A Diamond in the Rough

“Do you act like a freak at school like you do at home?”.

“No, the other kids just don’t like me.”.

“Then be more likable.”.

Easy enough, right?

It's so easy when a diamond doesn't meet our standards to dress it up, polish it, or add other jewels to make it more appealing. We do the same to our stones as we do our own flesh and bodies. We cake our faces in makeup, buy expensive clothes to hide away our insecurities, and slap fake smiles on our faces, all in the name of being likable. Pure, natural diamonds are born from our Mother Earth after billions of years of extensive pressure and heat. Theses glittering gems of trauma then become tainted, harvested from the earth by the aching hands of miners. Miners from countries torn down by war, only to be sat upon a hollow pedestal of lies and sold by villains hidden behind smiles, while passersby bustle about without a thought to the life of the diamond. She sits and she waits, hoping the pain from which she was born is enough to make her shine bright enough.

When we think of war we think of far-off lands with tanks, trenches, and filthy army men wiping the sweat and blood from their brows as bombs dive into the dirt. But we think so little of the unspoken wars right before us. The ones in our own towns, our neighborhoods, or perhaps the ones people come home to every day.

I was just a baby when war was waged in my home. My family took sides, one against the other. The weapons were alcohol and drugs, foul language and fist. My family spilt apart and there I was, just a bystander, being tossed about from one war zone to another. My parents split and left me in the care of my grandparents. For a short period things were calm and steady, until the day my grandmother was taken from us in a car accident when I was 7 years old. For the next decade I watched my beloved grandfather drink his life away ‘til he died of a broken heart. Pressure.

Sometimes I went back and forth between my mothers and my grandfathers. But no matter where I was, I always had to have my defenses ready. My mother was an addict and an abuser, and she had an army alongside her. Pressure.

For years I woke up every morning in my darkened room, quietly tip toed around, collecting my supplies for the day until it was time to flee for school. However, things weren't much better there either. Sure, I had acquaintances. They were little breaths of fresh air for when I could push past all the sediment and poke my head out to breath. But the bullies were relentless. My family didn’t have money, at least not for cool school supplies, or nice clothes. I was easy pickings for the other kids. They made fun of me for anything and everything, and I let them. I let them because I never felt like I was worthy. I felt like I was dirty, I was laughable, ugly. Pressure.

I tried my hardest to be enough. But I wasn’t. My efforts to befriend most kids were all the more reason to laugh. As we grew older and being accepted became increasingly more important to my classmates, a lot of my acquaintances drifted away and chose popularity over friendship. So, I put my focus elsewhere and narrowed in on my reputation as a student. I cared deeply about my grades, but, the better I did in school, the more that was expected of me. They mined me. They mined and mined for anything of value from me. Anything that could be put on a pretty little pedestal and given some kind of worth. If I didn’t get that A++, if I didn’t have perfect attendance, if I wasn’t the captain of every club, then I was just a nobody. I remember so clearly the day I failed my first test. It was 5th grade history, we had to name all 50 states and their capitals. I failed it with a 62%. I remember the sinking feeling in my belly when my teacher laid the white paper marked with red scribbles on my desk. I distinctly recall the pressure building in my chest and the heat swelling in my face as tears began to trickle from my eyes. I frantically searched for a valid reason I could have failed. Was it because I didn’t try hard enough? Did I not study long enough? Or was it the stress and exhaustion I gained after my mother had given birth to my baby sister. Pressure.

For nearly 12 years I had been an only child. People would joke with me about how great it must have been. No siblings to argue or share with, and my parents could spend all their time treasuring me. They of course couldn’t have known the war zone that I called home. Or how even as an only child, I didn’t shine bright enough for my parents. When my beautiful baby sister was born, still, neither of us was treasured and my mother and step father became frequently available. Now I was a full-time babysitter and a full-time student. Pressure.

I continued to wake day after day in my darkened room until one single night, everything changed. After that night, a dark room became darker than dark. Pitch black. Even the sunshine peeking through the curtains could no longer brighten the room. That night he crept into my room, and a black veil was pulled over my eyes. The last bit of child within me was harvested and thrust into premature womanhood, leaving a gaping hole in its place, pitch black and never ending. As a black sun rose over the gloomy horizon each morning thereafter, I accepted there was now no chance of me ever being good enough. I was no longer a jewel. I was tainted and I was broken. I was damaged goods, never to shine again. So, I gave up. Pressure.

Seasons came and went, and I sunk deeper and deeper into the ground. I no longer had the motivation nor the energy to apply myself anymore. I didn’t try to make friends. I didn’t strive for good grades, and it all came tumbling down. By my freshman year of high school, I was nothing but a rolling stone, barreling downhill all the way to rock bottom. And as we all know; a rolling stone gathers no moss. I was couch hopping from house to house. Between classmates and neighbors, I got by. I never stopped moving, in any aspect. If one social group became sour, I moved on. After a temporary stay at someone else's home, I kept going. If I failed a class over and over, I simply transferred to another. Always rolling, never gathering. I tried so hard just to get by, to survive, but I never had anything to show for it. I just didn’t shine as bright as the others.

It was in the gloomy winter my when I hopped off the familiar bus stop at the mouth of the old neighborhood where my mother lived. The house was right on the lake, and I paused to gaze out to the water as the sun, still seemingly black to me, tossed about its rays on the water. I watched them bob around the ebb and flow for a moment before making my way back to the old house. I didn’t have to walk far before realizing it was empty. I could see from down the street, there were no lights on, there were no cars in the driveway. The dogs were not in their houses, in fact, there were no dog houses at all. The only object belonging to the house now was a bright yellow paper attached to the front door. My heart sunk, and I made my way through the gate anyways. “Foreclosed”, the letter read, with a bitter echo in my head. Pressure.

I was 14 years old, asking myself if my parents had forgotten me. Was my shine so dull that I wasn’t embedded in their memory? Or was it because I didn't shine brightly enough that they decided they were better off without me, as if I would lessen the value of the family jewels? Pressure.

At the tender age of 15 years old I found myself sleeping in a dim cell in juvenile jail for shoplifting. Because the things I stole were much more valuable than my wellbeing. When released, CPS placed me back in the “care” of my mother, only for her to chip away at me and mine me for resources. We now lived together under my grandfather's roof, who despite his quickly declining health, continued to drink. I was now responsible for my little sister, my ill grandfather, and myself. A full-time nurse, babysitter, student, maid, and chef. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

I was just 16 years old when I came home to a box of my belongings haphazardly tossed onto the steps of my grandfather's porch. I felt the familiar swell of heat and pressure within me once again.

In the previous couple of years my father had resurfaced and come back into my life. I had only seen him a handful of times, as he lived on the other side of the state. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I was thankful for a fresh start. Could the stone finally stop rolling? I would have a new house, a new family, a new school, and new friends. However, I soon learned it was the same song, just a different chorus.

No amount of polishing, refining, or repairing, could have made me shine bright enough to fit into this new world around me. The kids at my new school had grown up together and were not looking to let a stranger into their well-established circles. My father had expectations for me. I was supposed to be the daughter he always dreamed of. A perfect little princess all dressed up in glittering jewels. But I wasn’t. I was broken. There was never a moment I didn’t feel as if I was up on a pedestal for all to judge. Even the slightest mishap was a great failure. Pressure.

The same darkness from years past followed closely and enclosed around me no matter where I was. It eroded me, leaving me hollow and nothing but a brittle skeleton of what I used to be. The darkness clouded every sunny day and it dusted me in soot. I felt nothing, I was nothing, and I gave nothing.

I turned inward and once again had to accept what was. I even found myself growing fond of being alone, and eventually it became a survival mechanism for me. My father was also a drinker as my grandfather had been, but he was an angry drunk. Fire water we called it. He happened to be a bartender, so tinder for the flame was always readily available, and I isolated myself to avoid being burned. I spent the rest of my high school career alone in my room like a cursed princess locked away in a tower. I picked up my own hobbies and interest in the meantime to keep myself occupied during those long and lonely days. I was an artist, and I spent my nights scribbling away at paper and smearing paint on canvas. I also delved deep into my video games, whole imaginary worlds at my fingertips for me to escape to. I was a weirdo. I wasn’t social, I didn’t put effort into my looks, I didn’t go to parties, and I drew odd creatures that others found disturbing. But I was me. And even if no one else thought I was shining bright enough, at least I was now comfortable nestled away deep into the dark, cold dirt that had once smothered me.

Days came and went. Some better than others. Some much worse than others. My father and I argued a lot. We fought over me not wanting to go to college (I didn’t think I was worthy enough), we fought over how messy my room was, (I didn’t have the motivation to clean it), and we fought over how I wasn’t a normal teenager going out with friends and dating boys (I wasn’t their type). He told me often how he was worried about me. Concerned even, that I wasn’t out doing "normal" teenager things. In reality I assumed he was more worried about his reputation. All his friends' kids were normal, so why wasn’t his? He had no extortionary jeweled princess to show off. Pressure.

I came home day after day in tears. Heat and pressure rising. Balancing school, work, depression, PTSD, and bullies. My father was sitting in his living room chair and I tried to quickly brush past him, hiding my face as I usually did, but this particular afternoon he stopped me. I don’t remember how the argument started, and it doesn't matter anymore. The only thing from that confrontation that mattered stuck with me for years.

“Do you act like a freak at school like you do at home?”, he interrogated with a condescending tone.

“No dad, the other kids just don’t like me.”, I answered.

“Then be more likeable.”, he barked as he stood up from his chair, throwing one hand to the air as if I was a lost cause. I stood there, hanging my head low as time itself froze around me. I listened as he stomped to the kitchen and aggressively prepared his coffee, loudly clinking and clanking around to better express his anger to me. Hot tears dropped around my feet, and I knew I had a choice to make in that moment. Pressure.

Graduation day came, and just as quickly as I had snatched my diploma out of the principle's hands, I was sat on a plane soaring over the Atlantic towards a new life. I had met someone who tolerated me at the very least, and I was on my way to be with him. I changed my name, I left all my belongings behind, and I was off to yet another new world that I hoped to be accepted in. See, I had fallen in love with a European boy, and he and his family opened their home to me so that he and I could be together. It seemed like a dream come true. My new country was breathtaking. Grass greener than you had ever seen, the majestic mountains of the Alps right in my back yard, and river water so crisp and clear it could pass for holy.

This fairytale land I now called home made the days seem so much brighter, and though I still held tight to my cloak of darkness, the sun here wasn’t blackened. Soon I was married, and my new family seemed so warm and welcoming. They were all so eager to learn all about me and the exotic world from whence I came. And suddenly there I was, thrust onto a pedestal once again. But I didn't feel like a princess upon throne, I felt like prize trophy upon a mantel. My new husband’s parents frequently attended banquets, large dinners, parties, and events, all for which I was dressed up and paraded around at. It was unsettling, distressing even, to go from isolation and the very definition of a disappointment, to being the entertainment of the night. My parents-in-law proudly boasted about their exotic jewel of a daughter-in-law, and people poked and prodded about me and my life, wanting to know every little detail. I was often volunteered without my consent, every word I spoke might has well have been into a microphone, and my private artwork was often shared with everyone without my knowledge, as if it sat in a public museum. I felt naked, stripped of all my privacy and everything that was me, and then dressed up to be what they wanted me to be. Pressure.

I was a show piece to them. A necklace to put on for the gatherings, and taken off at the end of the night. Once the party was over though, suddenly I was all alone again. Perhaps I was treasured, but as an object, not a person. As long as I could be dolled up for the show, I was worth something, and as soon as the costume came off I was invisible. They painted right over my blackened stone. They polished over all the rotting bits of me, ignored my pain and heartache, and placed me upon a hollow pedestal. I felt fake, I felt like an imposter. I was broken, and their idea of helping me was concealing who I was inside. Tears were wiped away, a fresh coat of mascara applied, and I was told to lift my chin and get out there. The show must go on. And don’t forget to smile and wave! On the outside I was a lovely centerpiece, but on the inside:

Self-harm. Pressure. Anorexia. Pressure. Bulimia. Pressure. PTSD. Pressure. Depression. Pressure. Night terrors. Pressure. Panic attacks. Pressure. Loneliness. Pressure.

Despite all the attention I gathered, my husband was always less than impressed. He was the only one I wanted to shine for, and once again I found myself in the same situation. I just wasn’t bright enough. While his parents had introduced me to everyone in town, his friends didn’t even know we had married. There was nothing I could do to get his attention. The man who I had fallen in love with had lost all interest in me, though it was later revealed he didn’t have much interest from the start. I had briefly found a purpose in trying to heal a person who like me, was shrouded in shadow. I thought that because we both lived in such darkness perhaps we could be each other's light, but for him I was nothing but a box of matches. He could take a part of me, strike it to get temporary light and warmth when he pleased, and as soon as I burned out, he shut the box and chucked me in the drawer. I found myself with the same hot tears on my face as I had when I was a child. Soon, I divorced due to violent domestic abuse. Pressure.

My last memories of that mystical fairytale land are of me sitting near the brook in the woods near our home. I peered out from behind my blackened smog and observed the life around me. The vibrant brown bark of the trees, the everlastingly green moss on the floor, and the cheerful song of birds floating above me. Why was the world around me so beautiful, and why was I not?

I returned home to America with a heart made of stone. Life went on, and I carried out my days with dim expressions and stiff motions. Some say the universe will repeatedly place you in the same situations with the same problems over and over again, until you have learned the lesson you were meant to learn. I thought about that a lot, and it never made sense to me. I couldn’t fathom what lesson I was supposed to learn from the life I was given. But what I did know for sure was that I was stuck in the same miserable cycle without a clue how to break free. Now 23 years old, I was in my final abusive relationship, though unbeknownst to me at the time. I whole heartedly believed this was just the way things were supposed to be, so I tried to make the best of it. I did my best every day to get by living in a world of diamonds as a girl made of blackened coal. I wrapped myself tightly in my cloak of darkness, and life went on. I met new people. Made some friends, and lost some. I had a few different jobs that came and went. And every day I came home to war. Now it was my turn to be a soldier, my voice my only weapon. Pressure.

No one will ever love you if you don’t learn to love yourself. A phrase I had been told time and time again. I had never even tried to love myself, as I had nothing to actually love. So, I focused instead on the outward things I loved, such as the people in my life and the hobbies I had. This was the life that had been carved in stone for me, so I figured I might as well find ways to make it easier to get through. And I'm glad I did, because through this I made a close friend. A friend who had the same interests and hobbies as me that we could bond over. It made the world a little less lonely. I also got a cat, he made good company too.

The season was shifting from a rainy spring to a blistering hot summer. My cat encouraged me out of bed every day, and my friend began to challenge my self-hate. He always questioned the negative things I felt about myself, and soon I began to question them too. It was refreshing to befriend someone with a good head on their shoulders, and when things were rough, he was always there to offer solid advice. I was able to build a special trust with this person and they offered a lot of comfort that I had missed out on in my life. The days that I woke up to a message or a call from him seemed a little warmer than usual. But I was literally playing with fire. I had an aggressive and jealous partner, one who didn’t mind hurting me to get what he wanted, and he did. But still I kindled this fire, and soon my frozen soul began to thaw.

We talked more and more, nearly every day now, and I began realized how I truly felt. When I spoke to him, I felt my body warm up and my face blush. I had butterflies in my stomach, and my palms would sweat. I liked this person a lot, but it was as giddy as it was desolating. It made my heart ache, for he was a diamond, and I was made of coal. I was met again with the nostalgic grip of darkness and shadows. I couldn’t bear the thought of my dark shroud bleeding into his life like spilled ink. But he showed no fear, and each day he continued to reach a glowing, sunny hand through the smog and offer it to me.

Every day I grew stronger. Every day I took his hand and I basked in his light. I had never had anyone whose mind worked the same way mine did. Even though he was a diamond and I was coal, I felt welcomed by him. My confidence grew and grew, as did heat and pressure. I sat there one night, thinking to myself all the pain I carried in my heart, and how my diamond of a friend was always lifting me up and boosting my morale. I looked to my cat, and he looked back to me. Our eyes met and I nodded at him. I knew somewhere deep down that I deserved better than this, and he slowly blinked in agreement. I made the choice that night to leave my abusive partner. After several days of carefully plotting my escape, I was on my own once again. My beloved cat and I were staying at a women's shelter for domestic abuse victims. They fed me and put a roof over my head, but it was a poorly funded shelter nonetheless. I had a month to find a place to go. Pressure was building in my chest every day as the stress of being homeless and trying to fabricate a stable life for myself in a matter of weeks overwhelmed me. Pressure.

I spent many hours on the phone with my best friend, venting all my worries to him, and he listened to every one of them. The shelter was rough and a lot of seemingly suspicious things were happening there, so after only a week, I decided I had to move on again. My friend offered his home to me a few times, but I always declined. My blackened ink staining his sparkling white home? I couldn’t. But things continued to become unsafe over at the shelter and he grew increasingly worried, so finally I accepted his offer. I had visited his home a few times before, and I knew my cat and I would be safe there for the time being. He also lived far away from my abuser. Still close to familiar territory, but far enough for a fresh start once again. So with a hint of a glimmer, I checked myself out of the shelter, stuffed my cat into his carrier (much to his dismay), and we headed for our rendezvous point.

It was dark outside when I pulled in. I sat in the poorly lit parking lot, waiting for my friend to meet me there. His car pulled up to mine, and before I could even fully open my door, he was standing next to me. Dumbfounded, I stood from my seat, and he quickly and firmly embraced me. I melted into his arms. I felt heat gathering on my shoulder where he rested his face, and I realized he was sobbing. He then lifted his head and looked me in the eyes;

“I love you.”.

Diamonds suffer under pressure for years upon years before they are thrust to the surface.

The day my father told me to be more likeable, I had a choice to make. I could either take his advice, or leave it. Today I am proud that I chose not to take his advice. Instead, I chose to endure all the heat and pressure and stay true to myself. And now, instead of being likable, I am loved. Through all the soot and dirt, I couldn’t see what I was becoming. It took but one person who was willing to peek through my shroud of darkness to see what I really was. My now fiancé was the sun in my dark life, and I had no idea just how brightly I shone in his. As we stood in that parking lot, he told me that by simply being myself, I had guided him through the night all this time. So, that very night, I tugged on the strings fastening my cloak of darkness shut, it fell to the ground, and there stood woman of pure diamond. A shimmering crystal-moon goddess, a beacon in the night.

Now, sun and moon rise and fall each day in harmony. Our cat encourages him out of bed every morning now instead of me, because he will happily jump out of bed to feed him, and sings a cheery little song about it too. I’ll lay in bed a while longer, looking around the room as it grows bright from the golden yellow sun beaming through the windows. Warmth caresses my skin as I lay there, completely aware of just how worthy and valuable I am, and I smile to myself. I am happy, and I am loved. The universe made it clear to me what lesson I was supposed to learn. How to love myself. And because one kind soul dared to show me how to be loved, I can now love myself.

After 26 long years, I wake up every morning in a sunny room, and when I gaze out the window, I see my own vibrant fairytale kingdom. I am following my dream of being a yoga instructor and will soon be finishing my certification with big plans to open my own studio. I scribble and paint with reckless abandon, and my partner and I pick up our gaming controllers together and delve into adventures. I focus now on my health and wellbeing, and I've never felt better. I have many friends, my dad being one of my best, and he tells me every day how proud of me he is. Each day as I set off into the world, I am plated in the diamond armor that I forged with my own resilience. I proudly wear my moonbeam crown, knowing that I shine brighter than ever, and that I have a safe haven, a sanctuary of white, to come home to every night.

I never believed I would ever amount to anything. I'd never be valuable. But to one person, who I was was everything, and I was truly treasured. I evolved through the heat and the pressure of pain, trauma, and broken trust, and for years I endured and I stayed true to myself. Today I shine before the world upon my sturdy, pearly white pedestal that I had the strength to carve myself, and I am not for sale. Today I stand before you, raw and unfiltered, a diamond in the rough.