Catching Up With the Past

Ashley was once again in her room, just herself. She didn’t have many friends, actually she didn’t have friends at all.

At school Ashley was always on her own. She wouldn’t go up to anyone and to talk to them. She was too shy and not confident enough.
The girl found herself disgusting. Though she looked good, she didn’t like herself.

Ashley was one of the girls you would call normal. She didn’t fit into any stereotype, which made her an outcast at school.
There were lots of different groups, each had their own style. None of them would talk to anyone in another of these groups, not even if someone wasn’t in any group.

Everything Ashley had gone through in her past life, made her the person she was now. The facts, that her parents were never there for her, or that she never got to know what love or friendship was, made her insecure in everything she did.

That's why Ashley didn’t think she would ever make friends, even if she talked to them, they would just laugh at her and leave. At least, Ashley thought so.

So, the girl spent most days on her own. Either doing her homework or just thinking about everything. Ashley loved to sit on her window sill, watching what happened outside her shell.

Something else she loved was writing. While writing her own stories, she could make up another world. A world, where she belonged, where she had friends, who cared for her. A world, that would miss her, if she suddenly disappeared.
In real life, however, no one would've noticed, if Ashley was gone. Nobody knew her, she could have just killed herself, no one would've cared.

Ashley often thought about ending it and living on somewhere else. Maybe there was some world after you die. She never managed to do it, though. She was afraid. Afraid, that it would hurt, afraid, that everything could be worse afterwards.

That's why she stayed alive. A decision she was going to be glad, she had made.

After some time, Ashley started to write poems, instead of stories. She got more and more interested in music, and lyrics, she could relate to.
She learned to play the guitar and wrote her own songs. Lyrics, that expressed her feelings.
A small part of the lonely girl changed.

When Ashley found this one band, however, everything changed. Ashley wasn’t the outcast anymore. She started to fit into some groups, by just changing her view on things. She now was what you would call emo. The girl always wore black, combined with only a tiny colored thing. She wore black eyeliner and never left her headphones.

Ashley lived from music. She knew every song from her favorite band by heart. She could sing to each of them.

During this time in her life, Ashley found some friends. They were actually great. They all cared about her and loved her, the way she was.

Anna also got to know her first boyfriend. Aiden was the most loving boyfriend, she could've ever imagined. He would take her out for dinner and to the movies, though it was just an average day. A day like every other one.

Aiden, he was slightly taller than Ashley, had black hair, which wasn’t too short, but not too long either. He liked to wear black skinny jeans and band shirts, along with Vans or Converses.

They both had the same favorite band, they actually heard exactly the same kind of songs. Ashley and Aiden were into the same stuff, like horror movies, black things and music. They both liked to show their feelings through lyrics, they wrote.

Ashley wasn’t the same person anymore. If you had not seen her in a while, you wouldn’t have recognized her. Unfortunately, not everything had changed. The depressed part in the girl was still there. Though, it wasn’t as dominant as before, it still showed on multiple occasions.

From time to time, Ashley even cut herself. The cuts weren't deep, though, so they healed, before anyone could notice.

None of her friends, not even her boyfriend, knew what she had been going through before they met. They sure asked, but Ashley would avoid answering it.

She didn’t want to talk about her past life, for the fact that she wasn’t able to live through all the memories again.

Her Dad beat her, when she was six. He was an alcoholic, but her mother didn’t want to see, what he did. She loved him.
When she found Ashley bruised, so the girl couldn’t even walk properly anymore, her Mom, however, called the police on him.
He was arrested.

Ashley didn’t know how long her father would be in jail, but it wasn’t long enough for sure.

Some time later, her mother had a new boyfriend. The guy didn’t like Ashley, at all. He hated kids. Also, he was addicted to drugs, which made him come home high a lot of times. Every time this happened, Ashley would lock herself in her room, afraid what might happen, if she went out.

She was afraid of him, the whole three years her mother was in a relationship with him. After those years, however, he left her for some blonde girl, who wasn’t even quite as old as he was.

After he left, Ashley slowly started to live her life again, though it was hard for her. She was afraid of most men, she would even run as fast as she could, when someone looked like her father.

The girl often imagined, what would've happened, if her father got out of jail, without her knowing. What would've happened, if she met him on the street.

When Ashley thought about this part of her past, she always had to cry. She never got over the beating.
Her Mom even made her see a psychiatrist, but that only made everything worse. Ashley couldn’t even endure thinking about it, talking was whole lot harder.

Even if she found the strength to talk about it, she broke down shortly after. Saying the words was much harder for her, than just imagining everything.

That was the main reason, Ashley didn’t want to tell her friends. They would've thought she was crazy and left her.

Ashley's condition never got better, not after she had made friends, not after everyone liked her.
On the outside she was confident and happy, but on the inside, she was just about to shatter every second.