I remember when I was 10 years old using my old iPad saying “Hey siri! How do I look normal?”. Obviously it didn’t work very great. Y’know I think It’s pretty sad that at the age of ten, TEN that I felt the need to ask siri such a question. It’s funny how toxic kids, no just people in general can be.

         At the young age of 8 years old I started having self image issues. Kids were mean. They were very, no extremely mean. One day I was minding my business with one of my only real friends on the swing when I heard a feint, “Eww look at her! She’s fat you see her? You see her?”. I looked left and right. No one insight. I looked behind me to see two girls younger than me insulting the way I looked and my weight. 

        “Am I really that big..?”, I said to myself. “ Lola”. 

“How do they want me to look?”

“Lola!”

“Am I that different?”

“LOLA!”

   “Huh? Oh, yeah C?” (C is short or Colleen, or my best friend’s name.). “You zoned out… You okay?”. “Yeah yeah don’t worry about.”. 

       As soon as I got home, I rushed to my iPad hoping for an answer. “Hey siri! How do I look normal?”. “I’m sorry, no results for this search. Want to try again?”, “no”. “Okay what would you like to search?”. “I SAID NO! Sheesh finally old lady”, I said rolling my eyes.

        That’s where I asked siri for the answer. The answer to my question. Even SIRI can’t answer my question! Ugh doesn’t siri know everything?

        “YOU OKAY BACK THERE HUN?” my mom screamed from the kitchen. “YEAH I’M FINE!” 

“Just stupid siri “, I mumbled under my breath.

 I had a friend in 4th grade, his name was pretty plain and basic but it was Henry. Henry was my family friend. Or my aunt’s half sister’s best friend’s son. He was a nice boy but I never really liked him like he liked me. I thought of him as a close friend that I could trust.

        In fourth grade Henry and I were pretty close friends. We trusted each other and we would play fight with each other which the teacher would then get pretty upset.(Sorry Mr. Fitzpatrick!). 

       About half way into fifth grade my friends tattled on him to me. They told me the words I never imagined to hear. 

 “Henry likes you!”, Tatiana crowed.

       Everything came at me at once. It took me about 20 seconds to process what was just said. All for me to ignore it as if I wasn’t just told that someone liked me. 

“Well yeah we’re friends right?” 

“He like likes you!”

“What?”

“Don’t act dumb!”

Silence... Pure silence.

 “I- I think you’ve got the wrong person hahah”, I muttered then walking away. 

         My only thoughts were, “no way he likes someone like me. I mean look at me”. Thoughts bringing me further down as I walked to the nasty smelling bathroom. 

         Days later it was the only thing on my mind. “I think it was a dare. There’s just no way someone likes me. Wait do I like him? No, I don’t think of him like that, he’s just a friend to me.”       

          About two weeks later it was recess. I was heading to the bathroom about to turn the corner when I heard, “I think I’m going to Tell her. I mean you guys already did so I might as well.” I heard the one and only Henry say to his friends around the corner. On second thought I don’t think I need to go to the bathroom.

         I went back outside to go to my best friend Colleen on the swings. “C you’ll never guess what I just heard Henry say to his friends”. 

“What’d he say?”

“He said that he was going t-” I was rudely interrupted by Tyler, his best friend.  

         “Follow me” He sang. 

“Uh okay? What f-”, 

“You’ll see.”

“Stop interrupting me”

“Whatever just follow me”

“Fine, fine jeez.”

         I followed tyler to the back of the playground to where Henry was. “Oh no… Already? I don’t want to reject him! That’d lay some brutal damage”, my thoughts were racing.

“What’d you need Tyler?”

  I turned to look at him and he’d already left. 

      I turned back to see Henry walking to me.

“So Um, look… I, Okay I like you.” He muttered.

“Oh no here it is”, I screamed in my head.

“What was that?” was all I could even manage to say.

“I um like you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…”

“Here we go” I thought to myself.

“I uh like you too.”

“Cool.”

“Cool…”

        There goes the teachers whistle. Recess is over, FINALLY! That felt like years. Super awkward too. I went back to class trying to act like nothing happened. He did too. From then on we almost never talked, In person that is. We texted and facetimed over a stupid app called “Messenger Kids”. Pretty cringe if you ask me.

        Well there it is, the story of how my family friend liked me, but I acted like I liked him back to not break his heart.   I guess that boosted my confidence a bit. Did I mention that this happened for over a year? Well it did. A lot of fake feelings. That sounds mean but it’s true.

    At the age of 7 years old, my mom and dad ended their toxic relationship. When I say toxic, I mean it was non stop arguing. They only talked arguments. It only took both my mom AND dad about a month to find a new s/o. They agreed that I’d live with my mom and visit my dad as often possible. 

                  Back to my parents. I liked my dad’s new girlfriend, she just seemed… I don’t Know, maybe a little bit fake? She seemed to always be mad, but when my dad came around she was happy. I don’t think she liked my siblings and I to be honest. I don’t she liked kids in general.

 During all this I had to get used to my step dad, Cameron. He was an amazing guy, I really liked him, and I still do to this day. He Is complete dad material and perfect for my mom. I couldn’t ever see an end to them. Anyway, Cameron has a son that at the time was maybe 14 - 15? I didn’t meet his son who’s also named cameron till I was maybe 10. Little Cam is amazing. He’s really sweet and I thought of him as a big brother right when we met. 

                 After my dad and his girlfriend broke up, he moved in with my grandpa, and very quickly moved on to the woman he’s with now. 

Her names Melissa. All of us kids liked her a lot at first, but It came to a point where she got a little, i don’t know.. maybe too comfortable? 

      Sometimes after we’d be done playing a board game including her, yeah it was fun, but when it’d end we’d all try to go and do our own thing. Then she would say something like, “Why don’t you all go play together outside? You guys never play together”. Like Ma’am, we all just played a game together. We can’t tell her no because she’s, well, Our parent.

Well, I actually really like her, she just complains a lot and can be kind of annoying. But y’know what, I love her. She’s a great step mom. We put all our trust into her and she will keep secrets for us. It’s like I’m the only one of my siblings who sympathizes with her because she had a pretty sad story before my dad.

        Before my dad, Melissa was with a pretty toxic man. He would slightly abuse her and her dog. He didn’t treat her right at all. Not to mention she doesn’t have the ability to have kids, so when she met my dad, she thought he’d immediately find that unattractive. But he thought the fact he had four loving children would be unattractive to

Her, but it was actually perfect because now she can have kids, or say that she has kids. I’m proud to be called her step kid and proud to call her my step mom.

        I may point out all the things I don’t like about her to my mom, but I really do love her. Honestly, I think she’s amazing, I’m just kind of negative. I feel like all my siblings are the same, they point out the negative but just don’t say anything about the positive. We all love Melissa. I don’t think anything will change that.

         It’s sad to say that at such a young age I started putting on fake smiles to make people happy though I wasn’t myself. Constant crying myself to sleep because I thought my parents break up was my fault.  Well I was the problem… right?

        This started at the age of 8. I blamed myself for my parents break up. I started getting self conscious about my body, and I kind of got bullied. These are the events that lead me to my worst.

         When I was at my worst, I just turned 11. A virus called Covid-19 hit, and I had to start doing online school, not to mention the fact I was going to soon be moving homes

    At my old school I thought I had liked online school, I had my old friends, I had perfect grades. Life felt perfect. Until the end of school. This is when I moved. I loved my home, I had my friends all throughout summer, we all kept in contact. I thought I was going to lose them and I didn’t….yet that is.

        The beginning of online school, I had some of my friends. Only some. Online school at first like any school was easy because it was the beginning and the beginning is always easy. Two months into school, no friends. They all left and forgot about me. “They were fake anyway” is the only thing that made me feel better. Or so I thought made me happy. I started realizing I had no friends, fake, all of them were. My grades started going down. I had no motivation. I got a 4/5 I felt worthless. I felt like i wasn’t going to get anywhere. I just kept procrastinating. I tried and then failed. What was the point of trying if I’m just going to fail? It felt like there was nothing left.

       This is where I started feeling emotionless. I’d cry all night and feel nothing when I woke up. 

        On the weekends I would go with my mom to my aunts house often. We’d do really fun stuff. I would show It through my fake smiles.

        If I cried when I was near people I would go to the bathroom, wash my face and smile to try to look like I wasn’t just balling my eyes out.

        Normally what I’d cry about is how bad I’m doing at school or how I’m so lonely. I have no friends. Just think, the only people that are my “friends” are :

1.) My siblings
2.) My mom/ her siblings
3.) My grandparents

      People would always get on me for playing video games too much and never being social. I understand that, but I need to escape

        Reality somehow, y’know? I also use volleyball to escape, hitting something with all my strength makes me feel like I’m letting out all my emotions, all the things I’m bundling up. So the only reason I’m “Anti-social” is because I don’t know how to start conversations anymore, or engage. It’s hard for me to have a conversation without telling how I really feel so I don’t like to talk to people much. It would just be coming at them all at once.

        All my life I had never felt understood. It felt like everytime I tried to tell my mom how  I felt I’d just say something wrong and mess up. Or maybe just accidentally say something and she’d take it the wrong way.

        You may be thinking, “Lola, why didn’t you get a therapist or why don’t you have one?”, well the answer to that my friend is that, I’m scared to ask for one. I don’t know how to open up to someone I don’t know or that I’m not close with. It would be scary having to open up to someone because you’re an emotional wreck. Just thinking “I’m only here because my mind is “messed up”. 

         Another reason Is that I don’t know how to tell my mom this one thing. It’s really hard to tell her because she wouldn’t understand, well here it goes… I’m part of the  Lgbtq+ community. I am queer, but thinking I am pansexual with a preferance of men.

        Or in other words, I love every gender no matter what they look like, it’s just about personality. I do prefer men the most but I would still date anyone.

           That’s how I would describe my fake smiles. :)