She matured quickly. Much more quickly than the other girls in her class, standing 5’1 at 10 years old. The boys teased her for her height and filled-out thighs and clothes that didn’t fit exactly right; these were the same boys that would grow up to love girls like her, already physically developed into a woman. The same boys that ended up showing much more attention, wanted or not, to her than to other girls. Girls like her made boys desire them because of how much older they looked even while just being 12. She was a girl that boys wouldn’t think of to ask out on a date but instead say, “how about we just hang out”. Butterflies and blushing cheeks and lovely conversations in the halls were reserved for some girls but not girls like her. Girls like her were always a second thought. And this became her normal.

She sang for the boys who would listen. And not the best did. These were boys who told her she wasn’t good enough to be the girlfriend but was definitely good enough to see on the side. Boys who showered her with compliments that were never filled with meaning and said only for themselves. Boys who made her feel loved during the moment even though, in their eyes, she was nothing to them. Boys who avoided big questions with small phrases like “don’t worry your pretty mind.” Boys who saw her as an object instead of a sensitive, insightful 13-year-old girl. She accepted this as her kind of love because for girls like her, this seemed like all they could get.

It wasn’t long before she sought out more. Men approached her at grocery stores and on walks around the block, and she saw how they could be better than the boys before. She was just shy of 14 and could already siren any of them. She started seeking men much older than her, no longer boys her age. Men who had lives that were separate from hers and didn’t have time for butterflies and blushing cheeks and lovely conversations in the halls. Who made her feel temporarily desired and needed just to leave her in a shell of a body needing the attention from them again. Who didn’t stay afterward but left to their wives and kids and dogs named Max or Charlie or Spot. Who had two lives and the one with her was nothing but a fix, a rush before they returned to their other lives. And this became her normal.

She sang for the men in her life. She expressed what she needed but did what they wanted. She spent nights alone and days waiting for the night. And each time a new man came along, she thought “this could be it, the man that sees me” but is disappointed at the end of it all. They didn’t listen. They were the same as the boys growing up, wanting the non-committed relationship, but is that a relationship at all? She became the other woman. At her man’s beck and call, a second choice, a second thought. And time and time again when she sang out to the men in her life, she was answered with silence, and she soon learned what she was doing. She was singing for the deaf.