No More Holding Back

It was a Friday night. There were events going on all around me. My friends and I were getting ready for another evening together on campus. At first, there was no one in the lobby except Jenna and I, but then our friend Sarah came in. It looked like she hadn’t slept for days with the black circles under her eyes, and they were so swollen I almost didn’t recognize her. She came running up to me. I didn’t know what was going. Sarah hugged me like she was holding on to her life. I hugged her just as tightly as she was hugging me. She needed something or someone, to help her and tell her what to do. A few seconds later, she looked at me with a face of tears, tears that told me she was hurt, wounded and damaged. Jenna and I took her into the bathroom. She leaned up against the wall, and slid down like she had no muscles in her body, like she had nothing left to hold her up.

She couldn’t talk she was crying so much. I held her in my arms and told her everything was going to be ok, not knowing what was wrong. I finally got her to talk to me. She had never told anyone any of this before me and Jenna. I always thought that she was happy. She never complained when I was around her.

I finally started pulling some words out of Sarah. Sarah met a boy named Scott her freshmen year and started dating. I knew about this relationship, but I had always thought they were a happy couple. Since the day they started dating, Sarah told me that there was always something that she didn’t like about Scott. As the months went on, Scott took control over Sarah, beating her, raping her, and controlling the decisions she made in her life. When Sarah told me this, my throat dropped to my stomach. I simply held her in my arms and told her everything was going to be ok. I was there to protect her and that was all she needed. It didn’t matter if I was her best friend, her sister or her Mom; I was somebody that didn’t hurt her.

For three years of Sarah’s life, she had put on a face that showed she was happy with her life. Happy with her boyfriend, her grades, and how she was living. She never complained about anything and always looked at the things in life that she had, like her family, and the school that she was going to, and the friends she had. I never knew this about her. Every time I saw her, I thought she was happy, but she wasn’t. I believe that people should always be in support of each other, no matter how close you are to a person. I was there for Sarah to protect her, and that’s all she needed. You never know what people go through in their lives. Sarah put on a face that showed she was happy, but was being torn apart on the inside.