love the way you lie

"I can't tell you what it really is..."

The kids sat in a quiet circle, all six of them. Uncomfortable and looking to the woman for instruction. A woman that really wasn't much older than them and vividly remembered the teen phase of her life. This was the first session of a new group, a day she both loathed and found thrilling. Each group was different and according to the files back on her desk, this might be the most difficult and diverse group yet. Usually there was overlap, kids that had been through similar or at least comparable things. Kids that could find a way to relate to each other. But her clientele had been expanding and these kids all had distinctly different demons plaguing them.

After a few sessions, the woman knew she was losing them. They remained mostly quiet when someone talked, with the occasional clearing of throat or exaggerated sigh. Those sounds, along with the eye rolling and thumb twiddling, spoke volumes. The kids were disinterested, judgmental, and just generally bored with these sessions. They spoke in generalities when it was their turn, each one of them so focused on trying to say the right thing that they weren't really saying anything at all. In short, they weren't relating to each other. Which was the sole reason she put the kids in group sessions. The woman took the loners and tried desperately to show them they weren't alone. She didn't know what to do next but she was determined to keep trying, posing new questions and implementing new exercises at each session.

"...I can only tell you what it feels like."

When the breakthrough finally happened, it was so unplanned and unexpected that the woman nearly missed the moment. Lauryn was talking. She was a girl that didn't speak often, probably because of the incessant bullying she suffered. Based on her file, the woman figured Lauryn tried to be invisible as much as possible. But today something had happened. Lauryn was the first one to raise her hand. She volunteered to speak and when she did, she was surprisingly and refreshingly honest. Lauryn was actually sharing and the other kids were listening.

The woman never thought Lauryn wold be the spark for this group. She was a plain girl, with no outstanding features, good or bad. Not too tall or too short. Not too fat or skinny. Strictly middle class. She dressed in a general nondescript, teenage manor. Nothing about her stood out. Yet she still was picked on mercilessly by her classmates all because she was new. It had happened quickly, thanks to one freak incident in the lunchroom with one of the "cool kids". And it was months before the school even cared enough to tell her parents what was going. Months of ugly notes in her locker, trash being tossed at her when she walked down the hallways, anonymous shoves in the locker room and lunchroom and classroom. Months of soul-crushing behaviors before she snapped and drove her car into a tree at full speed. That tree happened to be on the school campus and that was the day the school called her parents.

Yes, the woman wasn't sure what happened today, but Lauryn was obviously feeling brave and open. And her words were having a visible effect on the other kids.

Lauryn talked about becoming a target for unreasonable reasons. And Sean, who had been attacked and beaten by six boys at his school because of his sexual orientation, stopped fiddling with his shoelaces and looked up.

Lauryn talked about how the fear and the desperation outweighed the anger. And Alicia, who had repeatedly been molested by her foster brother, took her feet out her chair and leaned forward.

Lauryn talked about the judgment in the eyes of the teachers. And Kelly, who had a brief but violent mental breakdown after getting a batch of bad drugs, reached out to hold Lauryn's hand.

Lauryn talked about the unbearable pressure she felt to pretend like everything was okay and continue with the regular day to day. And Alison, who binged and barfed pretty much everything she ate, let a tear roll down her cheek.

Lauryn talked about the loneliness, the isolation, the feeling of being apart while the rest of the world moved on around you, without you. And Harry, whose mother had locked him in closets for days at a time for minor offenses like spilling water on the floor, crossed the circle to hug her.

The woman wanted desperately to understand but she understood the importance of this moment. She let it play out. Each kid spoke that day, each kid opened themselves to the others. There were tears and a few smiles. There was progress. The woman waited until all the other kids had left before grabbing Lauryn. She asked her why she chose today to share. Lauryn just shook her head and patted her shoulder like a child. Then Lauryn told her what she could see, what she could understand that the woman never would. Lauryn could see the telltale signs in Harry, that he was on the verge of driving full speed into that tree just like she had. And that saving him was more important than her pride and privacy.

be like that

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream. Is that too much to ask?"

The other kids in the hallway were a blur. I'm sure they were looking at me. There I was the, the self-appointed queen of the hallway, ungracefully lurching down the hallway and tripping over my own feet in my rush to get to the girls' bathroom. It was just a few steps away but seemed so far down the hallway. I reached the door just before my last bit of self-preservation failed. I pushed into one of the stalls, ignoring the stares of the freshmen standing in front of the mirrors trying to make themselves look like seniors.

And I let it all out. I wasn't sure which was louder, the rancid retching or the soul-crushing sobs. I was vaguely aware of snickers from the freshmen girls and that I must have been loud enough to hear in the hallway. But the only thing I could really focus on was my own voice echoing in my head. It was like a filmstrip of the past year playing itself out. It was deafening.

There was the first time I saw Katherine. She was sitting by herself in the cafeteria and for a split second I remember thinking that she was almost pretty. I'm not sure if that's what instigated it all, if somehow I felt upset or disgusted by the fact that this girl could have been so pretty if she weren't so damn fat. The second time I saw her was when we christened her Fat Kat. But even know I remember how shocking it was to see the amount of food she consumed during the lunch period.

But the torture didn't really start until the winter semester when she had ended up in two classes with me and some of my friends. We were merciless. We would trip her in the hallways, leave mean notes on her desk, play an elaborate game of keep away with her backpack. And that was the early days, when we were still behaving on a middle school playing field of bullying. The day she finally tried to stand up to us was the day things changed. We were appalled. How dare Fat Kat fight back? We moved from idle bullying to active harassment. Vandalizing her locker. Posting candid pictures of her trying to keep up in P.E. on the internet. Throwing stones at her own the way to and from school.

It must have been hell and we laughed the whole time. In fact this morning, I had a whole new vicious attack lined up for her today. We knew she had been trying to avoid us by walking through the back parking lot onto campus and we fully intended to soak her with power water hose the maintenance staff attached to the lawn sprinklers. Pure genius that was sidetracked the moment Ms. Brown walked into the room.

There were tears running down her face and the fact that a teacher was a crying was enough to silence the entire room. I looked at Fat Kat's empty desk and knew what was coming next. I was standing up in a daze, asking for a pass to the bathroom before Ms. Brown could even finish making the announcement that this morning Katherine's parents had found her with her wrists slit in her bathroom tub. I was trying to make it to the front of the room when I head an quick comment behind me. Some kid's own joke about how she had to cut her wrists because she was too fat to hang herself. Ms. Brown was handing me the wooden pass, and I turned around to lunge at the owner of that voice. I'm not sure what I intended to do but Ms. Brown caught me around the waist before I was able to make contact. I wormed my way out of her grip and practically threw the wooden bathroom pass back at her before seeking refuge in the bathroom.

There was nothing left in me. I continued to dry heave as I sat on the floor beside the toilet. I didn't care if the stupid freshmen girls were running up and down the hallway telling everyone that I was losing it in the bathroom. I didn't care if Ms. Brown sent me to the Principal's office for leaving class without permission and attacking a student. In the grand scheme of things, what did they matter? I had lived the past year as one of the most popular girls in school and had gotten there by slowly killing another person. Nothing mattered more than that.