She collected faith in herself by tearing pages out of her chemistry lab notebook and scattering them around on her bedsheets. She wrote pages and pages in shaky Chinese and stuck them to the wall next to the painting of Kuan-Yin. She took comfort in the fact that her wheelchair fit through the door to her bedroom and she could almost maneuver it.
That girl perhaps would have elicited pity had the others tried to understand, had they seen this as something real, something painful.
She grew up into someone her friends couldn’t trust, someone who lied and didn’t remember, someone who lost days of her time and hearts of those who mattered.
What I don’t want to admit though is that she grew up into me: a girl who will always be seventeen, searching for someone to hold my toxic hand.
