She thought that she would be dead by now. There was a time when everything in her life was falling apart. Where everything that could possibly go wrong went completely and utterly wrong. She was abused and beaten and scarred -- emotionally and physically. She lost the one person in her family who she loved more than anything in the world. Everyone around her made her feel invisible and useless and worth nothing. People told her that she was a mistake, that she shouldn’t exist in the same world as them. And she believed them. There was a time when she walked around with her head held low and never made eye contact with anyone else because she didn’t feel like she deserved to be around them. She felt like the world would be better off without her, that her existence made everyone’s lives miserable.

There was a time when she thought that she was in love – deeply, madly in love. But it turned out that she was wrong. The boy that she thought she loved didn’t really love her, though he liked to pretend he did. He was just like the family she had tried to leave. He didn’t hit her, but he might as well have. He yelled at her and picked arguments and made her cry more times than he made her smile. He broke her heart too many times but always managed to convince her to come back. She was scared to be alone and he knew that. He manipulated her and told her that he loved her more than life itself, but that was a lie, too. She would have done anything to keep him around, she fought her hardest to make him love her as much as she loved him. But she couldn’t. Her best wasn’t good enough and he left her anyway. Anyone who she has ever cared about left her alone. The only thing running through her mind was that she was worthless. She felt worthless to her family, to her friends, to the boy whom she thought she loved and to herself.

She has never loved herself enough to help herself. There was a time when she hated herself so much that she didn’t want to eat. And when she did eat, she never wanted to keep it in her body. She hated her body just as much as she hated her personality. She hated everything about herself, which only made the negative thoughts that other people tried to instill in her worse. Whatever they said, she believed. She couldn’t not believe the nasty things that came out of their mouths because deep down she thought them too. When she looked at herself, she saw someone who was stupid, fat, pathetic and way too emotional and she didn’t like herself at all. She looked around at the world around her and felt all alone in a room full of people that she had known for her entire life. No one else liked her either. No one else wanted her around. That was what she told herself every morning, every afternoon and every evening before she went to bed. And there was a time when she was convinced that she couldn’t take it anymore.

No, she didn’t think that she could continue to live in the cruel world that didn’t want her around. She didn’t want to be alive anymore. She kept telling herself that she had never wanted to be born. That the life she was living was not one that she could be proud of. That no one would miss the weird girl who felt too much. It would be so easy and simple to do – to just not exist anymore.

But she didn’t do that. She didn’t take her own life. It didn’t work and she hated herself for not being able to do it. She hated herself then perhaps more than she had ever hated herself. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t go home to her empty house and cry herself to sleep. Even on the days when she let herself be hopeful, dark clouds followed her absolutely everywhere. She told everyone that she was better in the hopes that she would actually just be better one day. Everyone around her told her that they loved her, that they valued her existence in their lives. She wondered why they had never said that before. Sometimes she still wonders if it’s even true.

Today, the girl does not hate herself as much. She has started to make progress in life, to do something that she is passionate about. She took herself out of bad situations that were making her miserable. She let go of the people in her life who treated her like she was worth nothing. New people have walked into her life that really make her believe that she is capable of being loved. There are days when she looks into the mirror and is in love with the girl who is smiling back at her. She smiles now, big and bright and genuine. That smile reaches her eyes and is often accompanied with a laugh – and not a super cute, dainty laugh. A big laugh that fills the room and makes strangers look away from their conversations. She can see new days forming ahead of her. Days where she can be happy and there are days when she can be sad. The days keep coming and she looks forward to them.

Sometimes she feels lost in her own body, lost in the world that she is still living in. You see, because she never thought that she would make it this far. She didn’t make a lot of plans for her future. She never told herself that she was going to grow up and graduate from college or even high school, really. She had never thought that she would really truly be happy someday. But, she is. High school came and went. She stopped being so scared of everything in her life. She stopped being afraid of the future and started allowing herself to make plans again.

Today, she is going to college and pursuing her dreams. Today, she is falling in love with someone who is completely in love with her and is really good for her. She is learning new things every day and falling more in love with the brilliant mind that she didn’t know that she possessed. Today, she is feels good about herself and the people around her and the life that she decided to life. And most days she wonders why she ever even wanted to die.