I tapped away on my phone.  It was 3AM and I was supposed to wake up at 6 but I didn't want to sleep.

I never wanted to sleep.

Nothing was interesting me, which wasn't unusual, but I still felt as if I needed to be awake. I just had no desire to close my eyes and let the darkness take over. The hollow feeling in my chest didn't help. It kept reminding me how cold I felt. It wasn't an external cold but internal.

Outside, my skin was warm and soft. I wasn't a small person either so fingers could really get a good grip on me. Really dig deep and watch as my flesh escaped between the digits.

I bit my lip as a slight heat flushed my thighs. I liked the thought of a strong man gripping me tightly, of being aroused at being able to grasp me like I was sturdy. Like I wouldn't break beneath him.

But on the inside, I knew the truth. I was easily breakable. My skin was cracked and dry and crumbled at the slightest graze.

I was weak and unstable and, as much as I hated the word, broken.  I despised that word because it made me feel like what was wrong with me could never be fixed. Something truly broken couldn't be put back together. It was tossed in the trash with all the other useless, broken, and discarded things.

I wasn't broken! I could be saved and salvaged! I wasn't a piece of trash you can just toss aside like I meant nothing!

I was just a little damaged.

But damaged didn't feel heavy enough to call the jagged edges rubbing against each other.  Even the people closest to me saw only glimpses.  Sarah and Jessi knew me the best. Talked to me the most, but they lived far away. They didn't see how I acted on bad days. I could sugar coat it slightly. I could tell them how I felt and what had happened but it just never felt like they could understand fully because of the distance.

I knew this wasn't true. They've proved to me a hundred times just how well they understood. Horrible, awful things happened to me. Things that still, even after years, make me want to run to a basket and throw up just thinking about it. They've helped me get a little better. They've encouraged me and told me that it gets easier and better and that I have to keep pushing foreward and how strong of a person I am even though the only thing I'm certain that's true about me is that I'm weak.

They told me all these things and helped me feel less lonely because what happened to me happened to them. Things they too still worked through. Things they were still processing and letting go.

It gave me hope that I'll be like them some day, but I worried it'll take too long. Jessi's told me that I shouldn't rush things and take my time because it'll only hurt me in the long run. She said she knew from experience and I believed her. I really did. She also said that I have to let go of what I defined as "normal" because I will never be "normal" again.

People like us didn't have that luxury.

The problem was, was that I felt like my whole life has just been trying to recover from one awful thing or another. Be it physical abuse from bullies to my drunk father saying all women are whores and sluts and only good for being in the kitchen and making babies while I, his most accomplished child who happened to be female, sat not five feet away from him. Be it suicide attempt after suicide attempt which confused me as to whether or not I should be thankful for all my failures or feel like a failure for trying so many times and never succeeding. I lost track of how many times I held my hand out for death to take only to be denied his comfort. I was a little resentful. What great purpose do I have that makes my hand more easily ignored than someone elses? Certainly it wasn't worth this pain, this anger that threatened to eat me alive and spit me out like a lump of uncooked fat off a pig's dirty ass.

It was 4AM and I contemplated not going to school. The ache in my chest was an icy burn. It made me think of winter. The kind of winter when it's pitch black at five in the afternoon but it makes you think it's midnight. The winter day that's so cold and windy, stores are closed because just a few minutes outside would mean a trip to the hospital.

I set my phone down and stared into the emptiness of my room. Even though I lived in a small town in an apartment complex with lights that illuminated the halls and parking lot, no light touched my gaze.

I turned on my side and clung to the stuffed bunny I got a year ago to help me sleep. I needed something to hold onto and no pillow fit right. Rabbiroo was his name.  I petted his head and kissed his nose. I imagined that he didn't like it and made this adorably disgruntled look. It made me giggle.

But my glimpse of joy soon died as reality set in. Rabbiroo was just a stuffed bunny. He couldn't make facial expressions. He couldn't snuggle closer to me and hold onto me just as hard as I held him. He couldn't ease the pain.

The world seemed to get a little darker, a little colder. I shivered as the new layer of loneliness washed over me. I felt exhausted and wished I could fall asleep and never wake up.

I pulled Rabbiroo closer to me and closed my eyes. I ignored the urge to toss and turn, to shift positions and move an arm. To toss some hair away from my face or ease the discomfort growing in a joint.  It wouldn't help me fall alseep any sooner. It never did.