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    The girl loved her dog and her little brother, playing soccer in the street and helping her mother cook dinner. Weekends were for visiting grandmother or spending time with friends, going fishing with her father or painting, and it was a simple, happy life. But with each birthday she grew more aware of something inside of her - a question that needed answering. She saw shorter skirts on her friends, make-up on their faces, a sway in their hips and a pout in their lips. The eyes of the boys followed them, worshiped them, and slid past her as if she did not exist. How could she make them see her too? When she asked her friend, an embarrassed whisper in the bathroom before class one morning, the answer was an unexpected and barely understood one. Stupid, you're a little girl, and guys don't want a little girl, they want a woman. The ache of alienation speared her in the chest, growing more unbearable with every day that passed and no one looked her way.

    Then she had wanted, more than anything else the world could offer her, to be a woman. A woman, like the ones in all her favorite romance movies - beautiful, confident, desired. Love, real sky-spinning earth-shaking love, did not come to little girls. It only came to a woman, so she must become a woman. Only then would she be enough, feel completed, be wanted. And deep down she knew the decision that she must make.

    So she had put on the make-up, stolen her mother's skirt and pinned it to fit, and done her best to move like a man would notice. It had worked. A guy had noticed her, and this was the opportunity she had been waiting for. He had muttered in her ear that he loved her, that he would make her feel so good, and she had softly said yes.

    But what was supposed to be a glorious moment of joy and discovery was instead pain and regret, tears in place of smiles. There were no butterflies blooming out of cocoons, no fanfares, no fireworks. Only shame bloomed in the silence of the room as he rolled off of her and began to dress with his back to her. It had been rushed, rough, impersonal. She could not remember a single instance throughout the ordeal that he had looked into her eyes. All the movies, the books, her friends, had lied to her. This was not special, no - this was scarring and devastating.

    Now she was a woman, but it was merely a definition, a technicality, a title that was meaningless and just as empty as her heart. How many times would it take to feel like a woman?

    Because she did not feel completed. She did not feel beautiful, or confident, or desired. No part of her felt like what she was supposed to be now, in the aftermath of her choice, and the abyss in her mind yawned wide the jaws of despair, threatening to swallow her. He had used her, thoroughly, and was casting her aside, eager to escape from her impending breakdown. Her parents would be home soon, but instinct told her that was not the reason he put his shirt on inside out.

    He was walking out then, hurried and without even a backwards glance to the girl-turned-bitter-woman lying disheveled and hollow-eyed on the small twin bed. Clumsy paintings of flowers and mountains hung above the headboard, and a small collection of beloved plush animals lay scattered in abandonment on the floor, just as she had been abandoned. The ruffled unicorn comforter that had covered her bed was wadded up at the foot of the bed, as if it were hiding its face from what had just happened there. All of these were the hallmarks of her girlhood, and suddenly seemed so ridiculous to her, she wanted to scream and rip them all apart, commit them to a wood-chipper.

      She thought maybe she should hate him for not wanting her, or hate herself for wanting him to, or for being such a stupid fool to fall for his perfect words, but she did not.

    In fact, she felt nothing at all.



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