It had been six months since my thirteenth birthday. I couldn’t have my own identity yet-my mom still did my shopping for me. I wanted my freedom so badly, away from my strict mother and my working father. All the rest of the girls my age were dyeing their hair, getting boyfriends and staying out late. I had ties to my family that wouldn’t let go. I was the only one at the mall with her parents. I couldn’t wear make-up. The only thing all my own were my cold eyes that could stare through steel. Even then I wanted contacts. I wanted out.

I ‘d go to middle school wanting to be in with anyone, to find some kind of acceptance. I found it through a bad choice of friends that called me Bitch, like it was my name. I’d go home to my house with electricity, running water and heat and go to sleep in my queen sized bed thinking of all the things I didn’t have. The dress she had, the contacts he had the shoes they wore.

I started starving myself to save up money when I ditched school to go to the mall to buy trendy clothes in the store windows that all my friends bought. I bought anything that advertised that I was what my friends called me and bought hypo-allergenic make-up because of my friend’s concern for breaking out with any other kind of cosmetics. I would wash my face and change my clothes before going home. I complained to my mom how underprivileged I was compared to the other kids and she would say, “That’s part of life.” I’d walk off and turn up the stereo to the same music my friends listened to and cringed at how loud the music was.

I went to school with a set of fake bruises I bought from a store, a dark purple and black shade to fool the watching. I applied enough ugly gross bruises to make people whisper. My friends ask me what’s wrong, and with fake defensiveness, I make it clear that something’s amiss at my home. Though my friends do not seem to mind or care, a truly concern girl does inform the proper authority figures. I am called into the office to see if this is true, and of course I protest, but now the fake contusions are now authentic looking because of the non-hypo-allergenic nature of the cosmetics. I am taken away from the only family I’ve ever known, the same family that I would have traded for a pair of expensive jeans.

My foster parents do not allow me to have any cell phones, make up, or brand name clothing. I sleep on a bunk bed with another foster child where I have nothing of my own. I go to school and come back and eat when they tell me and sleep when they tell me. They will kick me out at any sign of trouble or when I turn 18, whatever comes first. This is something my natural parents would have never done.

My old friends see me now, not as Bitch, but as a bitch and pass me by in the store. But what they don’t realize is that with my slight of hand, the same products that were meant to enhance will surly be my way to get out of this hell and into something else. But every time I do, I know that my temporary freedom is store-bought and as fake as I am.