Everyday we pass people on the streets moving from one destination or another, some running, some talking on phones, and doing a thousand other things. How many times have you stopped and wondered what that person has gone through or is going through?
I knew this girl, really someone I was close to who would walk around smiling and making nice with everyone she could. No one bothered to look into her eyes because if they did they would show more pain than any young person should have to endure. She was gossiped about and criticized even by her family for being strange, but she just kept walking and smiling praying no one could see that she was dying on the inside.
If someone would have asked her to dinner they would have noticed that she never put a bite of food in her mouth, if they hugged her they would feel that those layers of clothes were covering not much more than a skeleton, and if they looked under those long sleeves they would see the wounds caused by her razor so she could bleed the pain out and keep the smile for everyone else. No one looks up and she keeps walking hiding the pain that she is carrying inside.
To everyone around her she is just some girl not doing anything with her life, they label her a failure which only makes her feel more worthless and takes another piece of her will to fight for her life. Part of her wanted someone to wrap their arms around her and tell her that it was going to be okay and she didn't have to starve and cut herself anymore, that she was worth so much more than that. She wanted it to be okay if she wasn't perfect all the time, if she couldn't keep that smile on her face. She wanted to scream about everything that was happening to her....her mother was an abusive alcoholic, her dad liked to pretend nothing was wrong, she lost her virginity while some slime of a man raped her, and eventually her mother was lost to alcoholism. But, she dealt with her pain and rage by taking out on her body every night there was more blood and less food because no one wanted to see her pain, no one wanted to break the façade that the family was perfect, so the girl felt more and more alone.
Even going to college she simply walked and walked hiding from anyone who might question her secret and eventually figured any that found out would just give up and leave like everyone else. Eventually the blood wasn't enough to allow her to breathe again so one night she took a couple bottles of pills some psychiatrist had given her. She woke up in an ambulance with an EMT hitting her face trying to keep her awake. She found herself waking up in the intensive care unit surrounded by doctors asking why and the girl just looked the other way. She couldn't be what the world wanted her to be, she even failed at suicide, she was nothing to anyone but a disappointment.
After nine days in the hospital the girl found herself once again walking the sidewalks watching as others smiled and seemed fine. She couldn't understand why she couldn't just be normal, she couldn't accept that you make your own normal. One day it finally hit her, she wasn't going to hide anymore, slowly but surely the layers came off revealing a very sick girl, then the bracelets slowly disappeared, and she stopped pretending that she was fine. It was only then that she could heal. She is far from completely healed, you can see the cracks where she's been broken and put back together, but most days she finds a real smile that even her eyes show that she is happy. Will she have an easy life, no, but now she knows she doesn't have to be that girl on the street anymore that people judge without ever even trying to get to know her. She has learned that the anorexia, self harm, abuse, and rape weren't her fault and she didn't deserve punishment and most days she believes that. There are still nights where she wakes up screaming only now there is someone sleeping beside her to hold her and tell her it is ok not to be ok.
The next time you see someone walking down the street before you make a snap judgment stop and think about what you don't know. Maybe the guy running by that pushed you just found out he is a dad or his loved one is injured. When you look at a girl walking with her head down think that someone has damaged her, she isn't just emo or weird. That homeless man that begs for food lost everything fighting in a war, that girl with the "silly wig" is just trying to hide the fact that the chemotherapy has taken her hair, and that young woman pushing a baby in a stroller made the choice to be ridiculed and not have an abortion that her family pushed for.
Every person you pass on the street has their own story, their own pains, and we have no right to pass judgment on them. I was the girl walking down the street in the layers covering up the almost skeletal parts of me and hiding the bleeding wounds, smiling when I wanted nothing more than to die. People tore me down, told me I didn't pray hard enough, didn't try hard enough, did care about my family, and it was all my choice. Finally, at twenty seven I know that it wasn't my choice...I didn't make the decision to have an abusive mother, a party dad, I never wanted to be raped, and I never woke up one day and decided to become anorexic or a cutter. My path was dark and it took a lot of fighting and falling to find the light again.
So, my challenge to you is the next time you are walking around or wherever stop and look around, you pass sometimes hundreds of people in day and they all have their own pain and their own shoes to walk in. I'm not asking you to be their best friend, or save them...I am asking for you not to give that look that you think no one notices (we all see it though), don't call us names or degrade us because we are doing the best we can, and remember you have never walked a mile in my shoes or theirs, you aren't God and your job isn't to judge. Just think about it when you go for a walk next time.
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