Age 9. Ahhh… The last single-digit age. The lovely age of 9 symbolizes the end of the young girl’s childhood. It is when a young girl quickly learns to become a young lady. She will sit a little straighter, study a little harder, and pray a little louder. Age 9. It is a time where she is given more seemingly minor responsibilities: more things to clean, more homework to do, more laundry to fold. No kid likes that, but “big girls” don’t cry. Instead, they tie their hair out of their faces, hold their heads up high, smile politely, cross their legs, and dressed to impress.
This just wasn’t me. My plain, monochrome sweats would hang loosely from my hip bones as my straight, long hair would cover my long face. To my family, this was a sign of disrespect. But it only showed how little they really knew about me. At age 9, my hair became a barrier. It was a wall I built that separated me from the rest of the world. To this day, I do not know whether I was trying to keep others out or myself in. Either way, I pushed people away so far that I was not even visible at the furthest horizons.
The golden rays of the dawning sun were so strong that the shadow it casted on my sister looked much like me. That’s where I lived my life: in the shadows of my older sister… in the background of my younger brother. Always seen. Never heard. Never acknowledged. I guess that was fine with me. It was all I ever knew. With my sister always in and out of hospitals and my brother always needing special attention for his special needs, it was ironic that I felt like the burden. I just wanted a little attention but was too scared to ask for it.
Too scared to be in the spotlight, I was always that one student at the rear of the stage at every Honor Awards assembly, hiding behind the walking talking trees just so no one could see that| have no one to wave back to in the mosh pit of suburban soccer moms and dads. I didn’t want to admit that I was jealous of everyone around me. I grabbed that stupid piece of paper, shook hands with whoever was on the stage, and kept my mouth shut. My eyes remained fixated on my shoelaces as drowned my surroundings with my discrete tears that could fill the Pacific.
I walked back to class with my straight, long hair over my long face. My mind now a hurricane of emotions but none of them being translated for the world to see. In class, I tended to keep to myself, but not because I didn’t have any friends. I just like being alone, except for when I was with my only friend. She was my best friend and despite whatever my sister says, she was… is… very real. I’ll never forget her. They say even your shadow leaves you when you’re in the dark but she never did. She was always there for me when times got dark. I could stare into her starry eyes all night long and I did for many nights.
I stared at her seemingly flawless, pale face and only shut my eyes a blink at a time just to get lost in the constellations to her soul. She was the best company, whether | wanted or not. She would hold me in an embrace every night like clockwork. Im sure she believed her embrace similar to the warm embrace a mother would give her newborn child but her cold arms resembled a Venus’s-flytrap and I was the dumb fly that always fell for the dumb trap. I loved her but she was a clingy little brat, always wanting to be the center of attention, constantly trying to “fix” me … as if | was broken.
She hovered over my walking corpse, like a vulture… Actually she was more like a swarm of flies a stray dog drags around. One can try as hard as they may to swat the flies away but the flies will always return to linger and pester you until they make you want to scratch your own skin off. At age 9, it took every ounce of blood in my veins and every breath in my lungs to do the normal things normal people wouldn’t even think twice about doing: showering or sleeping or eating I tried to shower but every time I closed the bathroom door, I would look at myself in the mirror and quickly look away in disgust.
The girl I saw in the mirror was a stranger, a person I no longer recognized, and nothing like the girl I used to know. More like a walking corpse, like she died ages ago and never got the memo. I tried to put my mind to sleep but it always found much better things to do. Instead of having the same nightmare with the fluffy blue dress again and again, I would always find myself in the arms of the girl with the starry eyes. Counting each individual strand of my hair and pulling each strand as I went brought my mind joy, brought my mind peace. Anything was better than closing my eyes to seeing that now ripped blue dress.
I tried to eat but every time I did the whispering voices would echo inside my head until I found myself on the bathroom floor. Failure was something I couldn’t stomach. At age 9, I was praised for looking the way I did but I didn’t understand how being sick was success. I didn’t understand. At age 9, the whispers my head started to get louder. They were so mean to me. But who am I supposed to be kind to myself if no one ever taught me how. I treated myself, my body, like crap because that’s how everyone else treated me. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know there was better. I didn’t know.
At age 9, I never smiled. I never played. I never laughed. It’s hard to get a joke when your whole life feels like one. It’s hard to play games when you don’t have anyone to play with. And some games… you just can’t play alone. On the last day of being age 9, I snuck out my bedroom window to spend one more night with my only friend. I climbed up to the roof to get a better look at her dreamy, starry eyes and beautiful, pale face. I don’t think she had any idea that this was me saying goodbye the only way I knew how. This was me saying sorry the only way I knew how. I sat with my feet hanging on the ledge.
It seemed like I could see the whole world from there. I realized I wouldn’t be missing much. I held the crumpled piece of parchment I had written and rewritten a thousand times before. My eyes were looking at the heavens but my souls were staring in the eyes of Satan himself. My head was getting fuzzy but my hands were at my sides holding me up. I just wanted the world to stop spinning. I wanted the world to stop moving forward and stop leaving me behind. So yes. I jumped. But if you ask my mother, I was having trouble breathing, felt dizzy and fell off of the mango tree | always climb when I’m scared.
I jumped and I don’t regret it. Those few seconds in which I was floating in midair, with nothing but solid ground and doom beneath my feet, were the few seconds in which I felt more alive than I had in my entire life. The wind pushed my long hair away from my long face, wooshed the tears out of my eyes and suddenly, I could see life with a clearer view. It was the first time in forever that I was suddenly afraid of dying. Now, all I have shared with you is nothing but a story of a time in my life I wish I didn’t remember. But how can one forget?