A long time ago, in a mentality far, far away. There was a six year old girl with bangs and grass stains on her jeans. Now, dear reader, she was the tiniest little thing when she was born. A month early I might add. Merely 4 and a half pounds. 

“She could fit in my forearm.” Her dad would say.

“Her head was huge.” Her mother would say. (although I believe it’s because her mind was full of dreams and magic. But her mother just thought she looked like a bobble head.)

This girl was a princess among her family as well as in her head. She grew up being inspired by everyone and everything she laid eyes on. Fast forward to six years old and she sees everyone as she sees herself. Kind and sweet. 

“Everytime she went to the playground, she would stand at the top of the slide and we’d be waiting for her to come down. But all these other kids came down before her. The whole time we were wondering what the hell she could be doing up there and when her dad went up to get her, she was standing next to the slide, waving everyone on saying ‘you can go, you can go.’ She did that everywhere. In lines, at school she was always letting people go ahead.” This story was told time and time again about our sweet girl. She was gifted with the ability to be unconditionally kind. Always sharing, being polite and a little shy. Always willing to make someone happy. 

But you see, gifts can often be seen as a curse when they’re used on people who don’t deserve them. 

Elementary school, she sees that not everyone is like her. After being the only girl out a whole class who wasn’t invited to a “friends” birthday party, being left out of games during recess. Her heart was wounded, small scars began to etch their way across her face. One's only she could see, but they were small, she brushed them off and got back up, creating her own light where there was none. 

Middle school comes, and she’s nervous but excited. She meets new friends and soon enough she has people she believes could be the ones. 

“I met my best friends in 7th grade.” Her father always told her. And she expected she’d do the same. 

But 7th grade rolled in, and so did the storms. The people she thought were her friends were suddenly turning on her. 

“You’re so skinny.” A scar drew across her stomach

“Go eat a burger or something.” But she did eat burgers all the time, she was always eating, always starving. So how could she possibly eat more? A scar appeared on her mouth

“You’re a toothpick.” Scars lined her thighs.

“I can see your ribs, you look like a skeleton.” scars on her chest

“You’re so flat, you must be less than a double A.” bigger scars on her chest

She continued to try and brush them off. But the light was flickering, slowly getting dimmer. And with more scars, she felt weaker. 

“Do you have an eating disorder? Are you anorexic?” her stomach was slashed so many times, new scars appeared over the old.

Mind you these were all told to her by her friends.

“You’re freakishly tall.” 

“Your hair is ugly.”

“Those jeans are cute, it’s too bad you have no a** to fill it.”

“Whoever did those braids did a really good job, they don’t look good on you though. You just don’t have the face for it.”

“You like him? That’s disgusting.”

“That shirt looks really bad on you.”

With each comment, each humiliating sentence, they ripped her heart from her chest. She was bleeding out, her hands holding the wounds closed. But new one's kept appearing. 

She still tried desperately to fit in, to impress the “friends” who stood so high above her. Because sometimes they could be nice, sometimes they could compliment and invite her to go places with them. And just when she thought she could trust them, they shoved her down. 

“You’re such an easy target.”

“It’s so easy to make fun of you.”

Everytime someone pushed her, humiliated her, she asked herself the same question. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”

And one day she was invited to a birthday party, one with people she wasn’t super close with, and were kind of nice to her. She had fun for a while. Until they were walking back after a game of manhunt in the dark, her trailing behind because she was checking her phone. When in a break of hysterical laughter, someone said. 

“Where’s Brianna?” 

Brianna looked up, walking faster to catch up when someone else said, loud enough for everyone to hear, 

“Who cares!” 

She stopped mid stride, watching as everyone burst into laughter. She hung her head, shuffling further and further behind. “If I disappeared right now no one would notice. If I ran all the way home, no one would care.” she spoke these words out loud to herself, under the whisper of the wind. 

She felt unworthy talking to people who were “cooler” or “more popular” than she was. So whenever someone like that spoke to her or even just said hi, she thought it was just another joke. Some inside thing where everyone knew she was ugly and stupid and awkward. So she ignored them, she made a face or walked away. And everyone thought she was stuck up. 

But those “friends” had her so far under their boot she didn’t give anyone else a chance cause she thought they saw her the way her “friends” did. She lost so many opportunities, so many chances at making friends all because she thought she was unworthy of attention unless it was to humiliate her. 

And honestly, I don’t blame her and neither should you, dear reader. This girl was made to think she was nothing, less than nothing. That everything she did was wrong, every move she made was carried out in the most awkward of fashions. So much so she never took pictures of herself without a filter, never posting anything of just her. These “friends” made her look in the mirror and see an ugly, unpopular, good for nothing weak loser. 

Oh reader, once these “friends”  heard of her new insecurity created by all their tormenting, they didn’t leave it alone. 

“No, stop taking pictures of me!” scars appeared on her face as she frantically turned around or covered herself with her hands.

“You look so awkward! Ew what’s up with your smile it’s so big!” scars etched across her lips and down her face.

“Why do you get all wrinkly when you smile? Your whole face scrunches up.” 

They made her hate cameras and photos and then chased her around with one. Saving, posting and sending them, showing other people and further humiliating her.

Anxiety clawed its way through her chest, there were so many open wounds she couldn’t possibly stitch up. Knives sticking out her back and a hole where her heart used to be. 

She was always jittery, our sweet girl didn’t understand why this was happening to her and thought it incredibly selfish to agree with what her mom always told her. 

“They’re just jealous of you, you’re gorgeous.” But her mother couldn’t see the scars and the knives and the blood. How much their words hurt her. 

She tried time and time again to get up, but they only pushed her back down, their laughs quickly following close behind. 

Our girl had made up her mind about middle school, it sucked. It was a cage with freedom and maturity and friends on the other side. She was trapped until graduation. But she couldn’t possibly leave her “friends.” 

“If I leave them, I’ll have nobody. And being alone is worse than having friends who make fun of me.” She didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t know how to be alone. 

But it was about a week before the last day of middle school and after yet another day of being shoved and backstabbed and heartbroken, she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I hate them! I hate my friends and I hate the way they make me feel and I hate being their easy target!” She sobbed to her parents that night. She thought maybe when she reached her breaking point, she’d lash out and say all the things she’d wanted to say since the first scars. But instead her mind was tired from putting on a smile and laughing with the people laughing at her. She was tired of feeling useless and so she cried and cried. She thought it was pathetic. 

But it was the curse of her gift of unconditional kindness that held strong. She couldn’t hurt them, wouldn’t say anything to drag them down because then she’d be just as bad as them. And she couldn’t hurt anyone without feeling guilty about it. Even if they’d hurt her first. 

Now reader, as she curled into a ball and sobbed into her pillow begging for the universe to give her a way out of this. The thing she swore she’d never do came rising up inside her. She sat up and wiped her eyes, shaking her head. 

“Anything is better than this, even if it means having no one. I can’t live like this anymore.” 

So she stood up and brushed herself off. Tore the knives from her back and picked her heart up off the ground. And for once, she wasn’t scared anymore. She could feel the freedom licking at the bars of her cage and as soon as it opened on the first day of ninth grade, she jumped out and never looked back. 

Over the course of the year, she realized being alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely. She was perfectly content by herself. There was no one there to judge and she needed that if she was going to change. The wounds healed, leaving pink scars in their wake. They didn’t look so big anymore. 

Although the insults about her height stuck for awhile, people still sometimes pointed her out for being so tall (even though she really wasn’t. she’s only 5’7.” She still hunched over sometimes, and still felt awkward when she was a head taller than the girls she was talking to. And when she went on a trip to New York City one weekend, she was opened up to a whole new version of confidence. 

People were who they wanted to be there, no more and no less. (And plus she was pretty short compared to the crowds or people she walked through) everyone had their one thing, their own passions. And it was when she went to see the Broadway show, Wicked, did she finally see just how fearless she could be. 

It was intermission, and she was in the mile long line to use the bathroom, when she saw her. This woman walked out of a stall, almost two heads taller than everyone else. She watched in amazement. “How is she that tall?” Her hair was piled on her head, revealing her broad but delicate bird - like shoulders, like hers. And when she looked down her mile long legs, she saw them. 

They had to be 6 inches at least. Platform black heels. That's when our girl realized this woman isn't this tall naturally, she chose to be heads taller than everyone else. (she was definitely at least 5’8 without them but even then she chose to be 6’4.” She wore those heels so confidently, shoulders back, head high. The woman in the heels, Brianna told herself, was the inspiration she needed. This was just some ordinary woman, maybe even a tourist like herself. But she was everything our sweet girl wished to be and more. 

When that woman left, our girl stood up. Rolled her shoulders back and held her head high. For one thing, her back felt twenty times better. And another, her mind felt twenty times better. She was being confident and confidence requires you to stand tall and to stand out. Our girl kept her shoulders back and never hunched over again. “I have to stand tall if I want a place in this world, if I want people to see me and not dismiss me.”

Once she started being herself, wearing the clothes she wanted, standing the way she wanted and opening herself up to new people. She saw that she had blinded herself to everyone but her “friends.” It was only those three girls who felt that way about her, they were the only one's laughing. Not anyone else. She was angry for thinking that everyone saw her the way they did, for not taking the chance to talk to people who would have accepted her if she had let them. 

But she realized she was just going to have to make up for lost time. And once she started finding herself, finding what she loved and what she wanted to do, others took notice. They thrived on her confidence and reached out to her. Girls she was once intimidated by were telling her she was gorgeous and beautiful. Even people she didn’t know, one's at the mall or in the bathroom or on social media picked up on her radiating new found confidence. 

“Hey! I love your outfit.” someone called out to her as she walked by them in the mall. 

“I’m totally digging your style by the way.” A girl said as she walked by her in the hallway.

“I love your makeup!” someone said in the bathroom. 

“You’re so pretty!” Someone commented on her selfie

“Model!” someone else commented on her instagram photo

Her followers went up from 120 to 620 in a matter of months

She met people who wanted to talk to her and wanted to be her friend. People she would have never given a chance if she hadn’t taken the risk. 

And those girls, well let’s just say they weren’t bothering her anymore. They were actually nice to her. (and plus they probably got the message that she was done putting up with their sh*t.)  Our girl thinks they were meant to be classmates, not friends. 

Now our girl isn’t done with her journey, she probably will never really be done. There will always be people who want to tear her down. (but only because they’re jealous) and she’ll just have to stand up and show that she’s not afraid and she doesn’t care what they have to say. And if she ever runs into another toxic person again, she won’t think twice about walking the other way. 

The risk she made was her first step to success. She made her plan, she ran with it and hasn’t stopped running since. She’s free from her restraints that were weighing down. And now she can focus on what matters. Finding friends who care about her and are there for her as much as she’s there for them. Finding her people and her place. She’s still looking of course and there will be a lot of trial and error. But that’s how you grow. And she has so much further to go, so much more to see and she can’t wait to see it all. She can’t wait to become the person she was meant to be. To use her gift on the right people for the right things. And she’s going to follow her dreams no matter what anyone has to say about them. (which is going to be a world renowned author of course, like J.K Rowling or Marissa Meyer.) 

She’s still growing and changing. She still gets insecure and nervous and anxious. But she knows that in the long run she won’t regret anything. All her scars make up who she is. They remind her what she’s been through and what she’s still going through. If she can get through all those wounds, then she can get through this. She can do anything. 

Our girl is on her way. She’s running, shoulders back and head high. Wind in her hair and face lit up by her smile. Never looking back.