I am Katie. I’m sixteen years old. I have bipolar disorder. I have ADHD. I have insomnia. I have anxiety. I have athsma. I take pills every single night so that I can function, so that the world doesn’t crash down around me. I’m an abuse victim. I’ve been bullied my whole life. I don’t wear makeup unless its a special occasion. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t do drugs. I don’t swear. I don’t even wear clothes that show my shoulders or anything above my knees. I don’t have any friends at school that are anything besides that, because I don’t go out on the weekends and party, I stay home. The few friends that are close to me lately have been disagreeing with me for voicing my opinion. I’m so used to people tearing me down that I do it myself. I look in the mirror and I insult myself. I look at my body and call myself fat. I look at my face and see eyes brows that I hate. I look at my teeth that no matter how hard I brush them, never loose the yellow spots. I look at my nails, that are short and stubby because I play violin. I look at the skin on my hands and around my nose, that is dry and irritated from the exceema I suffer from. I look at my stupid unmanageable mess of hair which is usually a frizz of inconsistent curls. I look at see my nose, which when I was 12 changed shape when I was hospitalized with a sinus infection that leaked into my eye tissue causing the cartilage to change form. I look at see my freckles which depending on the day either don't stand out enough for stand out too much. I look at see my constantly chapped lips, no matter how much medication I put on them they remain dry and cracked. I see the annoying mole beneath the left side of my mouth. I see the deep dark circles beneath my eyes from lack of sleep from my insomnia. I look at see the weird deformity type growths on my right hands fingers that have a white texturing look to them like a callus gone wild that I’ve always had. When I look in the mirror all I see is my imperfections, I see all the ugliness. When I’m put all together I don’t think I’m ugly, I think calling me pretty would be generous, but average is a better term. But that is only what is on my exterior. On the inside is were I feel ugliest. Inside of me is envy, jealousy, hatred, fear, anger, sadness, heartbreak, guilt, hollowness, and worst of all, that little nagging voice in the back of my head that always assures me that no one could ever love something as wretched and screwed up as me.
As I was growing up I would fall easily and hard for pretty much any boy who was nice to me. They of course, never liked me back. I have always been one of the boys. With my three older brothers, I fit in with boys better. I would always cry that no one ever liked me, my Mom of course always said “you don’t need a boy to make you happy” and I always would reply “Yea...but it sure would help.”
It was nearly a year ago to the day actually. I forget the exact date that I met him, but it was between the late end of november and the early days of december last year. I had agreed to go to a get together at one of my friends houses with a bunch of people from our church. When I met him I didn’t really bat much of an eye, he was cute, dark toned skin, black hair that was slightly mussed and brown eyes, and a girlfriend with him. He spent most of the night outside with her and I didn’t see much of him, but when he was inside, he was either playing the piano or a guitar and singing along. That is what had caught my eye, the singing. My Mom was putting on a musical in our church community for all kids twelve to eighteen, but we were desperately short on boys, so I practically begged the boy, I could even remember his name at the time and certainly couldn’t pronounce it. He was interested in the musical and said he would audition. Fast forward to January and its times to start rehearsals. Meanwhile, him and his girlfriend had broken up. The schedule it that every single friday night, the main choir would rehearse for at least an hour and than afterwords the small choir which was a selective choir with stronger singers in it that had an extra musical number in the play as well as extra verses in other songs would rehearse. I was cast as a rather minor role, I had no more than seven lines, but I loved my role, I was a dancer as well, and was in the small choir, and also had a one verse solo at the beginning of one of the group numbers. It was around this time I took my moms cast info list and found his number and name which I put in my phone and eventually learned to remember Cuauhti’s name. He had been cast as a role slightly larger than mine, he was a rather important character, all though he didn’t have too many lines, he was in both the large and small choirs like I was, and was in the dance scene though he was not a dancer, and also, he had scored a five verse solo to a very difficult song. We had lots of mutual friends and sometimes we would end up hanging out together in groups. One night me and a few of my girlfriends, Mikayla, Savanna, and Becca were hanging out at Mikaylas house. We decided we would make cookies for a bunch of our guy friends, and Cuauhti made his way onto the list. When we arrived at his house, Becca phoned his cell and told him to come outside, and he did. In a tiny pink apron with oven mitts on. He was so confused as to what was going on, it was probably one of the cutest things I had ever seen, he had us come briefly in so he could show us the song he had been learning on guitar. He look off the oven mitts and slung a guitar over his apron and started playing the song “I’m still here” by John Reznik. I love that song, I will admit I was swooning. It got to a part where he forgot the lyrics and I started singing them, he looked up at me and smiled. Thats when it hit me like a tidal wave, oh no, I like him.
For the next week I managed to talk myself out of it, but we were already becoming such good friends, we texted each other all the time and we could just be honest with each other. He could make me laugh and smile like no one else could. He honestly became my best friend. I fell harder for him each day, and every friday I would fall even harder when I saw him in person and we would hang out and just talk about anything and everything. I learnt about his past that he had recovered from, the past of drug addictions, a need for alcohol, his abusive father, his unhappy mother, and his crazy family with his four little sisters and little brother. In return, he learnt about me being sexually abused as a little girl, he listened to my insecurities, and would comfort me. Of course though, he had a new girlfriend that he had got near the beginning of the play that went to his school. I was far to scared to make a move, so I was miserably in love with my best friend. I thought out a million ways in my head to tell him how I cared about him, but I never had the guts to say it. I didn’t tell any of my friends, I thought I was being so secretive, but it turns out everyone knew because apparently I looked at him like a lovesick puppy. So months and months of rehearsals go by and I keep falling harder and harder for him, I would spend every moment with him I could, we would talk about everything from school, to family, to his girlfriend, to my nightmares. We had each other, and i kept trying to tell myself that that was enough to just be friends with this amazing boy, but there was that part of me that couldn’t accept just remaining in the friend zone. One night after rehearsal at the play we went and jumped in puddles, we got completely drenched, we were muddy and wet and laughing and I knew that if I didn’t tell you I would regret it. But I didn’t know how to exactly say it, “Hey Cuauhti, so um I really like you, could you dump your girlfriend who you like so much and go out with me instead?” yea no. I wasn’t going to do that. So I kept trying to keep it inside. The show finally rolled around in May, somehow I got hooped into helping with makeup with the boys, when Cuauhti got to me I was so flustered. I was so close to his face, I was holding it and biting my lip trying to concentrate but all I could think about was kissing him. I tried to keep up a witty banter with him through out the ordeal, but came across in my mind and stupid and weird, but he laughed at all the right times and still made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Every time before I the spot light would come up on me I would look back to were Cuauhti was, he would encouragingly nod, giving me the strength to sing, and in return, I would do the same sitting down in the band pit when he sung his solo, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. The play had four show dates, and at the end of the third night, one of Cuauhtis friends pulled me aside and told me something I didn’t believe. He told me that Cuauhti likes me. At first I was mad, I told Santiago to not tell lies that Cuauhti had a girlfriend he was crazy about, and that boys like Cuauhti, didn’t like girls like me, but Santi insisted. For some reason I finally believed him and race into the gym and jumped into my brother Matthew's arms and squealed really high pitched “He likes me!!!!!!” and I twirled around in circles and ran off into the bathroom were I tried to calm myself down. The next night, I finally decided to tell him, I had wrote it out in a note on his Ipod, but chickened out and deleted it. He begged me to write whatever I had deleted again, and I did. Then I ran away and hid in the mic room. The mic guys became my therapists, I told them everything, all my feelings about Cuauhti, how scared I was that I had screwed up our friendship and about all the things I loved about him. I didn’t know that Cuauhti was sitting, right outside of the mic room, listening to every word that I spoke. For the rest of the night I stayed in the mic room, they wouldn’t let Cuauhti in to see me just like I had asked, so it became my little safe haven. After the final bows though, I finally got the guts to go over to Cuauhti, however his girlfriend was in the crowd, and he went to talk to her instead of me. Okay so I’m going to gloss over this next part that includes me crying in my car for about forty-five minutes and skip to the part where I went back inside to find my ipod. It wasn’t were I had left it in the mic room, thats when someone told me, Cuauhti had it. He was holding my Ipod hostage until I would talk to him. I was so mad, I never wanted to see him again, I felt like my heart had been ripped out. But finally he found me, I had been trying to pretend I was okay by dancing around with a few friends in the green room when he found me. “Can I talk to you?” he asked, I ignored him and tried to keep dancing, “Katie please” he said and I tried to walk away but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, I started hitting his chest trying to get away but instead ended up hugging him. He tried to explain to me that he liked me too, but that he also liked his girlfriend, finally my mother showed up, I took my ipod and left. I was so upset at life. I hated him, I hated her, and I hated myself. I don’t know when it was that it turned around. But the first concrete memory I have is when we ended up swimming in Arbor lake, our friends thought we were insane when we jumped in, It was still May and it was freezing! We were both in our clothes and I couldn’t even swim, but he wrapped his arms around me. Nothing had really changed, we were still best friends, but now...there was something else. He dumped his girlfriend. He asked me out. Everyone said it wouldn’t last. Well its been over six months. Everyday we have our struggles, but we work them out, he is one of my best friends. I wouldn’t trade him for anything in the entire world.
