Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?

How absolutely and full-heartedly wonderful you were?

Not your mom. Not your grandma. Not your best friend, or someone saying it out of pity…but a real, living, breathing, human who has blurted it out because it has every ounce of honesty?

Five months ago, my answer would have been no. Not just a lighthearted, laughing-manner type of no, but a gut-wrenching, heart-throbbing no that forced every muscle in my body to tremble with shame.

Love lives so that we experience its pleasures, and even in its absence, it demands to be felt. I have lived with this thought my entire life and refuse to falter my beliefs. Even in my darkest hours, there is a hint of warmth that spreads through my bones, dying to comfort my broken spirit. I have lived with this twisted view of love for 16 years, and I knew my day was coming for love to burst into my every fiber.

How does love make this transition? Love isn’t an object. It can’t be forced into my life. Love isn’t an idea. It can’t be created with my imagination. Love is a feeling, and it blends together the most beautiful spectrum of emotions that life has to offer. Nobody is born with a full spectrum of emotions, therefore, life comes, it creates experience, and within the experience, love is transformed. My love was transformed, and oh, how the world must feel it with me.

They say love is patient and love is kind, but it didn’t always feel that way for me. My journey to love was heart wrenching, but with brokenness comes beauty. I was 15 and quietly living with my quiet parents in a quiet South Carolina town. Nothing was out of the ordinary- we maintained a moderately nice cottage house in a wooded area just down the road from a local beach. My parents decided to isolate our family from anything living because they were scared of life and everything it had to offer- the risks, the danger, and the uncertainty. Unfortunately, this lifestyle had also shielded them from the wonders of life and all of the beautiful moments only experienced through boldness. Being in my parent’s control, I had no life. Of course I was alive and functioning on the outside, but I was utterly stale on the inside. I was forced to spend my weekends in the quiet confines of our cottage playing chess with my parents. Even when I was five years old, our beautiful days were spent inside watching documentaries on frogs instead of going outside and catching them... I had an exciting childhood to say the least.

Sometimes I wondered whether I was adopted or switched at birth because my parent’s way of life never suited me. I went through the motions of life, but I never felt truly happy. It was late August and the only thing that summer brought me was newfound knowledge on the history of dreams via my mom’s science encyclopedias. She was a scientist researching at the University of South Carolina and my dad worked with computers at home. Honestly, I never knew the details of their work lives and they never cared to explain. Our home life consisted of small talk at best; both my parents enjoyed their quiet time. That explains my summer of lonesome walks on the beach and countless books read.

The summer breezes began to cool and I knew fall was approaching. My first day of 11th grade approached but nothing compelled my excitement. My school had a typical small-town setting: everyone knew everyone. When someone hears this, they think that environment seems cozy and gives a chance for people to feel significant. Those people really don’t understand small towns at all. The more you know someone, the bigger inclination you feel to find fault. For the rest of the school, they found it relatively easy to find fault in me.

Two years back, I had a severe meltdown during school and broke into hysteric sobs. Of course, I was sent to a doctor for a few weeks, analyzed in a tiny white room, was given “happy” pills, then quietly placed back in my quiet home, forcing my parents to fetter me to the door so that my erratic behavior would be a thing of the past. No questions were asked, only whispers passed. I lost all my friends without even a phone call or text comforting me in my darkest hours. The town was quick to judge me but nobody even knew the truth about my accident. Nobody cared to know the truth. Not even my parents. Since then, I have been alone, and forever changed.


Today was the dreaded day: school. I put on a ratty pair of jeans and my 4th grade class t-shirt so that when I felt invisible, I could look down and know that I once felt happy and alive, even if it was just temporary. Plus, I liked to indirectly mock the classmates I had been so lucky to stick with since pre-school. Their fake high school selves weren’t fooling me. As I walked up the front steps, I looked down and counted them one by one: 11, 12, 13,... just as I did every day for the past two years. Westmill High School was nothing short of ordinary- chestnut brown bricks with a hint of retro windows that never fully recovered from our parent’s wild times. Fitting close to 300 students, Westmill stood in the middle of nowhere with swamps at both ends. Most days, I walked to school with rain boots on, and at the top of the stairs, I swapped shoes and left the boots near the bike rack for the day. That’s the good thing about my town- you could leave your car unlocked and nobody would steal it, because in such a town, everybody knows whose car is whose and whose rain boots are whose. Not to mention, nobody would dare touch anything in my possession. They thought an object of Lea must have the “mark of the devil.”

All 300 kids swarmed the only commons area Westmill had, which included a slab of concrete with rusty benches and tables. The very right side of the area was left completely empty at all times, no matter how desperate people were for a seat. This mysterious spot was where my incident occurred and I have been avoiding it ever since, along with the rest of the school. As I shot a glance in its direction, a million suppressed memories flooded my brain. I felt the panic and the hopelessness and the confusion all over again. I gripped my backpack so tight that my fingers turned white. This was why two years later I still avoided the spot- the wounds were never healed, and each sting felt like a brand new cut. I lessened my grip and decided to scout out a quiet spot.

As I walked through the crowds of various friend groups, I heard the typical girls say, “Sally! It’s so good to see you! Did you get a tan? We must catch up!” and the guys remark to each other, “Oh sup Dan. What’s up dude? School blows. Let’s skip today and chill by the swamp.” I couldn’t even take the fake people and fake conversations and forced happiness. I wasn’t happy, but at least I could admit it. The rest of the school was in some delusion that in order to be happy, you have to act like it and then one day it will magically flip a switch in your body and you will experience the real deal. I almost pitied my fellow classmates under this deranged spell, but then I remembered my incident and how nobody cared and how pity wasn’t even in their grasp of being felt. I guess I just thought they didn’t deserve anything from me, let alone my sympathy.

After wandering through all 300 people, I gained a headache from the plethora of my eye rolling and collapsed near the side of the school. Being away from the crazies, I took out my headphones and tuned the world out. I was into the Mumford and Sons, chill-type of music. Their songs practically mend a broken heart while making you realize your life has more meaning that just beyond your heartache. Yeah, it was some pretty deep stuff. I closed my eyes and let the music dominate my presence until I felt a tap on my shoulder. I practically flung myself across the wall into an animal-like defense stance. Rarely did anyone ever acknowledge my presence, let alone touch me. I looked up to see a skinny guy about 5’7 slowly backing away, with hands up signaling, “I surrender!” He had a slight smile on his face but didn’t dare open his mouth. His piercing green eyes were enchanting and I found myself communicating with this strange boy through our eyes. I slowly put my guard down, quite literally, and nodded at him to signify my peace treaty. He looked at my watch, glanced back up at the school, gave me one last look, and headed into the building. I was so shocked by the encounter that my knees gave out and I sat in silence replaying what just happened over and over, and questioning who that kid even was. What kind of small town is it when the wallflower, the one who sees all, doesn’t even recognize someone?!

I slipped in the back of my first hour without a trace of recognition from anyone- another perk of being a loner. The class was algebra, which I had already taken but was forced to repeat because my incident pulled me out of the last month of school. Little did anyone know, I was actually quite the genius. Even if I had missed the entire last semester, I could have glanced at a review sheet and passed the class with flying colors. I guess I had the whole school thing figured out. The trick isn’t to try hard and stay up all night and freak out over test grades, but to let the information consume your mind for a pure desire to understand this crazy world. I mastered this trick at an early age and had been playing the game for a while. I even took such measures as to purposely get B’s and C’s so that nobody caught on. My method was stealthy and effective- it allowed me to sit and class and contemplate every aspect of life besides algebra.

That day, my mind was focused on the mystery boy. Who was he? How did he find me? Why did he just stand there and not say anything? Why did he even bother approaching me? I didn’t understand and the unknown killed me. My doctor told me I needed to work on adjusting to changes in my environment, but this was a change that didn’t settle well in my stomach. I decided that the mystery needed to be solved, so after first hour I set out on a mission to get the details on this kid: aka use my teenage girl powers to stalk the living daylights out of him.

He was sited walking out of the library and I quietly slipped in his shadows, following him to a classroom I wasn’t familiar with. Once he entered the room, I waited a few seconds before smoothly walking past. As I peered at the door, a note slid under the door. I immediately stopped and did a 360 around the hallway, seeing nobody in sight. Cleary, this note was for me. I bent down and read: You’re a pretty bad stalker. Or maybe I’m just a good observer. My heart started pounding in my chest and I could feel my face heat with embarrassment. I tilted my head up and saw him staring intently back at me, with a playful grin that could only mean my cover was blown. Mortified, I retreated to the nearest bathroom where I spent the rest of the day.

The bells rang and I continued to wait until the last footsteps trailed off. I finally showed my face and was relieved when the hall was empty. I headed outside to retrieve my rain boots and when I reached my left foot in, I felt a shuffle of paper and pulled out yet another letter: Sorry to blow your cover earlier. If it makes you feel any better, I was honored to have you stalk me. Maybe this letter cancels out your creepy actions with my just as creepy actions of knowing your shoes. If that isn’t a start of a friendship, I don’t know what is. The playfulness in his writing was apparent with every passing word. I felt connected to this stranger and couldn’t help but smile at his efforts. Effort. Interaction. Human interaction. Boy interaction. The day couldn’t get any more bizarre.