Story #356

I am 16 years old. Go to a high school full of people who judge me for everything. Yet I have a talent and that talent is sketching anything by looking at it. People noticed it in the beginning of the year but I shown too much. At one point, I made a few friends. They were not the best, but one stood out more.  Whenever she wasn’t there, I just draw and stay silent or read Manga for a little. Sometimes people say I’m creepy or I look scary. I’ve gotten this from too many people for so long, it’s almost a compliment. This compliment shows that some people rely too much on the surface and become cowards to even meet you first hand with a simple hello.

– Kaylena, Philadelphia

Story #355

Hi I’m Sam. I wish I was dead but I don’t want to die, and here’s why.

One time, my roommates jumped down my throat about the apartment not being clean. I was in such a depressed state of mind, I thought about taking the kitchen knife I was holding and slashing down my forearm, spraying blood everywhere. In my mind I used my last breath to laugh and ask how about you clean us this.

Gross right? These thoughts often run threw my head, yet all they do is just stay there. I don’t want to die, I just want this pain, these thoughts to stop. Here let me rewind a little.

I’ve always had lived with my mother. The psychopathic bitch who gave birth to me. I didnt get meet my father till I was 18. The man who took his place in my childhood (at 8 years old) was wonderful until the day he snapped. I spent the next 11 years being verbally, physically and emotionally abused. I was told on a daily bases it would have been better if I was never born, that I was a whore and stupid and never would amount to nothing, watching my mother hold a knife to her chest saying she was going to kill me and her. My “dad” turned my mother and my little sister against me, i wasn’t “part of the family” anymore. I had nobody. I cooked my own meals. I was left out of Christmas family photos. When I went in the living room to watch TV with them, he turned it off. He told me that I made his life hell by being alive so he was going to make every second of mine hell. I spent my entire childhood being told I was nothing, worthless, by my own family, by everyone I was ever around. I seeked “god” and found nothing. I was udder alone.

At 15 I rebelled. I lost my virginity, I smoked pot, I drank, anything I could do to pissed my parents off. Though I myself defeated my own purpose. I did it all in secret. I kept up my perfect grades and sports, everything. I just wanted them to be proud of me, notice me, love me like they did my little sister. But I was never good enough. I started giving myself to any and everyone. I let myself be raped and hurt. Anything to feel something right? Pain is better than nothing at all.

I started self harming. It made me feel actual physical pain and let me focus on getting myself out of my head. I did it more and more. Over and over again. But unlike most, I cut on my thigh. I didn’t want them to be seen. I didn’t want anyone to know the pain I was going threw. I didn’t want to be noticed. All the while my brain was screaming for help… No one noticed a thing.

My senior year and the year that followed is what changed me, for both the better and the worse. That year I found out my “dad” had been molesting my little sister. She got taken away and given to the custody of my aunt. And I chose to stay. I guess part of me thought with her gone, maybe now they would love me. I was wrong. They blamed her being taken on me. It was my fault. I did it. Christmas that year we didn’t even put up a tree. My “dad” spent all of Christmas trying to take different shelters to take me. He tried everything to get rid of me but nothing worked.

I fell in love with a guy my senior year. We all know how it goes. I was crazy in love with him and he just wanted my body. Yet I was continuously stupid enough to believe he loved me. He fucked with my head, kept telling me it was to complicated, that we couldn’t be together. I graduated thinking it was my freedom from him, I wouldn’t have to see him anymore. I was finally free from his web.

A week after I graduated, I finally decided to leave. I knew my “dad” wasn’t going to let go to college because he didn’t believe women deserved an education. He believed that all women should be doing “wifely duties” like cooking, cleaning and having children. I had had enough. I asked my mom to borrow her phone and I called a friend asking them to come and get me. I packed 3 tshirts and a pair of underwear and walked out the backdoor. The only thing my mother was worried about was where her phone was.

I spent the next 2 months moving between friends houses. The 4th of July came around and guess what? I saw the guy I was in love with senior year. I kept telling myself I was over him, but when I saw him again… there was not doubt that my feelings had never changed. I took down his new phone number and started talking to him again. A few days later I was moved in with him and his parents and was beyond happy. He was finally mine and I had a family who loved me. I soon found I was pregnant and we were all beyond excited. My life was beyond perfect.

Soon it was my birthday, I was able to go a state away and visit my biological father and his family for the first time. I remember being so nervous I hid in the bathtub with a bucket on my head. My life just getting better and better. While with my father I had no way to message my boyfriend, so when the nleeding and the excruciating pain started I had no way of letting him know. I didn’t want my family to know I was pregnant so I hid it from them knowing they would shame me for it, talking it off as just super bad cramps. I knew something wasn’t right, and I had no other option than to suffer alone. I knew I had misscarried.

When I got back to my boyfriends place I explained everything that was happened and he cried. An hour after me getting there his father pulled me aside and told me that I had to leave. It was either me leave or they all got kicked out. Apparently the landlord were friends of my “dads” and heard from them I was nothing my a “lying, stealing whore” and they didn’t want me there. I begged to stay just that night, but I was told I had one hour to get what I could and leave. My perfect life… gone.

I spent the next 3 weeks curled up in a ball in my best friends bed. I didn’t eat, I didn’t drink anything. I kept text and calling my boyfriend, yet he never answered me. It was obvious. I’m damaged goods. I miscarried. Who wants someone who can’t even give them children. Who would want someone fucked up like me?

Have you ever felt you’re soul shatter? It’s deeper than just you’re heart breaking. I can’t really explain it, but promise me it hurt like fucking hell. I laid there, basically a zombie, and all I did was stare at walls and stay constantly stoned. It’s the only thing that kept me “sane”. At the end of those 3 weeks was my first day of college. I picked my self up, showered, and gathered my shit. I’m a fighter. I may be a fuck up but I’ll be damned if I’m a quitter. I HAD to prove my “dad” and everyone else wrong. I WILL make make it….somehow.

Those three weeks changed me. My depression got worse. I “taught” myself how to completely shut off all emotions. My depression controls me. I’m drowning in myself. These thoughts, their vines twisting and tying themselves around me. They control me. This time I didn’t sit back quietly and let everyone believe I was okay. This time I screamed out, literally begging someone, anyone to help me. Some people tried to helped, I tried dating again. And still nothing.

Over a year has passed. I should be holding my 6 month old baby in my arms, sitting beside the person I loved more than any other, but I’m not. I’m alone, it’s 4am and I’m bawling so badly I can barely type. Why does my body hate me so much it killed my own child. Why am I this way. Why are these thoughts still here? These thoughts telling me to just go outside and walk until I pass out and pray I freeze to death. These thoughts telling me to “go take a shower” and slide that shiny steel across my skin, just to see if I can feel it, and if not keep cutting deeper until I do.

This is only part of my story. Part of what goes on up inside this crazy mind of mine. This, this is not me. I am not my depression, but my depression is me. Someday I will find my purpose for being alive, I don’t know how, or when or anything. But this is not my end.

Hi, I’m Sam. I wish I was dead, but don’t want to die.

Now do you see why?

– Samantha, Lawton

Story #354

A steaming teacup perched on the arm of her pillow laden chair, filled to the brim with oolong tea. She reached over, taking a sip. The tea immediately fogged up her glasses, momentarily blinding her. She took them off and peered around her, the living room now a blur of bright colours, and for once, she was happy.

– Demetrius Shackbolt, Leichenstien

Story #353

Vanessa’s stiletto’s clicked against the marble floor as she walked across the lobby towards the front desk. A man looked up, smiling warmly

‘Ah, Miss Bouvoi, out for the evening?”

She began to speak, but then turned as a black jaguar pulled up at the hotel’s entrance. She ran out onto the footpath, her tight black dress clinging to her curves,  and climbed into the car.

“Hi, Jerry, right?”

“Yes, and you must be Vanessa. The notification says you want to go to 39 Grove Street, but, lets be honest, I’ve got better plans.”

“um, noo… let’s just go to 39 grove.”

“Is that really what you think i’m going to let happen?” he said.

He stroked his fingers up her thigh.  Then, pressed his foot down on the accelerator. She reached frantically for the door, but he pressed down harder on the pedal, leaving her know option but remain in the car. Sweat pricked her forehead , That was when she saw her.

Standing on the side of the road, the girl she had met last night at the bar; tonight,wearing a tight leather dress that accentuated the curve of her breasts. She got out, ignoring the cries of dismay emanating from within the car. She ran past rows of stopped cars, and then paused, taking a moment to compose herself, before gently tapping the girl on her left shoulder.

– Aliisa Hard, hrasgaard

Story #352

One sweltering summer day in Boston, an ice cream cone made an impromptu decision that would forever change her fate. Just as the employee was about to place her into the hand of a hungry 3-year-old boy, she thrust herself upward and out of the man’s grip.

“What the …? ” the employee said, scratching his head in confusion. “That ice cream cone just jumped right out of my hand!”

The ice cream cone, having some innate athletic ability, managed to complete a perfect tumblesault in the air and landed, unharmed, in the grass. She dusted some loose rainbow sprinkles off of her cone, and quickly ran off before the employee could scoop her back up.

“I’m free!” She thought happily. “I can do anything I want to! Maybe I’ll go to the zoo.” She took off running down the street, but stopped dead in her tracks when she realized she was starting to melt.

She quickly ducked under the cool shade of a tree and sat there for a while, thinking of what to do next.

“I refuse to melt!” She said emphatically. “I am an ice cream cone, yes, but I will not melt, no matter how hot the day may be.”

– Erin Balsa, Hingham, Massachusetts USA

Story #351

In all my life, I never expected to be diagnosed with cancer. I ate and live a healthy life, until April 2017 when I heard the word,”you have cancer.” Not just breast cancer, an aggressive and rare form of it. Now, I’m between feeling somewhat normal and feeling like I want to die! Then I thank God I’m alive…for myself, my family and most of all, my granddaughter. I love each day as if it were my last, doing everything I can to do something nice for someone. I live life. I enjoy it and thank the Lord above for giving me life in this beautiful world that despite everything that can go wrong and is wrong…I see joy and happiness and they are enough.

– Lily Mondragon, Corpus Christi

Story #350

Det var en gång en man som hette Clas. En solig dag gick clas ut till bondgården. På bondgården hitta clas gris som kostar 50kr. Clas köpte grisen. Clas tog grisen hem till clas, sen byggde clas en liten hage till grisen. Grisen blev nöjd med sin hage. Clas körde sin fyrhjuling till bondgården och köpte mycket grismat, sen körde clas hem och gav grisen lite kvällsmat. Sen gick Clas in i huset och lade sig i sin säng. Slut

– Clas, Kil

Story #349

Hi, my name is Kendon and I am an INFP male suffering with… Well a lot of things. Hear me out, yeah?

I’d say the most prominent suffrage I have has to be depression. The reason is very… Elaborate to say the least. I’d like to say it all happened when I was about 6 years old, so roughly 13 years ago. Young boy, able to walk, talk, dress himself somewhat well enough, feed himself if necessary.

That’s when I started to realize my dad was abusive. VERY much so. Not to mention a deathly toxic alcoholic. He beat me, my mom, and my sister every chance he got and that… Man enjoyed every second. He centered around me and my mom more so. He said my sister wasn’t his and he shouldn’t, and I quote, “Give a shit about some little skank that came from her whore of a mother.” Day in and day out, beating after beating. Belts, knives, kitchen utensils, tree branches. Anything he could get his hand on and lift with some ease, he used to make my mom and I’s life hell.

One day really sticks out for me. I remember the date perfectly. August 9th, 2004. The day he not only threatened to kill every one in the house, himself included, but he also beat me worse than before. He cut me up, beat me down to pulp almost, hung me by my wrists from the banister of the stairs. I can still feel the rope sometimes, digging into my wrists and twisting up the skin, shredding what skin was left.

He got my face pretty good, still a few scars left, and its 13 years later… This continued for three years. Daily. Every time I turned around, I thought that today was the day I die to this man.

Three years later, mom finally got the courage to take action against him and get the divorce. Some kids are sad and THAT causes their depression. Not for me. Thats a breath of fresh air. Oxygen in my lungs. Finally, I could breathe and not be afraid for my life every second of every day.

That was very short lived once we got to her mother’s house.

My grandmother. I wouldn’t even call her that. Much like my father is referred to as sperm donor, she is my mom’s mother. I haven’t called her grandma in a good long while.

However, behind my mother’s back, the abuse continued. A little… Softer than my sperm donor, but still. A new means of torture was introduced. Burning. She’d light a candle, one without a container, just candle, and put it out against my skin. She’d sometimes just hold the lighter to my skin, lit or so heated to the point where it imprinted. She’d purposefully close my body parts in doors and cabinets. Anything with a handle and hinges really. She pushed me into a lawnmower and made me burn a majority of my arm on the engine. It was the usual otherwise, savage beatings behind people’s backs, forcing me worse if I told anybody. To this day, this moment, I have told nobody. Nobody except whoever reads this. On top of everything my grandmother did, I was still forced to go and see my dad every so often. So it was abuse from both parties still. For three more years it continued. Worse yet.

It wasn’t but a year later that I tried ending it… My first suicide attempt. July 19th, 2008. I was 10 and I tried to take a variety of my grandmother’s pills, just to see what would happen. If it would truly end it all… It failed, of course. Attempts after that seemed endless… Cutting myself, threatening to blow my brains out, wanting to leap off my roof or higher, holding my breath till I passed out. Every way you thought of to end it, I undoubtedly tried it.Especially cutting… There’ll be days where I still do it. A few here, a few there. If the days are bad enough though…. I can’t keep track of how many there are. My grandmother and father weren’t the only reason I wanted to do that.

Say hello to the ugliest face of the abuse world… Rape… June 17th, 2009. We went camping with my uncle Ron and his sons, Matthew and Jt. It was them three, me, my mom, my grandmother, and my cousin Brayden. Every one went to sleep, I thought I’d get a good night’s rest…

My tent was broke into, the four of them looming over me… Each taking their turn making that night the one I would dread for years to come… I still do… I’ve only told one other person and even then it wasn’t the whole truth… I couldn’t tell her all of it… I didn’t want to believe it even happened. They tossed me around, different positions, different sizes being pushed where they weren’t supposed to be… Me wishing nothing but for them to kill me afterward. Cover it up as an animal attack or something… That continued for another year behind everybody’s back.

I was 12 when we left my grandmother’s. My mom being able to afford her own place and finding a new man. So that ended contact with my father and that side of the family altogether. That was whenever it was memories finally catching up with an older me.

And the suicide attempts continued. Years of sitting in my room crying myself to sleep. My eyes feeling like they were bleeding cause I never slept. Everytime I closed my eyes all I saw was them looming over me or my father getting ready to beat me or even my grandmother ready to burn me at a moments notice… I had nightmares instead of dreams. Wishes for death instead of praise for life. Wanting it to be over, the pain to stop… Yet too scared to try anymore. The last attempt was a handful a pills and they didn’t even make it to my mouth. I crushed them in my hand, slinging them across the bathroom and screaming, crying out for help and begging for the pain to just go away…

I would continue this story with the various heartbreaks. Girlfriends and small flings that… Really don’t mean much to me, save for two people. But I feel like its not necessary. Some was more physical abuse. Others mental. Most or all emotional, save for the two. Those two wouldn’t have dared lay a finger on me. They cared too much yet… It was the wrong time. We wouldn’t have worked at that time and it made me hopeful for the future for once… That someday, I’d be able to feel that happiness again. On top of sleepless nights, demons screaming at me and telling me i was worthless and I should’ve pulled the trigger or made sure the noose was tighter. Something… It all seemed essentially worthless. Life.. seemed worthless. As if there was nothing there for me anymore. I was hoping that when I got out my parents house that… That’d be it. That would be the time I’d do it… To truly end it all…

It was after I graduated that everything began to change… For the better seemingly… I was scared, jumping into good things and then, after awhile, ruining them… I was so scared that I took no precaution. It was entirely new to me. I felt happiness, truly. I felt it and took it for granted at the same time…

Only then did I realize that happiness doesn’t truly come from one select person. Granted, that one person, no matter the circumstance or relationship between the two of you, will be such a large influence on your life that you want to never let go of them. They’ll make you stupendously happy… However, happiness… Its two vastly different forms.

One, from friends. The truest of friends who are with you no matter the circumstance. The ones that, even through hell and high water, through the hardships you go through or put them through, they have your back no matter what.

The second, and this one took me A WHILE to realize, is from yourself. This one wasn’t fully introduced until here recently. But you can never be truly happy until you quell what demons reside in you and come to terms with your past. Its called the past for a reason… You need to leave it where it lies and continue on with your life. Learn from it and continue to live! Take life in strides rather than steps

Take life in and simply experience it! Breathe in every last atom of Oxygen. See every last inch of Earth. Touch the sky and pierce the heavens! Take life by storm!

Show it that you can’t be stopped, no matter how close you were before…

Show it that… No matter what happened… No matter the pain, the trials, the tribulations… You can make it out. You can make it and be better than you ever were. Better than you ever thought you could be.

You just gotta show it who’s boss is all.

My name, once more, is Kendon. And I hope my story can help some people. No matter how minuscule it may seem. Keep smiling, lovelies. It gets better, I promise.

– Kendon, Lawton

Story #348 – Today’s accident

There he is again, he is everywhere, Today, on all our streets and in every window, at the top of every taller building, looking only halfway down. He is wearing his furniture buttoned up, creased and polished, opening his mouth in creaks, light and food inside, darkness when it closes. Today, his hair smells too fresh, he has just vacuumed it. He’s drawn the curtains across his eyes, always seems to be sleeping, while his brain glows out of its blue glass case, muted. His desires are framed upon his walls, all the resolutions and obsessions, brand names and faces like magnets slipping and sliding. He takes what he wants, stabbing with his fork fingers, collecting with his spoon palms. He breathes in and out without a thought, he accepts everything.

He crosses a road he has crossed many times but collapses before he is on the opposite side. A truck quivers loudly to a stop before his flailing, limpid parts. There are some worried passersby who are worried enough to pause and turn toward the disheveled body. Some come close. Some come closer. There must have been a tornado here, and it has passed through, dropping this house into many pieces. Everyone laughs at the broken house, the bathtub standing embarrassed in the midst of this perfectly designed destruction, growing cracks and filled with fresh dust. The truck driver is relieved, he is laughing with everyone.

There was nothing inside to begin with, just a box to fit into. Everyone knew that, it’s so familiar, so ordinary.

– Suchi Rudra, Texas

Story #347

Gary Radiomac was quite the man. His black mullet, aviator glasses, and manly jawline were all classic trademarks. As for clothes- well, Gary liked to change things up a bit. Sometimes, he would wear his blue and white shirt with white bell-bottoms, accompanied by classic loafers. But when Gary was feeling particularly funky, he would put on his golden jumpsuit and platform shoes, close his office door and blast the full Saturday Night Fever soundtrack for all to hear. Sometimes, his assistant Carol would tell him to keep the volume down, because of a meeting outside. Ha. Gary didn’t listen her. He was the boss, man. Editor of The Daily Man Newspaper since 72´, the year of his birth, nobody told him what to do. He was king. Oh yeah.

– Gary Gerry Radiomac, Perth