The evolution of a name.

Trigger Warnings:
Depression, Anxiety, Self-harm, rape, suicidal thoughts, eating disorder

     I am starting this blog selfishly out the pure hope of catharsis.  In the spirit of early 90's crime TV series I will be changing the names including my own to protect not them but myself in small town America.  My name isn't really a change though.. she is me and she is a part of my story.. the part that always let me live just outside the edges of myself and my reality.. Many times Lilly probably kept me from saying fuck it and finally exiting the world I hated so badly.
      Funny how when I actually sit down to write I have a plan then it changes as my fingers caress the keys, flying faster than the thoughts, that I so carefully had selected which become so easily discarded in the fuck it bucket.  Lilly.. Hmmm growing up I hated my name with a deep vehemence, I would cry and beg my mother to take me to the courthouse and get it changed.  Kids teased me constantly.  My given name happens to be a name given to the mascot of a local radio station a cow.. of fucking course..always big for my age and started puberty early with rounding hips, and forced to wear a bra by the beginning of third grade this curvy gal got made the butt of every cow joke you can imagine. Add to the fact that I was painfully shy, only interested in reading, and had been hiding a self harm addiction for three years by that point.  so fuck my name.
       Not sure where Lilly even came from but it was there my favorite flower, so many types, from brave tiger lilies, to stargazer lilies with swirls of pink and purple to the white lilies laid out on the dark wood of a closed casket.  I always was alone being an only child at that point in my life and I spent it hiding in the woods mostly. reading or weaving vivid stories to the trees or whatever critters was around.  I'm sure I fancied myself a damn snow white wishing the animals could talk to me. Animals made me not lonely. even in the presence of people I was always alone. Depressed.. full of dread and anxiety. sneaking sharp objects up to the tree line so I could tell my stories, cry my eyes out and make cuts on my skin.  Being a country girls "playing" in the woods no one bats an eye at random cuts, scrapes or blood stained clothes.
           The years were full of loss and death, being mocked and always the last one picked.  I could not get along with kids my age we had absolutely nothing in common.  The were into basket ball and movie stars, Rugrats, and Powerpuff girls; I was into the Phantom of the Opera and Egyptian Mythology.  My depression got worse, I now had a little sister, she needed my attention and everyone else's attention.. I faded.  Jr high wasn't better, still being called fat and ugly on the daily was super fun.. but now boys started paying attention and I liked it, I was desperate for someone to notice that I was real.  But boys were creatures of sloppy kisses and groping fumbly hands. It was expected of me and yet unappealing, I was attracted to a few girls but there wasn't a single one that showed interest in girls and I was already being tortured for not meeting beauty standards. 
         The summer between 8th and 9th grade I decided I was done.. I channeled my depression into making myself lovable, desirable and attractive. So I starved myself.... I lived for 3 months on a diet of water and saltine crackers while riding my bike 3 miles a day. I cut more and more to get through the days and night of hunger pains. I was hanging on a ledge for sure constantly fantasizing about my own death.  And the depression had me convinced that no one but perhaps my cat would care, I was a burden, a pain, worthless and ugly, unpopular and strange. I was successful I lost 80lbs and was able to fit in a size 7 and weighed 142 lbs.  I was so proud and so unhappy still my depression still kept a tight grip on my throat.  I was still cutting it was the only way to release the pain enough to walk numbly through my life without ending it.
            Something happened the guy everyone wanted to date asked me out and I was shocked.  My first date and with this popular guy wow.. yeah wow awful. He picked me up in his convertible and instead of the movie date he promised me he took me to his house to sit and listen to music.. 1999 code for make out.. then when I refused to let him touch my body the way he wanted.. I was no longer a beautiful girl that he was so into .. I was a fucking bitch.. I had walk to a payphone to call my mom to come get me.. the razors edge was sharp that night. Monday brought sideways glances and snickers, how dare I have refused to fuck such a pretty pretty boy? Who the hell did I think I was?  Just some bitch, a prude, straight laced, didn't I realize it would have only been a pity fuck on his part?  I hated high school I got on the school bus pulled my hoodie around me and cried the 45 minute bus ride home like I did most days head against the window bouncing as we hit rough patches of gravel...
      But Lilly how do we find her? I need to get there so I can finish my story for the night.  My folks bought a computer in 2000 we braved the insanity that was the Y2K Bug scare of 1999. and so my Dad promised us a computer! The first night I discovered MSN then I discoved MSN that chat rooms.  Chat rooms to a lonely perpetually depressed, suicidal, hormone kicking in 15 year old is like crack cocaine late at night.  I fell hopelessly in love.  I could pick a name that was easy ~DaRk LiLLy~  The chat room Gothic Nightmares.  Again I was in love.. A country girl surrounded by tobacco spit and dirt road and constantly being picked on I found a new world and a new life.  A world of role play, A world of dark kink, and a world where I wasn't alone anymore.  Where the only intro you needed was A?S?L ?and you could easily lie. No web cams. just the option of voice chat.
         It consumed my life when I wasn't at school and to be honest it probably wasn't safe at all. But during the day I could hide in my mask of my own making and in the screen I could be Lilly and flirt and cyber the night away living fantasy lives with other men and women who were also alone. and had deep feelings who could talk about spirituality and Paganism and such instead of farming and basketball.  To tell you the truth a few of these people I have stayed in contact with and have grew up together through the invisible connection of the internet.
         Lilly saved my life again the next year, in 10th grade I decided to give a guy a chance, he was sweet constantly telling me he was not like those other guys, that he was content to wait... till he wasn't despite my multiple no's and the tears that wouldn't stop..I was 16 and even though I was a fan of role-playing erotica online I was still a hopeless romantic and had these stupid fairy tale ideas of how my first time would be.. it shouldn't have been like that.  I felt not only a bruised,empty shell but also that what was left of my willingness to live had been shattered.  I blamed myself and welcomed the shards of glass piercing my numb skin. A thousand boiling hot showers couldn't wash the guilt away.  I was so fucking numb and no matter how deep I cut it didn't make it better.  (lots of therapy years later I realized that none of that guilt was mine, I didn't ask for or deserve anything that happened to me).  I didn't tell, who would believe me anyways... I slipped into my mask outside, inside I desperately clung to Lilly because she was the only part of me and my sexuality that he didn't take from me.