The naive daughter of two people who could never decide if they loved each other.

A broken marriage.

 Calling the wrong faces “friends” and the wrong feelings “love”.

Once an untainted girl with too many hopes and dreams, until blindly making my way through the toxic arms of too many people.

Breaking my own heart.

I was that girl who wanted to grow up quickly, so I threw off my innocence like a blanket in the hot sweat of night.

Spending my summers sipping watered-down cranberry juice in bars after the kitchen closes, batting thick eyelashes at guys who will never know my birth year.

I was once a glass half full. Until taking a drink. Until losing myself.

Shattering my innocence

The unfortunate survivor of a valley of pain where people would rather die than graduate.

Some days I am the cold shoulder tucked in the corner writing a novel that no one will ever take the time to read.

Other days, exactly who everyone else wants me to be. It’s funny how this life is ours and yet the hands of life itself tug and pull; bend and mold us into who we are.

On Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter I am the undeniable pessimist praying to god no one will die this year.

I am my sister's alarm clock, my mother's marriage counselor, and my father’s strong little girl, trying to be everything he wants me to be. Isn’t that how every story goes?

I am the best friend of a girl adopted from Ethiopia, who proves that the brightest lights are found in the darkest places.

Some nights I am the only one holding those around me together.

Some nights the memories of feelings are all that is holding me together.

I say my own I love you’s. And my arms are the only ones wrapped around me each night.

 But for me to sit here and pretend that I can look into my past and define myself in the present; it’s just the saddest thing.

I cannot even begin to understand the very topic I set forth to explain.

Our prompt is the answer to a question that people still can’t express with the rhythm of their last breath.

I don’t know who I am. I want to.

But that would require mending the fragments of glass. The broken things.

Making a mosaic.