Dear Stranger,
I don't know if anyone will ever read these words. Maybe they'll vanish into the air the same way I've so often lost myself in the hallways of my own life. But today I need to write, because I can't keep faking smiles when inside I'm falling apart.
My name is Erika. And though it may sound strange, what weighs on me most isn't my name—it's the way I carry it in a world that seems to hunger for weak people. By nature, I'm shy. I'd rather watch silently than speak, I'd rather take a step back than face what makes me uncomfortable. But that caution—that distance I build to protect myself—has become the perfect excuse for others to point, to harass, to hurt.
Everyone tells me I must be strong, that I must resist. "Be brave, don't let them win," they repeat, as if words alone were an impenetrable shield. But what happens when being strong is exhausting? What happens when your knees shake from carrying a weight that was never yours to bear? What no one understands is that being strong hurts too—because sometimes you don't want to endure anymore, you just want to rest, to cry without fear that someone will use your tears as a weapon.
My classmates find amusement in my vulnerability. They invent cruel games, phrases that cut like knives disguised as jokes, stares that weigh like stones. They call it "fun." I call it daily torture. And the worst part is, they convince me of something: that my pain is insignificant, that I'm exaggerating, that I'm the problem.
I dream, amid this monotony, of a prince who will rescue me—someone who can see beyond my silence and understand the scream lodged in my throat. But each day that passes, that dream slips further away, like sand through my fingers. And I wonder if life is only this: learning to endure the unbearable, to silence the unspeakable, to hate what cannot change.
I hate bad boys. I hate that their strength becomes a license to wound. I hate the laughter that leaves invisible scars. I hate the people who watch and do nothing. I hate my life for letting myself be trapped in this maze.
I'm writing this letter because maybe someone, somewhere, will read it and recognize themselves. Maybe someone will understand that they're not alone in this burning desperation. I want them to know I understand, that shared pain hurts a little less. That we're not exaggerating, that we're not weak—we're human, and our fragility is part of our strength.
I don't have a happy ending for this letter, nor empty promises. I only have these words, raw and bleeding, for whoever needs to hear them: your pain matters, your voice matters, you matter.
With a tired heart,
Erika
---
Erika had written the letter the night before. Maybe it was a farewell, maybe a cry for help. Who could know? The words remained hidden in her backpack, a burning secret waiting either to be discovered—or ignored.
The morning at the university began like so many others: with the sensation of being prey. She walked through the halls with tense shoulders, her eyes scanning every corner as if a lion might leap at any moment. She had learned to live like this: alert, afraid, wishing she could be invisible.
The classroom clock struck eight. The beginning of class was always a thin line between relief and hell. Erika took a deep breath and, for the first time that day, felt her heart grant her a reprieve. "They didn't come… I'll be fine," she thought, and a timid, almost imperceptible smile appeared on her lips.
But then, like a cruel echo shattering the calm, she heard it. That laugh. Unique. Repugnant. Ester.
The undisputed queen of the place, the girl everyone wanted to imitate, the one who decided who was worthy of being seen and who deserved to be destroyed. At her side was Samuel—the perfect boy, with a smile that melted everyone else and a cruelty that went unnoticed, because his beauty seemed to absolve him of everything.
Eight others trailed behind them, loyal shadows orbiting the pair like satellites of malice. They didn't need words. Just by walking together, they sent a message: "Here we are, and no one is safe from us."
Erika felt her blood turn cold. The smile vanished from her face as if it had never existed. The murmur of the other students, the complicit glances, even the air itself seemed to grow heavier.
That group had a single purpose: to show the world how miserable someone like her could be. To remind her that her life held no truces, no hiding places. That, though her letter begged for a miracle, all she found each day was the same invisible roar of cruelty.
Erika lowered her gaze as Ester and her entourage entered the classroom. She knew what was coming; she had lived it so many times she could almost predict every gesture, every word. She wished she could shrink, become smaller than she already was, disappear among the desks.
—Look at her! —Ester exclaimed, her voice dripping with venom disguised as honey—. Did you see her clothes? Looks like they came out of a dumpster.
The laughter spread like wildfire. Samuel, with his eternal "perfect boy" smile, leaned toward her.
—Come on, Erika, aren't you tired of being pathetic? Even your shadow wants to escape from you.
A couple of his friends knocked Erika's backpack to the floor, spilling its contents: wrinkled notebooks, a broken pen—and the letter. That letter. The secret she had written in the early morning hours.
Ester snatched it up before Erika could react.
—And what's this? —her tone turned theatrical—. A love letter! —she read aloud—: "I can't keep faking smiles when inside I'm falling apart…"
The entire classroom erupted in laughter. Every word Erika had written, every intimate confession, became a public spectacle. A cry for help twisted into a joke.
—How dramatic! —Ester pretended to wipe a tear while the others applauded the parody. Samuel added:
—I say we give her an award: "The Queen of Self-Pity."
Erika's cheeks burned. She didn't know whether to run, cry, or scream. Her legs trembled but were rooted to the ground like chains. Each laugh was an invisible blow, each stare a knife.
The silence she longed for never came. Because the worst part wasn't Ester's mockery or Samuel's cruelty. The worst part was everyone else—the classmates who watched, who laughed, who filmed with their phones… and did nothing.