In one moment

I am breathing

My heart is beating

I am alive.

In one moment

My mind is foggy

My eyes are glossy

But, I am alive.

In one moment

The ground starts shaking

My voice starts breaking

But, I am alive.

In one moment

My head hurts

and my mind is the first

to ask

Am I alive?

In one moment

I am breathing

My heart is beating

But I am gone.

A snake hisses at my feet, a reminder of its constant presence. He is smart and cunning and craves only to make me suffer. I walk quickly to keep it at bay, but it catches up and nips at my heels, his sharp yellow fangs cutting the back of my feet. Its sleek, slimy-looking body taunts me as it slithers through the blood flowing from my heels. His beady green eyes pierce through the back of my head, further threatening me for my defiance. When I try to speak, he wraps himself tightly around my neck, putting a lump in my throat and pain in my chest. His aroma forced itself into my nose, compelling me to smell what I can only identify as a rotting animal, putting an atrocious taste in my mouth. It needs to see me struggle and feeds off making me panic. I snap. I grip his scaly body in an attempt to pry him off me. I cram my fingers in between his cylindrical body, layered on my shoulders. He fights back, sinking his fangs into my skin placing poison in my veins. I remain in control and throw his limp body to the ground revealing the soft belly that lies beneath. He writhes and jerks in an attempt to flip himself right side up. Before he can, I stomp my foot onto his small, unexpecting head, but he will always be with me, through his venom, coursing through my veins.

I was 16 the first time I truly hated being a girl.

It was summer. I was on a trip to Florida with a group of friends.

It was a Friday, our last full day there, we decided to spend it at Harry Potter land.

Loving the wizarding world, I was very excited.

About halfway through the day, we stopped somewhere to get lunch, where I don’t remember.

I would lose my appetite anyway.

While waiting for our food, my best friend and I went to the bathroom.

It was outside of the restaurant and down past some shops.

As we were almost there, I felt eyes on me.

As we were among many people, it was somewhat familiar, but it felt like these eyes were burning into my skull.

Suddenly, I felt a jolt on my backside as a hand grabbed my butt.

Shocked, I spun around to confront it, assuming it would be a boy my age.

I thought it was some leud act of immaturity.

But what I saw behind me was a grown man, probably in his 40s, smirking at me.

To his left, a woman of the same age and in front of them, two small children, two little girls.

These were, presumably, his wife and children.

So alarmed to see this man with a family, I felt suddenly embarrassed and continued to the bathroom.

I stifled my tears in the crowded restroom but let them stream down my cheeks as I entered a stall.

This man had a wife.

This man had two daughters.

This man treated me like a piece of meat.

Would he want the same for them?

This man acted as if I was there for him, and he was entitled to my body.

Would he want the same for them?

If you are a boy and have done this or thought about doing this, let me ask you this:

What if I was your mother?

Your sister?

Your wife?

Your daughter?

How would you feel if someone did this to any of them?

The unfortunate part is that it probably has.

I was 16.

For some of my friend’s things like this have happened even younger.

I was 16; the first time I hated being a girl.

I haven’t written in a while. This really isn’t like me. I’ve been writing nonstop ever since I learned how. I think I’m scared to face the writers block. My words used to flow through me like an unstoppable river. I had so much to say. Have I said it all? Already? Am I done? Is my one passion being taken away from me? Has this river run dry? Just when I feel whole and happy, I am so lost.

I write because there is a passion within me that cannot be extinguished. There is an undeniable drive that cannot be tamed. My words are the expression of the deepest, most vulnerable part of me. You read my work, you see my soul. My heart is poured out into every prose, story, and poem. I write in hopes it may touch you, the way writing it touched me. I’m allowed to be so intimate and so vulnerable, yet hidden behind my words. My writing screams what I’m too scared to say.

I don’t understand it a lot of the time. One minute I’m fine and the next I’m just, not. It steals my motivation, my drive, my passion. It takes me away from my family and friends. Isolates me from everyone and everything. It drags my life through the mud and ruins anything good and right. All for what? What is benefiting from my misery? What did I do to warrant this? I just want it to stop. The only way I know how to describe it is that it hurts to exist. It hurts to live my own life. I feel like I’m not living anymore, like I’m just going through the motions of my everyday life, as a shell of my former self. So, if I haven’t been acting like myself lately, it’s because I’m not. I’m sorry.

The entire room is in chaos, but I see the action as if through the blades of a whirring fan. Disjointed and surreal. I want everything to stop, even if just for a moment. To gather my thoughts, to catch my breath. My mind is racing, I pray for it to stop, but things move faster and faster everything becomes a blur, people and problems melting into one another making them all indistinguishable, making me unable to discern reality from my own confusion and personal chaos. “Just stop!” I cry, so loudly that I feel my own echo hit my tear-soaked face. The room of silently reading people look up from their books with utter confusion and I am snapped back to reality.

“Why are you always there for them?” They ask me, telling me to take time for myself.

I’m there because I have to be.

I’m there because there was no one was there for me.

The opposite in fact, it drove all my friends away.

It was hell. A real life, living hell.

I would never wish that on another human being.