumed it was just a phase. She didn’t tell anyone because she was worried, worried that people will see her as weak. Now, she still worries about that but mainly just wants to move on with her life, pretend it never happened.

As she blossomed into a teen, things got worse. There were police raids on the house, social worker involvement and many unwanted advances from men. Girls think she’s stuck up because she doesn’t always smile and guys think she’s jail bait and a tease-looks a few years older and never ever dates. She never leads anyone on and really this poor girl is just broken. Moulded from her demons, her scars. Many cry when their parent get divorced at an older age but imagine what it would be like to never have a good dad. Every so often, she spends her nights dreaming about a normal father. She tells her self she’ll never make the same mistakes when it comes to having kids. Most could never endure everything this girl has went through. Even though these experiences have caused her to be almost completely desensitized to everything and have caused a huge amount of pain, she knows that without them, she would not have the good she has in her heart today. ‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger’ is a mantra she recites in her head at times of trouble.

Sure, she may never be able to express her emotions in front of others, she may always be the ‘stone-cold tough girl’ but she’ll also always be the one who’s there for everyone. The one who’s always willing to help out. When people leave their lunch plates and rubbish on the tables just to give the cleaners a hard time, she’ll pick them up. Always stay true to yourself. Thats the most importent thing I have learnt. That girl is me.