It was just a thought.

There's that song I heard in church when I was little that goes "Oh be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down with love, so be careful little eyes what you see..." The song continues to warn our ears of what they hear,  and our mouths of what we speak. And I used to think it was because God was trying to control everything. Now I've realized it's really for our own benefit. Since December of 2008, there have been too many movies with graphic rape scenes that have rattled me to the core- taking me back to the cold cement floor of the stairwell. My little eyes haven't been as careful as they should be. I've grown a lot since December 2008 but when I see some poor girl emulating the fear and rawness I felt it puts me right back underneath that boy's forearm, tears on my cheeks and a fire in my belly. I continue to heal daily. Sometimes it feels like I take a step forward and then I get pulled backwards and fall on my ass. It gets easier and easier to get back up though. Each time I fall, I feel like I have more reasons to get back up than the last time. And that's good. But what I've come to realize is that when I do watch a movie that's a little too...er, rapey...it messes with the healing of that spot in my heart. The spot that's all super glued, Scotch taped, stitched, patched, and soldered. Every time I see a portrayal of the violent attack I endured, a couple of those seams pop and it starts to bleed a little bit. The thing is that I really do feel better and so I always think, Oh I'm so much stronger now...I can watch this...it's fake anyway, right? The other day I watched this movie about two teenagers who get abducted and in one scene, the abductor is raping the thirteen year old virgin and you can't even see it. You can only see her face, scrunched up in pain, tears flowing from shock-filled eyes, and then he rests his hand beside her face on the table he has her pinned face down on, and there is blood covering his fingers. My stomach, ugh, it feels sick even now remembering it. Even though I was disgusted, disturbed beyond all coherency, I couldn't stop looking. I couldn't tear my eyes away from her's. And it was fake. She was an actress, he was an actor. The blood was a mixture of corn syrup and red dye. But I was sick. I was in the stairwell. My lady parts hurt. My heart was breaking for the poor little fake thirteen year old girl on the screen. When the movie was over all I heard in my head was "Oh be careful little eyes what you see, oh be careful little eyes what you see, for the Father up above is looking down with love, so be careful little eyes what you see..."

I didn't even want to go in the first place. Partially because I'm that kid. You know the one. I'm that kid who doesn't want to do something simply because they were expected to do it. I was the kid who cried and pleaded to go home while at the circus for the very first time. I was the kid who whined and complained at every picnic, park, beach, pool, arcade, concert, you name it. If it was fun, I hated every second of it. Plus by that time, I was nearly sixteen years old, I had a boyfriend named Ryan, and like every silly teenage girl "in love," anywhere Ryan was not was simply tragic. So tragic that I sobbed-sobbed-when my parents told me we were going to Florida for two weeks. Yes, I'm a drama queen. I am a recovering teenage girl and I must admit that it has been quite the struggle to shake all of the Scarlett O'Harra woe-is-me nonsense out of my head. I still sob when I'm "starving to death" and a stupid old Mercury cuts me off at the entrance to the Burger King drive-thru line, and I'm a grown up now. You can only imagine me, at the prime of my "princess" years, having to let go of my "soul mate" for two, excruciatingly long weeks. Even though Ryan was my "boyfriend" it wasn't as though I could actually talk to him outside of church. My mother was beyond confusing. She thought it unfit for a girl to ever call a boy as calling was the man's job. However, when I asked if Ryan could call me, the answer was a rehearsed, resounding "no." However, she allowed me to call Ryan the night before we left so I could say goodbye (this is seriously how dramatic I was, I needed to say goodbye before I left on a vacation for-a year? That's what you'd think right? No, for two weeks.) With tears seeping through the cracks and holes in the cordless phone I held shakily against my red, puffy face, I managed to hiccup a goodbye through the unsteady sobs huffing out of me. I know Mom really did have good intentions for that trip, I know it because she even bought me a track phone with a minutes card so I could call Ryan. You can only imagine how bizarre that was of her, how truly unselfishly nice it was of her. I know she wanted that trip to Florida to be good, I know that. Maybe that's why it went so horribly wrong. The trip just cracked under the pressure, and then my mom you know, stomped through the cracks to watch it completely shatter.
       It was barely morning when we all seven piled half-sleeping into the black Dodge Caravan complete with a DVD player, a rocket box on top to store some of our luggage, bags upon bags of snacks: sandwiches, Goldfish, cookies, Cheerios, fruit snacks, peeled and sliced apples, granola bars, juice, water bottles, cereal, anything and everything you need to occupy four children and a baby. We set out in the pitch dark of Kansas, all dreading the eighteen hour, non-stop trip to Florida. Are you surprised we all seven drove eighteen hours in a hot, cramped, unbearably loud minivan instead of flying? That's the other reason I didn't want to go to Disney World: we were flat broke. It was the summer of 2007 and over the past year, my parents had sold our house in Pennsylvania, took us out of public school (again,) gave up a steady income, and moved us to Kansas to become missionaries. That means no income. That means no money. Most people save their money when they see it rapidly dwindling in their bank account, they don't spend an excessive amount on frivolous family vacations. We were barely making it by, and not without the number of worry-lines on Andy's face impetuously increasing with each click on that spiteful little Account Balance button. My parents' marriage was really only good for the first oh, I don't know, six of the ten years? Andy, being the epitome of a good guy wanted to do everything in his power to make things work between he and my mom and if that meant clearing out all the accounts, leaving behind mere pocket change and cobwebs, to take the family on the elaborate vacation my mother assured him would be the glue that kept us all together, he would do so but not without a tense jaw and many sleepless nights. The ignorant bliss that comforted me the majority of my childhood was no longer and I had become very aware of the financial crisis my family had fallen into. That being said, the thought of going to Disney World was not that of child-like excitement, but a quite mature one woven of worry and uneasiness that left my legs unwilling to carry myself out the screen door early that brisk morning, but inevitably, I did. I don't remember much of that car ride to Florida, and praise God for it. I'm sure it was like every other excruciatingly long car ride, with noise so mind-numbing it truly makes you black it all out. I remember when we finally got to Florida though. It was so amazing; I had never seen palm trees before and now I looked out the tinted windows of the minivan we never opened (who needed to with air conditioning?) and saw them bending down over us as we drove beneath them, and I feel so lame saying this, but I felt so rich looking up at them. It's so silly, but I thought, if we were truly poor, we wouldn't be looking at palm trees right now. It makes absolutely no sense because poverty is everywhere, certainly in parts of Florida, and many people make their homes beneath those palm trees and fall asleep looking up through those vibrant green palms every night. Seeing palm trees doesn't make anyone rich, that I know, but at that point, logic didn't matter, and at that point, for the first time in months, I felt comfort; I felt rich. We pulled up to the hotel in the just-running-in-real-fast lane right by the huge revolving glass doors welcomed with a giant Mickey Mouse door mat and Mom got out of the passenger seat with her purse on her arm and her planner in her hand, stuffed full of confirmation forms printed off the home computer and folded up inside her trusty planner. She slammed the door shut and strutted past the bellboy where she disappeared within the enormous granite building. We all waited impatiently inside the minivan, all of us wriggling and writhing, itching to get up and out, seeing fresh air and space and suddenly becoming very desperate for both. After what felt like an eternity, Mom came back out with a parking pass and we all went to park and unload the van, and in the parking garage is where we were all finally liberated from that automotive cage and were able to get the feeling in our legs and butts back. I remember the foyer of that hotel was exquisite. The floors were marble with an enormous Mickey Mouse glittering on the tiles. The lights seemed to make everything sparkle, and the sunlight beaming in through the many windows danced across the glittery floor and washed the walls with a splash of  authentic Florida sunshine. A family of hunchbacks is what we must have looked like, each of us loaded up with multiple bags around our arms, waist, wrists. We all waddled up the multiple flights of steps wrapping around the outside of the building, down a long stretch of patio with numbered doors along one side of us and a railing guarding us from the giant Mickey Mouse shaped pool three or four stories below us. The pool is what psyched me up the most. I don't know what it is about hotel pools but they're often my favorite part of the entire vacation. Once in Virginia when I was eight, during the day at the beach a wave had crashed over me, tossing me all around as I tried to get my head above the water and I attempted to take a breath as a wave of salt water poured into my gaping mouth. Instantly, I vomited in the ocean and ran out, trembling and shivering despite the warm Virginia sun shining high in the sky. Then that night while in an especially warm hotel pool, I puked again, this time in the pool, and I saw it sitting on the surface of the water and then I saw it go through the pool filter. That story makes me feel sick all over again. Even so, I still love hotel pools and the one in Disney World was magical. That was back before I cared about preserving my skin from the evil, youth-sucking sun and I loved laying out beside the pool with my sister beside me, my headphones blurring out the surrounding noise and my phone against my thigh so I could feel it vibrate if Ryan were to call or text. He never did. I called him every night before I went to bed. Sometimes he answered and when he did, he'd end each conversation with something along the lines of, "I think I might kill myself tonight so I probably won't talk to you tomorrow," and so I was just a little ball of stress the whole vacation already, constantly wondering if I'd wake up to a phone call from Ryan's mom informing me her son finally made good on all the promises he made to terminate his "unbearable" life. And all those times I'd call and he wouldn't answer further confirmed my worst fears. Maybe if I had wised up sooner and dumped Ryan long before my vacation, Disney World would have turned out a teensy-weensy bit  better, but not much. My Nana and Pop-pop, Andy's parents, were with us for the first week in Florida, for the Disney World part. The second week was just my parents and us kids in Daytona Beach. Nana has a terrible fear of heights so they drove as well and met us there. What I remember most was my feet killing me regardless of what shoes I wore-my Adida slides, my Puma track shoes-by the end of the day, my feet would tingle and throb with a mingled pain and relief as I hung them over the side of the hotel bed, not allowing them to touch the floor but rather hang there in a weightless limbo. The food in Disney World was ridiculous. Five bucks for the school-cafeteria-tasting fries I lived off of that week. For dinner we splurged and ate in Epcot (always at America and Italy due to the notoriously picky eaters in my family) and I remember having breakfast at this Hawaiian Lilo and Stitch themed restaurant and I had Belgian waffles and the best mango juice I've ever had. My parents argued through most of it, while we were on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Splash Mountain, but they tried to keep it low-key this time unlike the New York City trip the winter of 2006 where they screamed shamelessly at each other in the middle of Sbarro. Isaiah's birthday so happened to land on one of the days in Disney World and we all went with Nana and Pop-pop to Rain Forest Cafe and sang happy birthday to an elated Isaiah, ogling wide-eyed at his Volcano chocolate cake with the sparkler candles. We all went to the Olive Garden our last night in Disney World after a long day of shopping at Nana's favorite shops, and I had the Capellini Pomodoro I always have with a cup of Minestrone (that's when I learned how much I truly hate Minestrone.) We said good-bye to Nana and Pop-pop and loaded back up into the Dodge Caravan we had grown to loathe entirely, and headed to Daytona Beach for a week. I don't remember the hotel at Daytona Beach, but I remember the floating bar in the hotel pool, that would have been pretty cool if I weren't sixteen. There was hardly anybody there, we were there mid May and there were but a handful of people, it was nice to be on the beach with nobody beside you for a couple of feet. So nice, in fact, that I fell asleep on the beach one day and got my first taste of sunburn. I thought some prankster had replaced the water in the shower head with sewing needles, and was informed by a smug Andy-notorious for leaving every beach trip looking like a white person's distasteful representation of a Native American- that showering while sun-burnt is supposed to feel like sadistic acupuncture. I had been wearing a black swimsuit, practically asking for sunburn, but as I had never gotten sunburn before, I didn't think anything of it. I had a nice khaki-colored swimsuit outlined in crimson on my body beneath my clothes for weeks. The sun had turned my face copper and brought out my freckles, making me look like an Ecuadorian Pippy Longstocking. I don't remember much of Daytona at all, except for the last night. We were all going to have dinner at the hotel's outdoor restaurant, Mom said she was going to put in our name and didn't come back. After waiting for her at the entrance for maybe twenty minutes, Andy went to the hostess and asked if the name Angelino had been put in; it hadn't. We all ate dinner together in silence save for the incessant jabbering of my little brothers, wondering where Mom was and knowing the answer at the same time. She was where she always was when she disappeared as she so frequently did: a bar. I still don't know what bar she was at or when she got back because after dinner, Autumn and I wandered off to the deserted beach, and though we were in jeans and sneakers we sat down on the sand as close to the water as possible without getting wet, and let salty tears fall silently off our cheeks. I don't know how long we sat there, but we stared blankly at the ocean and watched the sky turn pink with sunset, and then violet with a faint sunless-light, then finally a deep indigo that washed over the ocean, painting it the same color. We sat there together, feeling the same hurt, asking ourselves the same questions in a silent unison. Finally, Mom walked down to where we were and from the unsteady steps she took in the sand, I knew she was drunk. Autumn and I still stared ahead though we felt her presence right next to us. We couldn't look at her. Every vacation with her was a chaotic trap we were caged in for a few weeks and this one was no different. In fact, this one was worse. We had all had a rough year and we all knew the equally turbulent future we were to come home to now that the last of our money had been spent on a trip that was supposed to lift our spirits, a trip that was supposed to bring us together, and she couldn't give it to us. The worst part was that I actually trusted her that time. I really did. She had fooled me into thinking that she was actually going to give us a memory we wouldn't have to suppress. And now she was standing beside me, expecting me to say something to her. I had expected her to come back with her tail between her legs, tears brimming her wide, repenting puppy-dog eyes, because Lucy, she had a lot of s'plainin' to do. But the way she was standing, erect with her arms crossed confidently across her chest like a defiant teenager (you got somethin' to say? ) told me she was far from ready to repent. So I just sat there, hoping she couldn't see how fast my heart was pounding, praying she'd just go away. Why was it every time I wanted her to go away, she wouldn't, but every time I needed her near, she was gone? She spoke and the smell of vodka on her breath took away any bit of ocean lingering in my nostrils. "What's wrong with you two?" she more demanded rather than asked. I blinked quickly, trying to make the tears that wanted to come change their mind and stay inside my tear-ducts, safe from the eyes of my mother. It was Autumn who spoke next. "What's wrong with us? What's wrong with you? You just disappeared, seriously Mom?" Mom ignored her and looked at me. "Gabrielle? What's wrong with you?" I just shook my head and out my peripheral, I saw her glare at me, uncross her arms and walk away back up shore to the hotel. Though I wanted nothing more than to just stay out there forever, the ocean wind whipped at my face, convincing me to go inside. I stood up, brushing the sand off the seat of my jeans, grabbed Autumn by the hand and pulled her up to her feet. Together we walked as slowly as possible up to our hotel room. From a couple feet outside the door, I could hear Isaac screaming bloody murder. Isaac was fighting with Isaiah, screaming at him, and Mom was fighting with Andy, screaming at him. That hotel room was a chaotic mess. Far too small for seven but our funds had dwindled significantly in the past two weeks and we still needed enough for gas to get us from Florida back to Kansas so it would have to do. I think it would have been a little more spacious if it weren't for all the noise and tension in the room. I ignored all of them and put on my pajamas for bed, tried to call Ryan and got his voicemail, he probably waited for my last day here in Florida to kill himself, I thought, and brushed by my mom who stopped arguing with Andy to shoot me a glare and slur, "What?" at me. Again I shook my head. "What?" she repeated, only louder. "You're drunk," I said. "As always." Her face crumpled into a look of disgust. "Oh, I forgot, you never do anything wrong. You're always perfect. Get off your damn high horse, Gabrielle." My lips pressed hard together, turning them into a single white slit. I nodded and got into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin and turned over on my side towards the wall, facing my little black Nokia flip-phone that never rang. Seconds later, the comforter was ripped off of me, exposing my red legs to the cold blast from the hotel air conditioner. "Get up!" she yelled. I sat up on my side, looking at her with bewilderment. "Get up!" she yelled again. I sat fully up now, lowering my bare feet to the cold, coarse carpet. I stood up, still staring at her. Her arm shot out, pointing a wavering index finger at the door. "Get out," she said. "You ain't gonna disrespect me in this hotel I'm paying for. Get out." Confusion trumped every other thought in my head. "Where will I sleep?" I asked. "I don't care," she said. "Sleep outside. You ain't sleepin' in here." I stared at her incredulously. "Mom, we're in Florida. You can't just kick me out of here, what if something happens to me?" She raised her eyebrows and shrugged nonchalantly. "Shoulda thought of that before you ran your mouth. Now get out." I walked out and stood there facing the hotel room that was quickly disappearing behind the closing door which automatically locked  with a hollow click. After about an hour, it sunk in that I was truly going to be sleeping on the cold cement in front of my family's hotel room. For a while, I just sat there, my back against the door so my butt could be somewhat cushioned by the thin welcome mat thousands of tourists had wiped their feet on, wondering if this ever happened to other kids on their family vacations. Probably not, I thought to myself. This was an Angelino-specific sort of thing. At one point, I took a brief walk down the outside hallway to that room that has an ice-maker and vending machines. I didn't have the ice bucket they supply you with or any money, so I cupped my hands below that spout the ice shoots out of and let hard rocks of ice hit the soft palms of my hand, inflicting a subdued icy pain. I walked back to the hotel room, unknowing of the time, had it been hours or simply long minutes? I resumed sitting in front of the door, chomping on ice cubes even though I was shivering. Finally, I heard a faint click and looked up to see the silver door handle turning slowly. I scooted away from the door, threw down the rest of the ice melting in my hands, and stood up to face whoever was on the other side of the opening door. It was Autumn. Her finger was pressed against the center of her pursed lips and she gestured me inside with her other hand, propping the door open with her shoulder. I shook my head but she furrowed her brow and mouthed, "Mom's passed out, come in." I nodded and tiptoed silently inside, holding my breath as we attempted to noiselessly shut the door. That hollow click made my skin jump and we both snapped our heads in Mom's direction, letting a wave of relief crash over us as we saw the drool dripping out of the side of her mouth. She was still snugly wrapped in her drunken slumber. I pulled back the covers of the bed Autumn and I had shared all week and sunk on top of the plush mattress, letting it cradle my sore butt and legs. I pulled the covers back up to my chin, rolled over, and instantly fell asleep. Suddenly, my legs and arms were covered in goosebumps, my whole body was shivering. The covers had once more been ripped off of me and Mom was standing over me, fire in her eyes, stale alcohol mixed with morning breath was puffing out of her mouth in poisonous pants. My tired, heavy eyelids instantly shot open, and the first thing I felt that morning was pure fear. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked. I shook my head, unable to speak. "I told you you were not to be sleeping in here so what are you doing sleeping in this bed?" My throat was dry, disabling me from swallowing. I lifted my tongue to speak and it merely stuck to the roof of my mouth then flopped down in a shameful surrender. "You just think you can do whatever you want! Nobody can tell Gabrielle anything. Gabrielle knows everything. Gabrielle can do anything she wants! You're so selfish, it's disgusting. Get out of my face. Pack your clothes up, we need to be out of her by eleven." She and Andy started hauling luggage down to the parking garage. Eleven o'clock came and went and all of us kids were still sitting in the hotel room with the remaining of the luggage. Andy and Mom had taken bags downstairs and hadn't come back. It had been nearly forty minutes. Isaac was screaming about something and a very irritated Autumn had forced him into the bathroom and was holding the door shut as Isaac pounded his fists against it and told Autumn in vivid detail how he was going to punch her "idiot face" in and then "kill" her when he got out. My stomach was in a knot that tightened each time the minute place on the digital hotel alarm clock changed. Finally, after losing (or winning) a debate with myself  over whether to call my parents' cell phone or not, I picked up the hotel phone and with trembling fingers, punched in the ten digits, remembering to first dial a one as we were out of state. I was praying for Andy to answer, but I don't have luck like that. "Hello?" My mother. And judging from her tone, she was mad. "Hi, mom, I was just making sure everything's okay...Isaac is kind of flipping ou-" "Gabriella! Are you using the hotel phone?" My heart sunk, "Yes," I replied. "Gabriella!" she screamed. "Do you even know how much my credit card is getting charged for this phone call? You're calling a long distance number, Gabrielle. You're wasting money-money we don't have-on a stupid phone call because you're impatient?! We're coming!" And with that, she hung up. About fifteen minutes, my parents walked back in, Andy's face was bright red indicating they had been fighting for the past hour or so in the parking garage. Mom pushed Autumn away from the bathroom door, walked in, whooped Isaac's butt, then grabbed him by the arm, pulled him out of the bathroom, and then out of the hotel room altogether. We all followed, being scolded unanimously by my mother who was ranting to no one in particular about how we're all ungrateful and she doesn't know why she even bothers, et cetera, et cetera. I sat in silence the next 18 or so hours back home, my head pressed against the window, watching trees and cars whip by me, longing to just open the van door, jump out, and run until I couldn't run anymore. Just like Forrest Gump. I refrained and after what felt like years later, we ended up back on 69th street. The next two days went by painfully slow as I sat at home wondering maddeningly if my boyfriend was dead or alive. Finally, Wednesday came around, and I spent the entire day getting ready for youth group, getting ready to see Ryan. I remember being so stressed out, I got sick in the garage before getting into the minivan. Autumn was like, "Seriously? You're that nervous?" I couldn't even respond, I was seriously that nervous. Would he be alive? And if he is, would he even show up? Or would he stay home in hope of convincing me he was dead when in actuality he was simply playing Halo with his brothers Connor and Cole? I had my money on the latter, which is so sad when I think about it. I knew that Ryan was the kind of guy who really would do something like that and yet I continued to see him. I continued to love him. I walked into the church and saw him across the room very much alive, very much ignoring me. I waved at him and smiled and he turned and looked away. Feeling both relieved and nervous, I walked over to him and said hi. He walked away from me and sat with his friends. I sat alone on the other side of the room, watching him, wishing he'd watch me. We'd sometimes skip youth group and make out in the backseat of his dad's forest green Infinity, obviously unbeknownst to his dad. Sometimes though, we'd agree to skip and see each other and I'd be outside in the parking lot waiting in our designated spot and he wouldn't show up. I sneaked out the back door of the church at the end of the worship segment when the lights were low and waited in our spot for him, hoping he'd actually show up this time. He did. He walked to me, his brown hair sitting in a dumb tuft on top of his head six feet and one inch from the ground. When we had started "dating" I had made him trade in a pair of hideous beige and green Pumas for a pair of grey Converse All Stars and his frumpy Old Navy jeans for a pair of skinny jeans, making him somewhat presentable save for the overdose of metal in his mouth, but I didn't really notice it because he never smiled. He had swollen red balloons for lips which were constantly surrounded by a five o'clock shadow that occurred five minutes after he shaved. He waved to me slightly. I smiled, my heart full; I never expected him to show and yet here he was. Because we only spoke to each other twice a week, we were always so awkward around each other, never knowing what to say. We walked, neither of us speaking, to his dad's green Infinity, slumped low into the backseat together, our legs pressed against the bucket seats in front of us, hoping no stragglers out in the parking lot could see us. I leaned in and kissed him. When we'd kiss is the only time I ever felt like he liked me, let alone loved me like he claimed to. We kissed for a few minutes, his braces scraping against my lips in a way that I'd find simply unbearable now, then he stopped and looked at me wide-eyed and smiling. "I have an idea," he said. "What?" I asked. Please don't say sex, please don't say sex, I repeated in my head. Though I had told him maybe a half a million times I wasn't ready for sex, he still managed to push the idea every time he saw me. "You should...you know," he said, his eyes bouncing from me, down to his fly, then back up at me. "That's not sex technically." My nose wrinkled. I knew what he was referring to. I had never done anything of the sort, in fact, he was the first boy I had even kissed open mouthed, but I had heard about it. I knew this girl Nina who used to do that to the boys on the back of the school bus. I shook my head but I didn't say no. "I don't know Ryan...I think that's considered sex..." "No it's not," he said immediately. He was already beginning to unzip his pants. "Let's just try it. If you don't like it, we'll stop." His pants were now off and he was pulling off his boxers before I could even register what was happening. Had I just agreed to do this? Apparently, because his hand was on the back of my head, lowering it down to his crotch, my face twisted in a grimace he couldn't see. After a couple second, I stopped and said I didn't want to. "Let's just make out," I was saying, but he wasn't listening. He put his hand back on my head and pushed my face back down, but this time he didn't let go. My lips were pressed shut trying to resist him. "Do it!" he yelled. My eyes closed tightly, squeezing tears down my cheeks, I obeyed. I was still crying when he was done, and while he got dressed and got out of the car, not offering me so much as a side glance. I too got out of the car and walked to him, tears and snot now flowing freely, I wrapped my arms around his middle and pressed my head against his chest. He pushed me away, locked his dad's Infinity, and walked back inside the church leaving me slumped down crying against the red brick, spitting to get as much of that awful taste out of my mouth as I could. Church ended and I still sat there outside, crying in the darkness of the night, the street light glinting off of the diamond Mickey Mouse hanging on a silver chain around my neck.

As my twenty-first birthday ekes closer, I am reminded of other birthdays. My tenth birthday (double-digits!)  was my second combined birthday with Isaac and my mom went all out. She made three cakes, all shaped like balloons, using the star-shaped piping tip to cover each cake's surface with hundreds of little stars. She had made six practice cakes earlier that week and by the day of the party, her hands were cramped and aching but she had that notorious Mrs. Angelino smile plastered across her face as she presented all three perfectly primped cakes before the friends, family, and entire neighborhood in attendance. Each cake was a different pastel color (blue, yellow, lavender) with a coordinating curled ribbon attached at the end, and "Happy" "Birthday" "Gabrielle and Isaac" written between all three of them. Much food was eaten, steak, burgers, hot dogs, and then the staples that my mom made to impress company: stromboli (original Italian consisting of salami, pepperoni, ham, mozzerella and provolone cheese, tomato sauce, served with more tomato sauce, and the Philly cheesesteak stromboli, chopped steak with caramelized onions, grilled green peppers, and mozzerella cheese, served with tomato sauce-the "true Italian way"-or ketchup) and homemade pizza. Before I continue, I feel the need to remind you of who my mother really is. Boundless birthday parties came with chichi Christmases, extravagant Easters and vainglorious vacations, but a sense of closeness and happiness within the family was not the goal. After everything that's happened with my mom, I became obsessed with understanding why she's done all she has done. I spent many hours of many days at the Johnson County public library, searching for answers in diagnostic manuals like a monk does scriptures, seeking salvation from the cage of questions around my brain, around my heart. The words BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER popped up off of pages everywhere. All the symptoms fit my mom: recurrent suicidal behavior, inappropriate intense anger, impulsivity, frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. The list goes on, but one major symptom of borderline personality disorder which fits my mom even better than her pair of Seven jeans is identity disturbance. I feel as though my mother viewed her life as a show, she was the star, and we were the cast. She tried on different costumes, if you will, and assumed the role of the person who would wear that particular costume, and when she tired of it or found that role to be harder than she anticipated, she simply stripped that costume off and put another one on. She played the victim (impeccably well,) she did the whole single-mom-stripper thing, then she was saved (hallelujah!) and then she was a stay-at-home-mom which she tired of and became a working housewife with her at-home business. When she got tired of working again, she went back to being a stay-at-home-mom but she had to add a little zing to it so she decided to be a homeschooler. Then, she played the divorcee who was makin' it work as a new-found single mom, waiting tables at upscale restaurants in the city at night, seeing her kids off to school by day. But then she was waiting tables at upscale restaurants in the city at night and then partying until three am with coworkers ten years her junior, and having her kids see not only themselves off to school, but also the mysterious black dude sleeping on the living room couch. That's when she took on the deadbeat crackhead role she's currently portraying. You see, through it all, we were merely extras in her whole production. We tucked ourselves in at night through the single-mom-stripper thing, winced through the burns from the curling iron as she prepped us for church, kept our perfect Angelino smiles in place at all the right places, reheated chicken pot-pie while she was at conventions for her business, went to homeschool events with other homeschooled kids, and then...we were dropped. She's got a different cast for this new show. They're called ReeRee (?) and Mike and Mr. Ken (??) The point is, nothing was real to my mom. Nothing at all. Once, when I was 11, my mom came into my bedroom to wake me up for church and saw my left arm, so cut up and welted, dry blood smeared and crusting, it looked like ground beef. She shook me awake, and I looked into her eyes. Smoldering embers glared back at me. She grabbed my arm, pain flaring up instantly, tears stinging my eyes, my mind whirling in confusion. Why is she mad right now? "You better be wearing long sleeves today." she said and shoved my arm back, releasing me from the worst Indian burn of my life. All she needed was to assure nobody knew. That's all that mattered. And nobody did. I wrapped my arm in an ace bandage and gingerly led it through my expensive lavender V-neck sweater and she spoke nothing further of it until the next time she saw, which was before soccer practice, and she said the same thing, "You better be wearing long sleeves today." Never, "my-God, you're eleven, what is causing you to do this to yourself?" Never "let's talk about this." Just always "You better be wearing long sleeves today." My family was like a group of zombies who put on clean skin suits. We were rotting beneath, but always looked perfect. And that's all that mattered to Mom. My tenth birthday, like every other day, looked perfect. Because it was Isaac's second birthday, she did a little firetruck side-theme and made another cake, this one shaped like a firetruck, and she even had the fire department bring by a truck for the kids to go in and look at. Of course the scant remainder of the neighborhood who wasn't already there trickled out into the streets, pointing, mumbling, crowding around. People were taking pictures, lifting their kids up into the truck, making small talk with the firemen who were enjoying the plates of food my mom provided. The whole thing looked spectacular-beyond, really. My parents even announced the expectancy of Isaiah that day (I was kind of like, "really?" Like, she gives birth on my eighth birthday and then now, two years later at my tenth birthday party, more baby. Come  on.) It all was so very Dick and Jane, Sally and Jack. I don't know if Sally laid upstairs on her bed the night of her tenth birthday and cut her arms up with a shard of glass from a broken light bulb, but I did. But that wasn't the worst of the birthdays. Certainly not. The worst one wasn't even mine. It was Autumn's so very un-sweet sixteen. You remember the birthday cakes and cakes and practice cakes and cakes? That was the one consistency throughout our birthdays. When we moved to Kansas to become missionaries, we gave up an income and after my mom insisted on spending the last of our life's savings on a trip to Disney World and Puerto Rico, we became very poor. Not homeless shelter poor (that didn't come until later) but certainly food-drive, we aren't even Catholic but hail Mary full of grace help us pay the electric bill Catholic charities, Dear Santa I don't want any presents just the water to turn back on, poor. And that meant no birthday parties, a few used DVDs and video games for presents, but no matter how poor we ever got, my mom made it happen for us to have whatever cake we wanted. My sixteenth birthday, I got a used Justice League video game for the playstation and my mom caved in and let me get my nose pierced (because she couldn't afford to say no.) Certainly not MTV worthy, but I got a ten inch Snickers cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. That is a nearly fifty dollar cheesecake. Honestly, I had no idea how much it cost until just now when I looked it up. I assumed it was expensive, as a single slice is eight dollars, but wow. That number was still a bit shocking. I mean, considering the fact that the year I turned sixteen was the worst year financially our family had ever experienced at that point. Every day, Andy would sit down at the computer desk in the dining room, log into his bank account and his jaw would tense, becoming a bulge pulsing slowly as his vacant eyes reflected the red numbers on the screen. He'd sit there for a while, not blinking, just staring, his mind somewhere far away. Eventually, he'd turn the computer off (he turned everything off) and walk away, that bulge in his jaw still pulsing, and say "We're in the hole." Even so, for a reason I don't know, my mom always made sure to buy us whatever cake we wanted for our birthday. And so, when Gavin and I went to my mom's house for Autumn's birthday, not only was I stunned she hadn't gotten Autumn a single present, but she didn't even get her a cake. She bought a box cake mix and some store-bought frosting, and made my sister burnt cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. When I look back on all of this, I feel as though this was the flashing red sign that danger was ahead. Never in all my life had something like this happened. It may seem small, but this really was the major sign that everything was not alright. My mom sat there, hair a frizzing mess, face gaunt, body attenuated, bra-less, shameless even in front of company. I mean, company consisted solely of Gavin but still, a few years before she would have had make up on, hair done, laughing and trying to convince him she was a cool mom. But she was just slumped in the dining room chair, robe half-way undone, picking at the crumbs clinging to the cupcake paper laying like a crumpled flower on the yellow table. Autumn sat there, eyes down,face hot, making sarcastic jokes and remarks, trying as she could to deflect all the bad vibes of a terrible birthday. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, smoothed my yellow skirt, and fixed my curls, telling myself everything was alright. Everything was just fine. Everything's jake. That was February. That was the last birthday party my mom ever threw. One more month and then my mom would lose it entirely. One more month and everything would be wrong. One more month and my sister and brothers would be living in a cheap motel, and then in a homeless shelter. February, Gavin gave me a ring promising me forever. February, my mom was becoming tormented by the thought of forever. She was growing tired of this role of Mom and she didn't want to do it anymore. February, she disposed of us in her mind. March, she took out the trash.

"Gab, look!" Autumn yelled, but she didn't need to. I already saw. Thick, mucus-like amniotic fluid seeped out of the cracked, once protective shell and onto the grass, weighing the blades down with the snotty substance. The snotty substance which once protected life. The life that was laying in between the shards of shell and the dewy summer grass. Yellow feathers were matted down against his skeletal, premature body with the same phlegmy liquid soaking the grass. The dirt from the sole of my light up Barbie sneakers left its print on the off-white freckled shell; there was no denying I had done it. Autumn looked up at me, her eyes, filled with blame and despair, brimmed with tears that inevitably spilled over the barrier of her lashes and down her rosy, full cheeks. "You killed it," she said, tears breaking through her words. "I didn't do anything," I retorted. "We killed it. And it wasn't even our fault. Not really anyway. How were we s'posed to know there was something inside it? And really, how were we? I mean, I knew ducks were born inside of eggs, but I didn't know this egg in particular had one in it. I thought it was one of the eggs Mommom makes for breakfast. Only bigger. And freckly. Alright, I guess the spots should have been a sign. And I don't even know why I wanted to stomp it in the first place. I just...did. And now there it was. All crumpled and wet and well, dead. And it was all my fault. No. All our fault. She stomped it too. Right after I did. And then we saw. We crouched down around it, protectively. Guarding the evidence, our young brains trying as hard as they could to concoct some sort of plan. Tears began falling freely off of Autumn's lashes, snot mingled with tears dripped off her upper lip and onto the already soaked ground. "Stop crying," I spat, "You sound like a baby." That just made her cry harder, her blubbering creating a thick drool that dripped off her face with everything else. I lowered my voice urgently, "Shut up, Autumn. If you don't stop crying, Mom's gonna hear and come out to see what's going on. Do you want that, stupid? Do you want Mommy to come see what we did? " She shook her head, the wind catching her blonde, wispy hair, carrying her scent through the warm June air. Her sobs and blubbering lowered considerably. She used the hem of her strawberry printed tank top to wipe the majority of snot and drool from her face, sniffed up what she couldn't wipe, and said, "Whaddo you think we should do?" I stared at her, thinking, as she blinked away the last few straggling tears. "I guess, we should just cover it up. I don't want to pick it up." Her brow furrowed, her green eyes beneath it analyzing the duck corpse before us. "Cover it with what though? Leaves?" "No," I said immediately. "The wind's blowing. It'll blow the leaves off. We need something heavier. Gimme your jacket." At that, she began to cry more. "No, Gab, why don't we use yours?" "Be-CAUSE, Autumn! Because I'm the oldest, because I'm the smartest, because  I said! Gimme your jacket or we'll get caught. And I'll tell Mom you did it. And she'll believe me because I'm her favorite." Autumn's lips pursed, trying to block all the words she wanted to say back to me from coming out. Because I was right. I was the oldest. And though all of my other claims were as empty as the crushed shell on the grass, Autumn still listened to me simply because I was the oldest. And she was the nicest. She also seemed to be born with an awareness that I didn't grasp until much later in life: when we bicker, our heads get thicker; resolve matters quicker. Autumn was always one to take the high road and resolve the matter as quickly and efficiently as possible. I always liked to verify the fact that I was indeed right and she was in fact wrong. She always pursed her lips and nodded her head, assured deep down that while she may be younger, she quite possibly could be smarter. Even though I was in kindergarten with homework and stresses her little 3 year old mind couldn't fathom, she always had a much deeper understanding of things and was never so stupid as to let her pride interfere. She dutifully handed over the magenta and teal windbreaker my Mommom insisted she wear even though it was June, and I laid it over the corpse, the evidence, the Duck Doe, weighting the corners down with heavy rocks we gathered from the entrance of the forest. We stood up, brushing our hands off on the seats of our shorts, staring down at our handywork. "Looks pretty good to me," Autumn said. I scrunched my lips in thought. "Well," I said. "We'll need to think of something to say if they wonder why you're jacket is being held down by rocks in the middle of the yard, but it'll do for now. " Autumn nodded, then looked at me, her eyes filled with inspiration. "I know!" she exclaimed. "We'll just say it's a bed! You know, for all the wild bunnies that come into the yard!" I frowned, pretending to hate the idea, while jealousy swelled inside of my chest, wishing I had come up with it myself. I wanted to just brush it off as implausible and watch her head slump to her chest in disappointment but even I had to admit it was a pretty good idea, and given the circumstance (us being murderers,) I thought it wouldn't be too wise to excuse any good ideas, even if it wasn't created in my head. I shrugged my shoulders, "Yeah," I said nonchalantly. "Should work. Alright. Let's go in." She smiled, happy I approved her scheme, knowing how mad I was that I didn't think of it, smiling harder because of it. We looked once more at the mound of magenta in the yard. The wind would exhale, billowing up the center of it, making it look like a deformed magenta hot air balloon, and then it would inhale, and the thin windbreaker would cling to the shell beneath it, contouring its silhouette, disclosing itself to the world. We both inhaled deeply, inviting the warm, sweet air to tickle our lungs, and grasped each others' hands as we embarked back up the hill to our farmhouse. We left behind our evidence (my mom found it later and discarded of it for real,) but the guilt came in with the breeze and never left.

She messed my meds up. With her PhD and her Indian accent-nearly as thick as her caterpillar eyebrows, inching closer and closer before they finally met, with a kiss, in the center of her brow. I'm bipolar. You've heard of it, I'm sure. There are times when I'll be reading every store sign, billboard, and street name and then a little bit later, I'm fantasizing about the feel having shards of glass embedded in my entire body. While riding in the passenger seat of a car, I'd find myself praying for us to crash. And I'd slowly, quietly unbuckle my seat belt and wait for it to happen. I wanted nothing more than to crash through that windshield. But before I crash all the way through, like before I'm ejected from the vehicle, I just wanted to hit pause and stay in that moment forever. That moment where I'm just stuck in a shattered window and all the shards of glass are creating gashes in my face and my palms...my forearms sliced, blood trickling some places, streaming others, and still some gush. Around the time I visited her in her weird-smelling office, I wasn't too concerned about the excessive energy and chatty Cathy-ness of the mania part of my bipolar, yeah I was a bit more distressed about that whole wanting-to-lunge-my-body-through-the-windshield-of-a-moving-vehicle thing. What does she do? Prescribes me lithium. A lot of it. And nothing else. I don't know if you know, here's a fun lesson!

• Lithium is prescribed to treat mania in bipolar and manic depressive disorders. 
• It works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain.
• One side effect of lithium is depression.
• If you overdose, you can die 
The thing with behavior altering medicine is that it can take up to three months to take it's full effect. Psychiatrists strongly suggest you stay on the medicine for at least three months. By strongly suggest, I mean they will not switch your medication before that three month period is up. Into the first month, I had already begun feeling worse. I went to her and told her that I had been feeling more depressed and I didn't think it was helping. She refused to switch my medicine and insisted that I remain on the lithium for the next two months. Of course my mother counted my pills every night to make sure I had in fact taken them like I assured her daily I did. So simply not taking the pills was out of the question. And so I went on through the next weeks growing more and more suicidal every day. My fantasies of death and pain and blood and relief were increasing with every sunrise. One night, I was crying in my bed like I had done every night of my memory and I thought, I just want to sleep. Sleep forever. Have the ache of a hollow, lonely heart lifted finally. I'm going to sleep tonight. I'm going to sleep tonight and sleep forever. I grabbed the bottle of gloomy pills and poured the remaining contents-15 pills- down my throat then laid down in my bed to sleep the sleep I thought was going to last forever. 
My heart sunk into the pits of my ever so nauseous stomach when I awoke the next morning. I opened my eyes, confused, why were my eyes opening? I'm not supposed to be here. My eyes aren't supposed to open. My confusion grew into pure bewilderment as I realized, I couldn't see a thing. A bright blob-I think that's the window. A dark blob-the hallway? I pushed back the covers- if I wasn't dead, I had to get ready for school and act as normally as possible. If my mom knew... Oh my god. She couldn't know. I'd be back in Marillac just in time for their "pizza" and "pudding" lunch special. No. If I wasn't dead, I had to get to school, away from my mom, and let the symptoms wear off. I should be fine by 3. Right? I put one foot on the floor (that was tingly.) Then the other. Putting all my weight on my feet, I rose up from the bed, only to collapse to the floor. Not only could I not see, I couldn't stand either. How was I going to walk around school if I couldn't even stand? Whatever, I thought. I just have to...somehow...get to the bathroom and get ready for school. I'll figure out how to skip out of school later. One thing at a time. Get to the bathroom. I crawled to my door, grabbed hold of the door knob and pulled my body up. Holding on to the wall and moving as quickly as I could given the circumstances, I managed to get into the bathroom, pull the door shut, and lock it. I shut the lid of the toilet seat-covered in lavender shag to match the hand towels- and sat there, feeling drained, nauseous and blind all at once. I grabbed what I hoped was eyeshadow and compact mirror and tried to put on my make up. Have to look normal. My hand was too shaky. I failed pathetically and so I gave up. I'll just say I don't feel well. Wasn't a lie in the slightest either. I remember very little of the ride to school. I kept blacking out, then coming to. Throwing up in my mouth, then trying to play it off as a burp so Mom didn't get suspicious. But I do remember school. Oh so well. I spent my entire first period puking in the bathroom and passing out at my desk. Then, while stumbling back to my computer class, I passed out in the hall outside the door, causing the teacher to call an aide to take me downstairs to the nurse. There, in the tacky nurse's office, covered with posters of cute little ducklings and monkeys smoking cigarettes with slogans like IT'S NOT CUTE WHEN YOU DO IT EITHER  and NOBODY LIKES BUTTS and a betta fish named Darth Betta sitting on the desk, I confessed to my school nurse what I had done. And though I pleaded her to do otherwise, she called my mom. In my defense, I was inebriated and my persuasive skills weren't at their usual top notch, otherwise, I'm sure I could have been more convincing. I was so scared, sitting there in the nurse's office, waiting for my mom to come. I knew I was going to get it. I might as well say good-bye to everyone here because I'll be in Marillac for a very,very long time. I can just forget about going to WPA (women pay all) with Nick because boys don't want to go to dances with crazies. God. I had already puked my guts out and now I felt like I was going to puke more. More guts out. If I had any left. Mom picked me up, silent, scowling, sneering. Eventually, she spoke. Though what she said, I couldn't tell you. Remember, I did that whole Jack and Jill went up a hill shut up shut up shut up thing when she talked to me. But I'm sure it was something like, "I don't know what to do with you anymore...You're doing this for attention...I have a lot of things to do today I don't have time for this...My world doesn't revolve around you...What do you want me to do?...You're out of control...Blah ba dee blah blah..." My mind was still shutting off and then turning back on again and I had not yet gotten my vision back when we got to the hospital. I don't remember much of that part either. But I remember my mom signed me in and then left. She had to take my brother to a dentist appointment. They told her they were waiting for the results of the test they ran on my kidneys, but judging from the fact that I had taken 1500mg of lithium at one time and factoring in my height and weight, they told her there was a very good chance I was not going to make it.  That I would, in fact, die of kidney failure. She told them to call her on her cell if anything happened. And I laid there in that bed, wondering if I really had succeeded. If I really was going to die. And I laid there, watching Wheel of Fortune on the television set mounted into the wall of the hospital room, praying that the doctor would come in, a look of sorrow, guilt, an unwillingness to tell me that, she's so sorry, but there was so much damage to my kidneys, and again, I'm so sorry, Miss Angelino, I don't know how to say this, but there's nothing further we can do. The doctor came in. I knew instantly from the look on her face. The look that said "You oughta feel lucky. That little stunt almost cost you your life." My heart sandbagged to the pits of my stomach, crushed under the weight of diminished hope. I was going to have to live. And not only live, but leave this hospital and go...worst case scenario: Marillac...best case scenario: back home with my mother to hear about how selfish and terrible I am and how I cause so much grief and irritation for the rest of the family. I exhaled, now four hours after I woke up, I was feeling sicker than I felt all day. I was going to live. That much was certain, and that much was terrifying. After the doctor left, a psychologist came in. I had made up my mind to explain this was all an accident, by gosh! No I'm not trying to kill myself, jeepers! Didn't realize how much I was taking, my mistake, Doc. Anything to keep myself away from Marillac. She came in. I don't recall her name but I remember she had beautiful, dark hair cut off at her chin. Soft, loving hands as she grazed my forehead, looking into my eyes not with judgement, but empathy. "You sweet thing," she crooned. "What happened?" Maybe it was the comfort that overwhelmed my body when she touched me with the hands a loving mother has or her espresso colored, almond eyes filled with pain as she looked at the freshly cut welts smarting my forearms, but I broke down. I told her everything. About the lithium, my mom, the rapes-the nightmares. She listened, nodding at times, sighing sympathetically at others. Finally she said, "You aren't crazy." Everything in my mind-my body-froze. The blood running through my veins, halted for fraction of a second as did my heart, my lungs, my brain. I had never heard those words spoken to me before. For years I had heard exactly the opposite. By this point, I was ever so convinced that I was a freak, a loony, a psycho, a monster. Something to be poked, prodded, tested, analyzed. She had my undivided attention. "You don't need to go to Marillac. You feel this way because of your mother. And I've never said this to a seventeen year old girl before, but get out of that house as fast as you can." 

I've been having these weird outer-body experiences when Gavin and I argue. It's so bizarre because I haven't had these in a long time. Not since I lived with my mom. It didn't used to be something that just happened to me; I forced it to happen. It was so hard to do but as it happens with most things one does habitually, it became easier and easier to do until it finally just- kicked in when my mom and I would argue. She always said the most hurtful things, most I told tell myself she didn't really mean, when she was angry and so to- shield myself from it, I would make myself separate myself from- myself. It's difficult to explain. Basically it's like this: after every argument with her ended, I hated the way I felt. In reality, I hated who I was. She said things that really made a person hate themselves. It was so easy for her to do and she was so successful in tearing me apart because she was the person who knew me the best. Inside and out. She knew where I hurt and where I was weak. As my mother she should have guarded my soft, child-like spots, but instead, she used her tongue as the dagger to puncture the skin of my underbelly. I couldn't make her stop saying the things she said, but I could make myself not feel it. So when she would start, I took a deep breath and when I exhaled, a chill would take over my whole body, goose-pimpling my flesh. And I was gone. Looking at the fight from the safety of somewhere deep inside my head. My mouth on autopilot responded with words I didn't think. I stared her straight in the eye through the whole thing and, though she was peering through what they say is the doorway to your inner being, she didn't see the shiny, robot eyes peering back at her--

I don't know what is wrong with me. I feel so stupid. So ridiculous. I'm disgusted with myself. I'm so sick of constantly feeling threatened by other women. Be it the leggy blonde who confidently walks past me, the smell of perfection suffocating me in a plume of perfume, or the actress on television whose rack is spilling over in her tube top, I can feel my intestines twist inside me. My stomach flips on its side, my mouth dries up, and then the thoughts start rushing in. You'll never be that. You'll never look like her. She's the type he'll leave you for. She's they type he wants. Everyone knows you can't choose your soul mate, but you can choose who you cheat on the soul mate with. And that is exactly the girl he'd cheat on you with. She's everything you aren't. She's everything you could never be. He's thinking about fucking her right now.   He'll be thinking about her while he's fucking you later. And while I know that none of these thoughts hold any shred of accuracy, I can't help but feel like it's all 100% true. But see, it would just be so much easier if I didn't know that my thinking is delusional. So much easier because if I truly believed that the thoughts I think are completely valid, I wouldn't have to feel crazy on top of it. But I'm totally aware of my insanity. I know I'm crazy. And in turn, I'm lonely. For fear of people knowing how extremely insecure I am and how fully delusional I am, I can't tell anyone how I feel. Not even Gavin. Especially not Gavin. What, and give him an even better reason that my physical imperfections to drive him into the arms of another? Yeah, right. Instead, I sit there, feeling my blood congeal in my icy veins, trying to focus on something else, somewhere else, someone else, anything else. And I combat the crazy thoughts screaming mercilessly into my head with "Shh"s and "Go away"s. And I feel the skin on my arms and the back of my neck turn from people skin to goose flesh and I want to do nothing else but lay in my bed and cut the cold out of my body. Cut the bad gunky out. But I don't. Because then he'll know I'm crazy. Right now I think he only suspects it. And only now and then. I try to keep the crazy thoughts to myself. I've made the mistake of telling him about the thoughts before and I could just see it in his eyes. He was doubting my mental stability. After years of being insane, I know the look. It's the same cold-eyed look that prick of a psychiatrist gave me when I was 16. "You see this sign?" he said, gesturing to the cluttered clipboard hanging on the wall adjacent to his desk. His finger was pointing towards a decorative sign made of card-stock and stamps that read  I AM UNSTABLE,  some letters drifted towards the top of the sign while some sunk down to the bottom, conveying both the word as well as the definition. "You ought to be wearing this around your neck, huh?" I said nothing. I looked from his coal-like eyes back to the floor of his office, staring at the multicolored weaves in his carpet. It looked like low-pigmented rainbow vomited all over the floor. I wished the vomit floor would open up and swallow me whole. Or maybe it would open and I would fall into a pool, like in It's a Wonderful Life. I wasn't so lucky. The douche continued. "When you...mutilate yourself, you are saying this to the world. You're telling the world you are unstable. Do you think people want to be friends with unstable people?" I took the question as rhetorical even though he paused for me to answer. "Do you think people want to date unstable people?" I'm not going to answer that. "I don't think that's the sort of message you're looking to send people." I don't think you know anything. "Gabrielle, you need to rethink how you portray yourself if you want to be successful in life." And with that, I resumed tuning him out as he rambled on about God knows what and wrote me prescriptions for anonymous pills that I obediently slipped down my throat, and after a while, I was out of there and on my way to forgetting. I'm almost there now. I've forgotten his name. I wish I could forget what he said. Or the way his hairline ran terrified from his forehead to the safety of his crown. Mostly though, I want to forget that place entirely. First it'd be nice to just forget, even for only a second, that I have so much to be self conscious about. I wish I could watch whatever and not have to worry about how I will feel about it afterwards. Some women allow their boyfriends/husbands to go to strip clubs and receive lap dances, I won't even allow mine to watch the nude scenes in rated R movies. And that is yet another reason why I know he will end up leaving me for someone else. Someone sexier, someone more compatible, someone simpler, someone sane.