By the time my teenage years wrapped their claws around me, I was already raw inside—angry, hollow, and bruised in places no one could see. I wore rebellion like armor. I didn't care about rules, and I didn't care about what people thought of me. At least, that's what I told myself. The truth was, I cared too much. I cared about everything—about not being enough, about being abandoned, about being seen as worthless. But caring hurt too much, so I masked it with defiance.
School became a battleground. The teachers gave up on me, the students whispered about me, and I stopped trying to prove them wrong. Instead, I leaned into the chaos. I was the girl who fought in the park, who skipped classes, who rolled her eyes at authority. When someone crossed me, I didn't back down. My fists became my words, my bruises my confessions. The park was where we gathered, the place where my rage found a release. Every punch, every shove, every scream was less about the person in front of me and more about the storm I was carrying inside.
It didn't take long before I started clinging to the wrong kinds of friendships. People who seemed bold and fearless, people who lived with the same "nothing matters" energy I thought I had. We smoked together, drank together, laughed too loud together. I thought they understood me. I thought, in our reckless nights and blurred mornings, I had finally found a family.
But family doesn't betray you.
The first crack came with a boy I didn't even care much about. He wasn't special to me—not really. He was just someone who made me feel less invisible for a moment. I let him hold my hand, let him text me late at night, let him think I was interested, because it was easier than admitting how empty I felt. But then, one of the girls I thought was my friend decided my life was entertainment. She went behind my back, whispering to him that I was into prostitution. That I sold myself. That I was dirty.
The word spread faster than fire, and just like that, he was gone. He didn't ask me if it was true. He didn't give me a chance to defend myself. He just left, the way people always seemed to. And my so-called friend? She smirked when I confronted her, like she had won something. Like hurting me gave her power.
That betrayal stung more than I could admit. Not because I loved him—because I didn't. But because it confirmed the fear I had buried so deep: that even the people closest to me didn't see me as human. They saw me as a rumor, a punchline, a mistake.
After that, I stopped trying to hold onto friends. Trust was a luxury I couldn't afford. I drifted further into habits that numbed me—smoking until the world blurred, drinking until the nights disappeared, throwing myself into fights I didn't need to pick. The more people distanced themselves, the harder I pushed. If they thought I was ruined, I would ruin myself further. If they thought I was lost, I would walk deeper into the dark.
But even monsters have breaking points.
My grandmother had been watching from the sidelines, her heart breaking in silence as she saw what I was becoming. She had carried me through so much already, but she wasn't strong enough to carry the weight of my rebellion forever. I could see it in her tired eyes, in the way she sighed whenever the phone rang with yet another complaint about me.
The day she broke was the day I realized my choices weren't just mine. They were hers too. They were crushing her. She sat me down, her voice trembling with both anger and sorrow, and told me she couldn't do it anymore. That she couldn't watch me destroy myself. That she couldn't be the one holding the pieces of my chaos when I refused to even try.
So she made the choice I didn't know how to make for myself. She sent me to stay with my mom in another state. It wasn't framed as a punishment, though it felt like one. It was framed as survival.
At first, I resented her. I hated that she was giving up on me, hated that she was pushing me away, hated that I was being uprooted and forced into a place I didn't want to be. But beneath the anger, there was something else I didn't want to admit: relief. Relief that maybe, just maybe, someone still believed I could be saved.
Because deep down, under all the smoke and rage and scars, there was still a piece of me that wanted saving. A piece of me that longed to breathe again.
That piece whispered to me as I packed my things. It whispered when I said goodbye to the park, to the girls who had pretended to be friends, to the boy who had walked away. It whispered when I looked at my grandmother's face one last time and saw the love there, even through the exhaustion.
Maybe I wasn't beyond repair. Maybe being sent away wasn't the end. Maybe it was the beginning.
I don't know what I had coming for me.... But I hoped it was good.