Insecurity: A Short Story

Another cold and dark morning on the bus, all I could feel was dread as we got closer and closer to the gates. Despair suffocated me like a fish out of water. I didn't want to go back and face another day in hell. There was nowhere to go, school was the jail cell I lived in during the day, and at home I was an actress pretending I was okay. Every night I was beaten with his so called rumors and continuous distrust because of his own insecurity. Every single day my self-esteem sunk lower, being told to change constantly, not fitting in because I had to withdraw from those I connected to, just to try and appease the situation. After continuous days of going through the same old toils, I felt myself skating closer and closer to the edge. What

This is what you want, to belong so they like you. Do you like you?” Like a crashing wave, I was being torn apart and pushed under the water struggling to take a breath, I gasped for air like I was just resuscitated after drowning. The lyrics hit me hard, like a smack in the face. The simple verse tore me open, ripping the already bleeding wounds even further apart. At the end of the verse the simple question “Do you like you?” was a question I had been asking myself for a long time now, and answering with a solid

I laid on my side facing the kindle, holding my best friend since birth –my stuffed golden retriever Princess Rose- while slow quiet tears fell with the words that filled my silent room. The lyrics silenced all of the discouraging words and thoughts that floated in my head, and throughout my room. In their place were lyrics that shook my core. The dam inside of me was beginning to burst but the water flow was a slow trickle, and as the song continued to play the tears ran faster. The song that saved me was “Try” by Colbie Caillat, that night it played on repeat like a broken record. My mom came in my room during the fifth or sixth repeat and saw me crying, I probably scared her that night, I ever saw her eyes because I was too busy crying. She had many question, none of which I could answer at that point, all I could say was “listen to the song”. Without further questions, a mother’s instincts came out as she laid down next to me and soothed me with her presence as she stroked my soft brown hair, in that moment I was a little girl again, safe and sound in my mother’s arms. In the security of my mother’s arms, I slowly drifted to sleep with the music still