My Most Amazing Life

I grew up in a two-parent, loving home. My early years were filled with mostly happy moments, although marred by a short stint of abuse by an older neighbor kid. Still, I always felt that I was an outsider. I knew many people but had no close friends. Throughout middle and high school, I kept myself busy by being involved in all the activities I could fit in—softball, newspaper, band, church youth group. But none of it seemed to help the ache inside that told me that I did not really belong. I cannot remember one time that I was asked to a social event, or even just to someone’s house to hang out. I went to only a handful of school dances; the one where I had a date, he ditched me soon after we arrived. I became depressed and the only relief I found was through cutting and journaling my increasingly suicidal feelings into dark poems and letters, crying out to God to end the misery inside.