Young

I remember reading magazines like YM, Teen, and Seventeen religiously as a teenager. I would read, then religiously follow their beauty advice, boy advice, life advice, even though none of it seemed to really work. But, I could draw the conclusion, if it was written in a magazine, it must be correct.
 
I can remember reading one article about teenage prostitutes. Girls who were my age, came from middle class families living in the suburbs, just like me, out on the street turning tricks. I remeber reading the article several times, then lying back on my clean bedsheets, and wondering how I could sell myself into a world of pain and destroyed lives. I needed a physical translation for the pain I felt inside yet couldn't explain. I needed a reason to be miserable, because my life gave me none.
 
I remember sitting in my room with the lights off. Seeing the world by the soft glow of a candle somehow seemed more appropriate. I could hear my family milling about the house outside my room, making a snack, watching a movie, but they could not enter into my world. My private, dark, warm world of secret agony that I created for myself. I used to take a pin, draw it through the blue part of the flame, then press it into my flesh in a spot that no one would ever find. Too afraid to do any real damage to myself, I had to be content to create small, painful blisters, or light scratches across my milky-white arms.
 
I was young. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know why I felt so bad inside all the time, or what drove me to do what I did. My life was like a huge paper back novel, with nothing but blank pages inside. With each minute of each day, more words were inscribed within the novel. Today, the novel lies nowhere near being finished. Waiting patiently for the pen to scribe the next words.