**7 years ago**
I am crying, huddled in a ball in my bed. From a rational standpoint, this is a stupid thing to do. After everything that happened, I should be happy to be free at last. Instead, I feel like a Barbie doll without limbs and hair, thrown out into a garbage can. Broken, unwanted, powerless and so, so alone.
It doesn't help that my roommate left the college dorm for the summer break. Most people from the dorm did. If things didn't turn out the way they did, I'd be visiting my parents, too. I still could go to them—but even the thought of it fills me with paralyzing shame.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, but I ignore it, just like I ignored all the other messages. Over and over, I rethink the story that led me to this. The love, the romance, the barbs and needles, the hidden cruelty, the cheating… the breakup.
