There once was a shy little girl who was a loner. People used to tease her and call her a weirdo because they couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to make friends, instead she would sit by herself and cry. She would encourage other people to isolate themselves from her.

Luckily enough, there was boy who approached her. He was a bit older than her. Despite all the rumours he had heard and warnings he had received to stay away from her, he still insisted on getting closer to her. At that time he was learning how to talk to her, but he couldn’t predict how she felt, regardless of all her facial expressions he saw. She saw him as her best friend. People thought that she was silly because she did not allow even him to comfort her, yet he was her best friend.

She acted tough in front of people and cried behind them. When she was hurt, she would hide. Lick her own wounds and recover by herself. If only she could have behaved like others, shouted out loud when it hurt. Otherwise, how would other people know if she was hurt if she kept hiding it? Her best friend always wondered how she was coping because he knew she was having a hard time.

She had too many hardships but couldn’t stay sad for too long, because the responsibility on her shoulders was so heavy. From then on, she lost the right to be an ordinary girl. The cruelest thing is that the man she trusted the most let her down. She thought she had the future in her hands but it contained traps and lies, one after another. It’s so miserable that she met this kind of a man, that’s why she became tougher. She endured pain, forced herself to become strong in order to face reality. But that’s not what she really wanted. She just wanted to live like an ordinary girl.

Actually, that girl was not brave either. It wasn’t because she was born brave that she endured the pain. It was because she was too timid. She cried a lot. She cried when she saw that there was nothing she could do to help her mother who was being beaten up daily like a punching bag. She cried when men criticised her age, said that her body was not suitable for her age and saw her as a sex object. She cried when she was raped at a tender age and was scared to speak out because she thought no one would believe her or people would call her names, and everyone else had decided to isolate themselves from her for no valid reason.

She realised that crying and running away would never bring back everything she had lost. Since she couldn’t change her fate, she changed herself. Her only chance was to move on. She had to move faster than everyone else because that was the only way to hide the fact that she was more afraid than anyone else.

No one is born brave but it slowly made her grow stronger from the fear she experienced daily and her hard work paid off. Now she has a man who makes her happy.

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Tell us: Do you think one should speak up if one is hurt?