Valentina

16

James left me in that janitor's closet alone, naked, and broken. My body felt numb and frozen after what he did. I stayed there for hours, not moving a muscle and only staring at the wall blankly. It felt as if my body didn't want to leave the closet. I couldn't get myself to make even a little bit of an attempt to get up and leave. It felt like my body was over the feeling of being alive and being in pain. I laid on the dirty floor for too long, not wanting to move or face the outside world.

I needed to be alone.

I didn't end up going home until around 9pm that night. My brothers wondered where I was but neither of them questioned me. They could probably tell I looked beyond tired. I was staring numbly at them until they got the idea that I wanted to be in my room alone. I didn't want them to see the actual emotions I felt because if I cracked even a tiny bit I would have had a breakdown.

If my days keep continuing the way they are, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up with being alive. James and his friends are certainly not helping me either. If anything, they're making me feel so much worse. The panic, the fear, and the gut-wrenching feeling I get when I see any of them are too much for me to continue on, especially as much as I have been.

Will it ever get better?

The pain I feel on a daily basis is so extreme to the point where I can't focus on anything. I drink too much and I have no energy due to the lack of sleep I get.

Rocco tries his best to invite me out to places where he hangs out with his friends. He even invites me to go shopping and out to eat at my favorite restaurants. I almost always say no unless I'm in a good mood that day. He tends to cancel all his plans and hangs out with me in my room. It's occasionally him either doing homework or playing games on his phone while keeping an eye on me. We do watch movies or a TV show together if neither of us are doing anything important.

Romeo hates how much time I spend in my room. I don't like the way he feels when he notices my pain so I tend to make him feel better by cooking dinner or baking a recipe he found on the internet with him. We put on music while we cook or bake and he likes to try to make me laugh by dancing like a fool in the kitchen. Rocco will sometimes join us.. When it's all three of us, Romeo and Rocco like to start a food fight and they will keep doing it until I join in on them. I won't ever admit it to them but it does make me feel better to know that they care so much about me that they'll make themselves look crazy just to make me laugh.

I'm not okay and I'm far from it. I hope to God that things get better for me soon. My patience with how my life is going is going down the drain and I'm not sure how much life I have left in me. I don't have much fight left in me to give.