About Her Pain.

"Hand me that piano," she said. She wasn’t serious…she never really was-or so people thought. She was always laughing and giggling and bouncing around. If it weren’t for her height, people would think she was about eleven, not fifteen and three quarters. She rarely listened to her parents when they ordered her to ‘turn it down a notch’. She just kept dancing away in her own little world.1

The people who knew her would never admit it, but they were jealous of her freedom. She seemed to be carefree and happy. If only that were true.2

Her parents were overpowering and overprotective. She pretended to be free, but in truth she was a prisoner under her own roof and in her own body. Her father was a principal by day, a lazy drunk by night. Her mother was a chain smoker. If she needed to talk to Mom, but couldn’t find her, she was probably outside working on another pack of Player’s Extra Light.3

People were secretly jealous of her always present smile and the bounce in her step. They wanted their own little world to always be away in. But they didn't realize that Stephanie’s world was only an escape. 4

At school, she could enter that world, where she had friends and good marks and a good family. At school, she was the ‘babe’. At school she was the jester, always making people laugh. 5

But at home, she was never good enough. Home wasn’t a place to laugh. It wasn’t a place for joy and loud rock music, like she needed it to be. As soon as she entered the front door, she remembered that all the people she hung out with weren’t really her friends. They didn’t know who she was, so they couldn’t be.6

She wasn’t popular and she wasn’t unpopular. The people she hung around with were kind and generous. But they didn’t know the truth about her life. About her pain.7

And that’s why it came as such a surprise to everyone.8

Not even her parents expected it…they were too absorbed in their own issues to really see the hurt in their daughter’s eyes. If they had been parents to her instead of just guardians, they would have. But instead, they had to read it in a tear stained note beside her limp body. They had missed the chance to notice their daughter. To help their daughter. To love their daughter. To save their daughter's life.9