A Simple Hug

Silence is her worst enemy when everything is silent she has time to think, and thinking is dangerous for one whose life has been turned upside down. As she sits on the couch and listens to everyone sleep, her mind wonders in unseen directions, and then the tears start as they always do on silent nights. Tears of pain and sorrow, guilt and regret, hate and love. She wonders if she cant even love herself how is anyone else to love her? She regrets having that last bite; she regrets that thanksgiving when she was nine. Her stomach aches from the guilt of being a pig, of being selfish and eating the last cookie. She feels the pain in her heart every time someone looks at her in disgust, and disdain. People tell her they understand, but how can they? None that has talked to her knows what it is like to be overweight, none know that hours she has cried because she is ignored. No one knows how many times she has called herself a coward for not being able to pull the trigger. She gets up after a night of crying and no one notices her swollen eyes, or her cries for help as she asks morbid questions. No on takes notice of the way she is always silent and never laughs anymore. And none care that her life is filled with loneliness and self hate.

They tell her that she needs to be more outgoing, but she fears rejection again, they tell her to exercise, but they never listen to the pain she feels. Its as if they don’t care. Then when one does notice and she says nothing is wrong, they don’t care enough to ask again, to make sure she isn’t lying. Being the new girl is hard enough without having to deal with rejection from people she thought were friends. As she sits in the back row and cries, they never see because she is quick to leave. When the pain is too much to bare she takes a knife and studies it before drawing it across her wrists in hopes that maybe it would "accidentally " cut her. When she is unable to do it, she gets up and runs outside calling herself a coward for not being able to end her own pain. She spends another night in tears as she waits for sleep to come. She gets up once again with swollen eyes; she goes about her normal routine. Then someone notices her swollen eyes and the pain within them. They don’t offer words of advice, or say they know how she is feeling, they don’t try and smooth everything over and make light of her pain. They offer her a simple hug. As they turn to leave for the first time in months there is a smile in her lips and happiness in her eyes. She goes home and flushes the pills down the toilet, the ones she was going to use to kill herself with.

They didn’t notice her downward spiral, but they notice her upward climb, and as new people enter her life, the days of swollen eyes fall into the past, where they belong, and days of laughter and smiles are in the future all due to a simple hug, from some one who care.

Feb 9, 2012