Girl of glassYour Story Title

For my younger self.

Natalie was eight years old when she developed mental illness. Depression, to be exact. Her mother was abusive, but Natalie didn’t know, as she was used to living this way. She didn’t realize that her mother’s cruel punishments were abusive. There were times her mother would try to push her down the stairs or scream profanities at her. She thought it was normal.
Natalie went to bed around 6 pm to be ready for school the next day. She was crying hysterically. Looking in the mirror, her tiny hands pulled up her baggy sleeves and wiped her tears away roughly, leaving red splotches on her face that burned. She climbed up the unstable ladder to her bed and took her teddy bear into her arms. She thought he was real and whenever she hugged him tight she would wonder if she had killed him.
She decided to get some sleep or at least try. You would expect that an eight-year-old would dream of daring sword fights or beautiful princesses that bring love and joy. But this was not the case for Natalie. She liked to think about the books she had read that helped her escape her dreadful life. If only she could be Alice falling down the rabbit while entering a world of wonder. But instead of that, her mind would always bring her to the most horrifying of places. She was a girl of glass and every night in her dreams she would fall to the bottom, almost pummeling to the ground. She would smash into pieces and bleed profusely until she perished. That night it was too much. She woke with a start sobbing and thinking about putting herself together again like the knights with Humpty Dumpty.
Her crying ceased when she heard her malevolent mother’s footsteps increase towards her room. Her mother slammed the door open and yanked her harshly from the bed. Screaming for her to shut up. Natalie screamed and screamed and screamed. Her mother took her beloved bear and cut it open with a knife that Natalie knew quite well. She then left.

Natalie now knew from that point forward that she was a girl of glass born to be broken.
Natalie is more than a fictional character and grew up to be me. I am now 15 years old and am separated from my mother and am glad. But now I suffer with multiple mental illnesses which affect me on a day to day basis. This is an example of different kinds of abuse especially mental and physical.