I was born without a story. Well, according to them I was. The girls saw prey. Saw me, and decided to feast. They said I had no story, and therefore was fit for devouring.
I was an outsider, and I was content. But then someone told me to come in, but her voice smelled like danger, even as she waved me to her. It was confusing. I know now it was my soul screaming for me to run away from the lie put on my plate.
Someone ordered pizza that day, and I was happy to eat it. Just that. I didn’t know the game going on. I was okay being me until I was told I had no story. No story of sex and drugs and alcohol to share. No story of bad abuse going on at home. I lived through a lot, and bad things happened to me, but it wasn’t my story. It was just stuff that happened to me. So I lay on the carpet, a good five feet away from the main group. Looking back, I should have been proud of the symbolism because I was content to eat alone.
If only I had known better.
“You don’t have to sit all the way over there,” she said. “Come join us.” Now that I’m older and wiser, I wish I would have handled things differently.
I responded like my storylessness meant valuelessness, and I sucked up to fit in. All it did was put my broken personal views on display, and call to the predators that there was new meat for slaughter and ravaging.
I ate my pizza with them, and at that moment when I moved closer, told myself that her voice gave me value, and my own voice would have to match. I swallowed down that story of myself, right along with the pizza. I ate the wrong story thinking that I needed that story to fit in with that group. It took me years to vomit out that story.