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My life is full of pain.
Emotional pain, physical pain.
It's all there if you look at it closely.
I can easily remember the first time I injured myself and thought: "Wow, that hurt." I was five, and about as rowdy as any five year old boy could be. As I remember, I was riding my bike rather recklessly, as young boys do, down the street when I suddenly hit a curb and fell off my bike, scraping my knee horribly. I remember the stinging ache of it that brought tears to my eyes. That was my first true experience with pain.
When I was about eleven or so, my mum got a new boyfriend. She was so happy, and I was happy that she was happy. Eventually, he moved in with us. At first, I was fine with it. I just wasn't used to having another guy in the house, was all.
But then one night he came home later that usual. My mum had already left for her shift at work, so I was at home by myself watching telly as usual. I can still remember how strange he looked to me, not knowing at that young age that he was drunk. I remember him yelling at me for seemingly no reason, beating me, hurting me. I remember crawling into bed that night and just crying to myself and asking, "Why does it hurt so much?"
When I turned fifteen I realized I was gay and I got a boyfriend that same year. His name was Rodney and I remember thinking that he was the most amazing person on the planet, even if he was almost eighteen.
I didn't want my now stepfather to know I was gay, so we always hung out at Rodney's house after school. On our one month anniversary, Rodney raped me in his bedroom while his parents were gone. I cried so hard, begging for him to stop, but he kept going, telling me that if I loved him I would let him do it.
Rodney raped my everyday after school for the rest of the year that we dated. It only finally stopped when he broke up with me, telling me I was no longer any fun and he wanted someone new.
I was so hurt and confused after that. I gave him everything I had, my body and my all, because I thought I loved him and he loved me back. But I was wrong. I cried for days, refusing to leave my room for anything, not even when my stepdad would come in and beat me for stressing out my mother.
I discovered the beauty of cutting, the way the physical pain could take away some of the emotional pain. I began to crave it. Sometimes I would cut just a few too many times and get a bit woozy.
I cried every time I cut, though. I reminded myself every single time that I deserved it, the beatings, the rapes, Rodney dumping me like garbage.
One day in the school bathroom, I cut too deep. I passed out and a boy named Niall found me a few minutes afterwards, blood everywhere. They say if he had walked in thirty seconds later I wouldn't have made it to the hospital.
I woke up the next day, dazed and confused as to why I was in a hospital room. My mum had been there since I arrived and flipped out on me once I woke up, asking me why I would do such a thing. I ended up explaining to her about my stepdad, but I kept Rodney a secret. My mum filed for a divorce, and my ex-stepfather was imprisoned.
I'm twenty now, working my way through University, striving to be a drama teacher. Today, something special happened. I met the boy of my dreams. We ran into eachother in the store and had such a laugh about it that we went to coffee together not long after. We talked, and I ended up telling him everything about me. All of the things that I've never told anyone. And he told me everything about himself too. Everything.
I am Louis Tomlinson, and today I fell in love with Harry Styles. But I will never know if he loves me back. Because today, Harry Styles was fatally injured by a car on the corner of 3rd and Main.
And that's what hurts the most.