The Ghost Girl

This is a poem I wrote, when I was 13.
It's very "emo"...I'm sure you'll agree.
Surprisingly though, I wasn't a particularly "emo" type person....I was quite a bubbly person.
 I've always been the girly girl...always the boyband fan...always going to concerts or to the cinema to watch the latest movie...always trying to keep up with the fashion trends, collecting handbags, buying new lipsticks in wacky colours...
I wrote that poem from my painted-entirely-in-hot-pink-with-heart-shaped-stencils-on-the-walls bedroom...I'd have been watching my Take That Live video on my little pink TV/DVD combo at the time....I'd probably have been wearing a Fred Perry tennis dress and would have had my hair loose with one little plait at the side just like Angel wore in Home & Away....
To look at me and to know me, you'd have thought I was a perfectly happy and perfectly normal teenaged girl.
Bubbly...Happy Go Lucky...Shy yes, but not unhappy.
And that was true...most of the time.
But when Monday Mornings rolled around and it was time to put on my uniform and go to school, I felt my whole mood and my whole personality change...
I wasn't one of the "cool crowd" - I didn't smoke and drink in the evenings like the cool girls did....I didn't swear all the time, and I certainly hadn't "necked" any boys....
I wasn't one of the popular girls - I wasn't allowed to use Sun-In in my hair or have gold sovereign rings and earrings, and I wasn't confident enough to flirt with the boys like they did...
I wasn't one of the down and outs either....I was always one of the top few kids in the class when it came to grades so teachers liked me, I listened and paid attention in class, I would never have done anything a bit naughty or got into any trouble...
I wore nice, smart, clean clothes and was always perfectly groomed so I didn't fit in to the "outcast" group either....(You might think thats a good thing but there's safety in numbers when it comes to high school and ANY group would have been preferable to me!)
The truth is...I didn't fit in anywhere.
I was just me....On my own. 
And I hated it.
I always felt nervous....I always felt alone and self conscious.
I spent my mornings worrying about who I'd sit with at lunch time, and I spent my afternoons watching the clock tick away and praying that my Dad would be there on time to pick me up incase anybody tried to pick on me outside school....
All of those feelings are reflected there in that poem....I was the ghost girl. 
Nobody saw me, nobody noticed me....nobody really ever knew me....I had a lot of interests, I had a lot of opinions, I even had some talents...but nobody knew. Because it's like I wasn't there.
The ghost girl.
I've never been so happy about anything ending as I was when the final day of high school eventually rolled around.
I'd love to say that I never looked back and I never felt that way.
But I'd just be lying.
The truth is...those feelings impacted on me, massively.
They've never truly gone away.
When I think back to how I felt in high school, it still makes me cry.
High school has so much to answer for.
Throughout various jobs, college courses and points in my life....I've felt like that same awkward 13 year old is still there within me....she's still screaming and fighting to be heard, but never quite getting her voice across.
I thought I'd found solace in my blog.
Writing has been my release ever since childhood - from writing stories from my imagination at 5, to writing emotional poems to pour my feelings and hurt into as a teeanger - it's always been my solution.
And when I started writing this blog, I found that comfort again - but what was so amazing and uplifting this time was that there was a voice coming back to me - unlike the stories on my typewriter and the poems in my journal, people were out there reading these blog entries and I started to feel a connection with people. 
And I loved that.
And I still do....but lately it's lost its shine a little.
I feel like something has changed, there's been a shift that I can't quite put my finger on.
My passion to write is still there....in fact I'm putting more time and effort in to my writing now than I ever have before and I'm enjoying that.
But those voices that were coming back to me seem quieter now...and I'm struggling to hear them.
I feel like that girl again.
I have a million things I want to say, I have talents I want to share, I have interests and quirks and parts of me that I want to express - but it all feels stuck.
I'm not one of the cool crowd - my blog isn't particularly quirky or unusual, there's nothing ground breaking or out of the ordinary to be found here.
I'm not one of the popular girls - I don't have the perfect white smile, the perfect white living room, I'm not the kind of person who wants to gush about how happy we are or how perfect life is, it's not in my nature to be that way.
And just like in high school - I can't fake it. I can't make myself be somebody I'm not.
But it's happening all over again.
I don't fit in anywhere.
You wouldn't know it to look at me or to read this blog....
You'd see a perfectly normal, perfectly happy, mommy blogger.
Bubbly...Happy Go Lucky...Shy yes, but not unhappy.
But I'm not....Deep down inside, I'm her again.
The Ghost Girl.
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