rebirth Blog and Journals

Someone asked me why I'm so hellbent on getting famous. I can understand that I look like a complete and total attention whore... and I am. But there is something more to my intense desire to be noticed. And it's not just so I can feel good about myself. My photos, friend invites and acceptings, tiresome and constant social networking, event parusing, and active internet use is not just a vain attempt at being popular. There’s a reason I want recognition, and I think this story will help explain.

In elementary school this girl was mocked by all the popular girls who grew boobs first, or had their ears peirced, or were rich enough for designer clothes, or whose mothers let them wear make up. She’d sit at recess trying to draw or write and one would come up and steal her pencil, or worse, her notebook. They would ask her questions about kissing boys, since they were all cool enough to do so, and giggle when she said “Ew”. She just looked at them, blinked, and walked away. In middle school through high school, it was the same thing. She was picked on by some older girls, who made up a song about her and said she had a big nose, messy hair, and ugly clothes. As her body started to develop, they called her fat. As she thinned out but kept an hourglass figure, they spread rumors that she had breast implants.

After a while, she couldn’t stand just walking away. There’s only so much a person can take without break down. So she allowed herself to break down. Sometimes teenagers respond to bullying and harassment by cutting themselves, doing drugs, drinking, promiscuity, getting into harmful relationships, or [especially if the teasing involves the person’s body] developing eating disorders. None of these were good enough for her. She picked all of them at once. Every day was a fantasy world, nothing was real. The girl would go to school with arm warmers covering up her scars, eat a salad at lunch and quickly rush to throw it up and swallow some pills in the bathroom while she was at it, do all her work as best she could with the questions and numbers floating around the page like they did, and then go home. She would call her boyfriend who would either be high out of his mind, or having sex with another girl, and one of his family members would take a message. If he called back, she’d murder her heart by killing time with him. If he didn’t, she’d go to a party, drink til she puked, and wake up with no clue who she was sleeping next to. This went on for a good year and a half.
One day, she was in the city with a few of her guy friends, sitting on a ledge while some of them practiced their skateboard tricks and failed miserably. They were all laughing, and enjoying youth for what it was. At one point, she looked up and noticed how pretty the leaves of the trees looked with the sun shining through them. Instead of green, they looked yellow and glittery. Not because she was stoned, but because nature had presented one of its miracles and she turned her head at precisely the right time to witness one of the simplest most beautiful things in the world: purity. She lowered her head to watch her one friend fall flat on his ass and everyone else laughed. It was at this point that she realized: “What the hell am I doing?”
The next few months were hard... hell, the next few years were hard. But she came clean without any rehabilitation centers, hospitalization, or help from anyone else. She set her mind to getting it all together; broke up with her drug addict slut of a boyfriend, deleted her own substance sources from her cel phone, started exercising and eating right, took more care in her appearance, and stopped going unsafe places. Solace was found in strength. It was so much more satisfying to be tough than it was to let things just happen.

Now? She’s in college, doing better than ever. She hasn’t touched drugs since highschool, every guy that hits on her gets told “F**k off before I rip it off,” and if anyone throws hate her way or says something about her, she doesn’t pay attention. She’s pursuing careers in t-shirt design, writing, illustration, and potentially modeling. She’s been eating right, spending her free time with good people and good friends, and she wants to reach as many people as possible. She wants the younger kids to know what she went through, what they might be going through, and that it’s going to be okay and you don’t have to hurt yourself because someone else has. She wants to be the best person she can be so she can inspire others to do the same.

This girl? is me. And I’m doing everything I can to get my name out there so I can make it big and spread the word to kids who are in trouble. Maybe if they know it gets better, they’ll stop getting worse. I want to change the world. I want to help everyone learn what I have. I feel like if someone had done that for me, I wouldn’t have gone through half the crap I did.
I’m on my way. I’m going to get there one day.