I am.

I am 7 years old, over at my best friend’s house when she gets mad at me for telling someone else one of my own secrets before she knew. “That makes you a bad friend” she said. I don’t remember many of her words from those years I knew her, but I do remember those. I don’t know what it is that makes me a bad friend; I just know that I’m doing it wrong.

I am in 5th grade, already in a relationship with a boy that has lasted nine whole months. We talk on the phone every night, and eleven years later I still believe I loved him. “He’s cheating on you” someone said, “I think you should know he likes Kylie.” Kylie was prettier than me, and he was a fifth grade boy. I wasn’t prepared for that.

I am one of the few kids sectioned off into the ‘other’ middle school where everyone else knows each other. People are already starting to have sex and do drugs but I know maybe 7 cuss words. I am used to being friends with everyone, but I can’t relate to these people. The atmosphere is too different, and this change is much harder than I thought it would be.

I am in 8th grade, painfully listening to my best friend of the past 2 years talking about how she tried cutting herself one time with a steak knife while unloading the dishwasher. "God, I'm so emo," she said. I may not have been able to wear bathing suits to the pool the summer prior, but everyone knew that I was a poser who copied everything she did. They knew that phrase, straight from her. I’m not sure anyone ever told her she was wrong for that- not even me.

I begin counting on my hands the people I’m close with, the people who I know won’t go anywhere. I no longer go out of my way to find anyone new, because people can’t really be trusted. I think, “Six is a good number. When problems arise you find out who your true friends are. Six true is still good, I guess.” But I’m still afraid to reach out, even to them, for fear that I’m doing it all wrong. I have been doing it wrong my whole life, and people just scare me now. Everything I can say sounds wrong before it comes out.

I am in 9th grade, and I’ve been told that the boy I’m dating is a pathological liar. “I’ve changed” he said, and I believed him. When he told me he had breast cancer, I was afraid for his life. Fear ignited to anger as a pyrophoric substance in air.

I am leaving for college, and I think I have finally found the self I’m proud of. I believe I can put most of these instances behind me; it’s been a while since things were bad. I have a great relationship, a great group at home, and a great group at my new school. For a while, I am happy with the way things are. That seed of innocence is still alive, watered and sprouting.

It is the 2nd month of school, and my friend’s girlfriend’s friend is brought into the group. She doesn’t appreciate my friendship with the man that she likes, and so she and her friends start inviting everyone to do things without me. Everyone else says they have my back, but for some reason she’s always there. I know how that goes at this point. I am so uncomfortable that I immediately drop the group and only keep in contact with the ones I knew from the start. It doesn’t take long to fade out that way.

It is later in the year and my friends at home are mad at me because I’m bad at communication but my boyfriend’s not and he hangs out with them still and he tells them about all his problems including the ones to do with me. Suddenly I’m the outsider and the bad guy and that doesn’t surprise me; it never does anymore. It’s easier to take someone at face value when you’re face to face, than to give someone else the benefit of the doubt. I’ve never gotten it anyway.

I am in my second year and I broke up with my boyfriend and I’m in bed with my best friend and I’m asking a lot of questions because I guess now I need confirmation from everyone I care about, but the only answers I remember are “I think I’ve been using you” and then a month of silence.

I am home for Valentine’s day and excited to see my old friends- it’s been a long time, and things haven’t been great at school- but I ate something that was full of something that gave me a panic attack. I’m upstairs bawling my eyes out, and when my ex offers to take me home, everyone who I was excited to see gathers together to talk about how I’m immature and rude because I’m ignoring them to drag him off. Because all I care about is sex, even though in reality I just cried for a few hours and fell asleep. The person who started the conversation was one of my six, from 8th grade. You can know people for years and years, and you still won’t get the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t owe an explanation for that.

The seed of innocence is trust and belief, a seed that is planted in our hearts from birth but that requires care and affirmation in order to grow.  A plant that roots itself in childhood and is designed to grow back time and time again after being pulled.A seed that, unfortunately, adolescence is designed to starve and to bury so deep that it becomes almost impossible to nurse back to health- especially in later life, when we become so busy that we forget, or no longer have time to care for it. Yet in most cases, those roots remain. What matters is whether someone opens the blinds.