.

Age 14
Her brown eyes are wide, hidden under glasses
She's creative, she's intelligent, she knows what she believes and she's
ready to fight for it,
she travels with her mother to provide eyewear for children living in poverty, she hangs up signs and she rallies,
uses her charisma, her charm, to convince others to join her cause.
Articles are written about her, she's admired,
someday she'll help the world in ways she can't yet imagine.
Nobody can ignore the light she carries with her,
a flame ignited by magical summers at a camp tucked deep into the woods,
a place of beauty and songs and happiness,
a place she loves so much, with every inch of her heart,
that she has to pinch herself, hard, to make sure she didn't dream it up.

Age 15
She's now replaced her thick glasses with contacts,
nobody can deny her beauty, her kindness, the way she pulls others in
and never lets go.
She attracts people wherever she goes, she thinks that's always a good thing.
She's gullible, so gullible, and young, so young.
She's on a social media party chat,
meets a boy who doesn't deserve her, never could,
he hurts her, she never wanted him, she never asked for it
(but she's told she asked for it).
People call her terrible words, torment her through phone screens,
force their untrue claims into her until they become echoes in her mind,
and all the rooms are full of mirrors 
and she becomes convinced that the person staring back
is horrible, ugly, a slut,
not deserving of everything life has handed her.
Not deserving of anything at all.

Age 16
She's changed, no one can deny it, but she still has her sunshiny smile, she still has her warm brown eyes.
Her ghosts follow her like a shadow underneath her joyful expression, but she can't let her facade of happiness slip. Not yet.
The only place where she truly is happy is her summer camp--
she doesn't tell her friends there about the chat, the boy, all those terrible things about her online.
She needs to be herself there, just herself,
free for once of bullies and rumors and scars.
She doesn't mention the deals she's been making on social media,
how she's been buying drugs that help her find peace, an escape from the unrelenting pain of everyday life.
Not many drugs, not very strong, but it's enough to help get her through the terror that has become her new normal.
I stray from the norm, I forge my own path,
she writes in a letter to a friend, sitting on a bunk bed in a crop-top and dark shorts.
She lets herself believe that she is all of these things and more,
not what people called her all last year.
She sees the tears in her campers' eyes when they see her leave and starts to convince herself she's worth missing.

Age 17
She found the light at the end of the tunnel but then it disappeared, it deceived her,
miles of darkness in its place.
She goes on social media all the time, buys stronger drugs
she starts needing them more and more, she just has to feel that rush
no more sadness, block it all out as the warmth takes you over
she tells herself as heroin erases her excruciating pain.
She gets a nose ring, she grows up
or at least thinks she does. 
She still returns to camp, but she's different
her campers wonder why she freaks out when she spills milk on herself, why some days she just seems sad.
She couldn't wait for that summer, couldn't wait to meet her campers
but ended up quitting the job halfway through,
knowing she wasn't a good role model anymore, couldn't be the counselor she wanted to be,
not with the pain and the drugs always in the back of her mind.

Age 18
The world is locked down, and she spirals
her only connection to the outside is her phone
where she can once again buy the drugs that once saved her
but are now eating away at her insides. 
They're the only way she can live anymore, she depends on them,
and she hates herself for it.
She doesn't complain,
her family knows she's going through a rough time and
does everything they can to help.
Her mom talks to her about buying an apartment, far away
she opens up about the drugs and they cry together, 
she vows to never use them again.
She tells herself that she'll be at camp next summer, 
she will, she'll make it, she'll be fine.
She tells herself this, and she finally believes it.
But living without the drugs is cripplingly difficult,
she needs to find some way to ease the pain, and they finally overpower her
it was accidental, she didn't mean to
she didn't mean to
she didn't choose any of this
but it's what happened.
She didn't make it to her nineteenth birthday,
and it was not her fault.

I knew this girl, I talked to her and hugged her many days and weeks and months and years ago,
watched as she painted my nails a brilliant blue under the haze of a perfect summer day.
I swam with her in the lake, I wrote letters and I asked for pictures, so many pictures.
I couldn't forget her face.
Her memory fades with time, but the imprint she left on me
will never leave, never disintegrate into nothingness as the years pass.
She was magical, she was kind, she was corageous, she was beautiful.
She would've helped the world, she would've done everything she could to spread joy and happiness.
She was a special human being, there's no one else like her.
She did not deserve to die.