Willow Prynne I need to buy a vehicle before a house. I need to graduate college before I run a business. I need to learn to be a girlfriend before I'm a wife. I need to get married before I have a baby. I need to learn how to be a daughter before I can be a mother. I need to finish being a girl before I can become a woman. Essie Prynne I was that girl, ya know? The girl. The girl who developed early. The one every boy with testosterone firing in their veins wanted. The one every girl wanted to be- the one they hated out of pure jealousy. I was that girl, but she wasn't me. Kieren Mason I've seen things I can't unsee, things that ruined me. I've taken on the role of my father's wife, my siblings' mother, and my brother's enabler, because the guilt is suffocating. As those roles are stripped from me as my family moves on, I'm left behind without a purpose. Devon Mason I'm just like my mother- bipolar and abusive, but I'm also a drug addict. Being manic is a high without a drug, to the point I have to take drugs to dampen my high. Imagine your mind is a heavy metal song, but all the instruments are giving conflicting sounds, and you're doing all you can do to make sure the bass doesn't overpower the guitar, and the drummer is pounding out a wicked solo, drawing the song in a new direction. I've yet to find anything to properly represent the depression aspect. Perhaps death is the only way to describe the low of depression. You just feel dead in a sea of hopelessness, without the ability to move as all life has to offer flies by in waves of fast-forward and rewind. Everything you once loved, no longer sparks any interest. Ever. The only thing the inflicted seeks is relief. Something to make you high again. Anything to make you feel alive for only a few seconds. A reprieve in an endless expanse of shadowy nothingness.