His hands grabbed my neck and pulled me into an unwanted kiss.

Bruises left a trail of how he hurt me. A path of how he explored my body on a expedition I did NOT want to be on.

The name that will forever haunt me. The name of the man who raped me. Who broke me: on what I thought would be forever.

I believe that the world is cruel and a bruise looks like a galaxy.

June 7th: Four days after my 14th birthday. Everything changed that day, but that's not the day I would like to focus on. June 7th is only important because it influenced the events of June 16th.

On June 16th: I tried to kill myself.

“To whomever finds this note, and my body along with it,

I’m sorry. But when running a sterling silver blade across a body I no longer feel is my own won’t even bring me any feeling. Then I find it best to just stop, to stop trying, to stop living.”

That was the first paragraph or the last thing I thought would ever be written by Kathryn Kelly Woodcock.

So I took every single pill I had, made cuts across every bruise. It was morbid. The red mixed with the purple and yellow.

I cried, not because I was in pain, or because I was sad that it had come to this. No, I cried because that what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to cry.

Finally, I felt something.

A tear fell into a cut, and it stung. The salt stung, and the blood from what the tear hit, had washed away. After 11 days of just being numb I had felt pain. I was angry and depressed. For me that was enough. I knew I wasn't just a body without purpose or emotion.

So I forced myself to get up, and made myself sick to get the pills out of my system.

And as I made myself sick I noticed it. Out of the corner of my eyes. The bruises and the blood. It looked like a Galaxy without stars. So I added my own. I grabbed a white gel pen and added my own stars.

It was beautiful. A silver lining to the event that was, and still is the biggest moment in my life.

The world is NOT cruel. But the people in it is. Friends betray friends. Families are ripped apart by the actions of it’s own. But people make up the world. We are the world. We so unkindly make the world a cruel place, full of fear. However, We can learn from it. We can see things differently ...

IT’S

Why

A

BRUISE

Can

Look

Like

A

GALAXY

This I Believe

THE END.