About a Girl

Feb 8, 2015
4 min read

I started watching Nashville, on Hulu - you know, that show with Hayden Panettiere; the situation with her character, Juliette, & her mother, heavily reminded me of someone I used to know. I wasn't lying when I said I let go of a lot of people from my past.

I had a friend, once upon a time. We were 16. She'd been through a lot in her life at the time - multiple types of abuse, rocky childhood, always up & down, never really had anything solid or stable. Somehow, she managed to literally block everything out. To her, she was a normal, 16-year-old with problems like every other 16-year-old. Everyone's parents lived in separate cities. Everyone had a step-family. Everyone didn't feel like they belonged. Right? So she thought.

My friend had accepted all of these things as normal. I always thought she just chose to be oblivious to the reality of her world. I figured no matter what happened to her, she would ignore it, write it off as normal, & stay as strong as ever. She was a human punching bag, & she truly believed that was her purpose in life.

One day she broke. & I don't mean she got a little upset, broke down & cried, let it roll off her shoulders, & started fresh the next day.

This girl broke, & changed forever. I guess that's why we aren't friends anymore. I couldn't be there for her. Her heart was permanently damaged, she changed because of it, & I had no idea how to help her.

Her grandfather died. He wasn't even her grandfather by blood, but he was the only grandfather she'd ever had, & he was the rock in the little bit of family she had. Him & her grandmother were the only people she truly ever looked up to. Once the cancer took him, everything & everyone fell apart.

Her mother had always been a frequent drinker, but nothing ever overly noticeable, at least not to my friend. She was used to it. Her grandfather was like a father to her mother. Once he died, her mother fell apart. Her mother became even more of an alchoholic, on an extreme level, & then took it about ten steps further, getting heavily addicted to drugs.

My friend broke when she lost her mother to drugs. & when I say lost, I don't mean her mother died. I mean her mother chose drugs over her own daughter. My friend lost her mother to drugs. She watched her mother transform practically overnight. Her mother got a new boyfriend to share her fatal habits with, got a divorce, & disappeared, leaving her daughter totally abandoned, at only 16.

Not knowing where her mother was, my friend went to stay with her grandmother. After two weeks of absolutely no idea where her mother could be, reality set in. She couldn't just live with her grandmother, giving that woman the responsibility of raising a high school kid for the next two years. It wouldn't be right.

She moved cities, into her father's house, a few days later. During the year she spent at that house, she endured more emotional abuse than she had in her first 16 years of life combined. She started taking pills, be it allergy medicine, tylenol, anything she could find that would numb the pain, if not knock her out for a few hours to escape it altogether.

My friend finally hit a secondary breaking point, something she was unaware was even possible. She started trying to contact her mother, begging her mother to just come & get her, just take her home. Three times her mother promised to come & get her; three times she never came.

Months later, her mother finally showed up to save her, but it wasn't the sweet rescue she'd been waiting for. It only took about twenty minutes of the car ride back for this girl to figure out what had happened to her mother, to see her addictions written all over her thinned face, her bare bones, not to mention the evidence in the car.

My friend was never the same. I watched her turn into someone that I couldn't even recognize, no matter how hard I tried. She moved out, beginning of her senior year of high school, barely even graduated, & didn't apply to any colleges. She was so smart, too.. so smart. It was like she was just permanently broken, & she had nothing & no one left.

It took 6 years for her to start healing, It took 6 years, & a tragedy, for her to snap into a reality she had yet to live in, & start caring about life again, to start actually living.

My friend, she's gone now. The pain that built up inside of her for 22 years was too much for her to handle. It was unbearable. How do you heal from 22 years worth of pain? She had to let go.

My friend's name was Kayla. Kayla reached her 22nd year in this world, & decided enough was enough. Kayla found God, & everything changed. & when Kayla found God, God introduced her to Kay. He showed Kayla that Kay could help her. Kay could show her how to start over, to repent, to reinvent herself. He showed her that her past didn't have to determine her future. He taught her the meaning of a silver lining.

God turned Kayla the Victim, into Kay the Victor.

"She is clothed with strength & dignity. She laughs without fear of the future."

I'm still here.

- Kay