“Manage me, I’m a mess” After My parents got divorced, I was lost. My mom had left my religion, the one thing that had stuck to me my whole life. I cried every night and pushed the people I loved away. I looked for others to pick me up from my sadness.

“Turn a page, I’m a book, half unread” I pushed people so far away that they didn’t know who I was anymore. Somehow along the way, I lost myself too.

“I wanna be laughed at, Laughed with, just because” I had a secret longing for happiness. The religion told me not to want anything. “As long as you have a relationship with God, you will be okay.” Only, I wasn’t okay. I saw my friends being happy, so why couldn’t I?

“I wanna feel weightless, and that should be enough” I wanted everything off of my shoulders, so I tried things. I was in mental and emotional pain and I had read about physical pain, so I threw a rubber band on my wrist and snapped it back all day every day for a long time. Most people believe that it doesn’t count as self-harm unless you cut, but every time I went to get the blade, I would back out. I was scared of what would happen if I did. Everyone in my religion knew nothing about self-harm, and they were against therapy, so I had to go with an alternative. I felt like it wasn’t the same, but I know now that it was.

“I wanna feel reckless, wanna live it up just because” I was in a box that my church put me in. I wanted free of my life. But that was wrong, it was wrong to hope for such things as having fun unless it was provided by the elders. They led the church and got to choose if you were going to make it past the “end” or not. They were holding me back from everything I could have been. 

“But I’m stuck in this f***ing rut, waiting on a second hand pick me up” I was blinded to the world around me and I was going around in circles. Every time I tried to do something, it would backfire and I would fall back down. One step forward, two steps back.  I went to church thinking that my “friends” could help me, but in reality they were never there for me. All they wanted was for me to preach “goodness” and “harmony” of their religion.

“Make believe that I impress, that every word by design turns a head” I was told that I could be extraordinary, in a small way. If I did everything I could to make the people of the church happy, if I could make my god happy, then I could also be happy. So I did everything in my power to get people to listen to what I was saying. I tried to talk my mom into coming back to the religion. I stopped doing my schoolwork and I focused on my religion.

“And this is my reaction, to everything I fear” I was scared. I had been pressured into being in a religion that I didn’t want to be in. I knew that what they told people wasn’t right, but my friends were there. The only friends that I had. I grew up with these people and they were going to protect me from “the end”. Right?

“I’ve been going crazy, I don’t wanna waste another minute here” I was so close to being done. Done with life, school, family, church. I was almost ready to end it all. I was tired of being held back from all that I could be. I was still waiting for someone to pull me out of the black hole I was in. I went to school sobbing my eyes out, and my parents didn’t seem to care. I ran into the school dropping everything and hid out in the bathrooms. I was done. I had reached my breaking point. My friend, Jazmin, came into the bathroom and I held onto her, scared for what I could have done, what I could still do. That wasn’t the end of pain in my life, but it was the end of me letting myself be harmed mentally and emotionally by others. That day was my game changer. I got home and I screamed my lungs out to ‘Weightless’ by All Time Low.

“Maybe it’s not my weekend, but it’s gonna be my year” It was a long journey, but I got out. I left the religion and got my friends back. I was lucky enough to get them back. I was happy, and, of course, I had bad days, but I was good. I was okay, even if it was just for a little while. I found a band and a song. I was and I still am, Weightless. 
This I believe, everyone gets a game changer.