The first rejection

My name is Frankie, I know that’s a boy’s name and I am a girl so don’t bother pointing that out. It’s not short for anything girlish, it’s just Frankie, Period. I won’t bore you with stories of how my parents wanted a boy or how they thought it would be cute to give me what they believed was an androgynous name, that would be a lie and while I am good at telling lies this one wouldn’t serve any purpose. The truth is my mother was too stoned out of her mind when I was born to even recognize that I was a baby girl. My father you ask? Well, he wasn’t around by then. He had left around the time my mom was 5 months pregnant with me because he didn’t want the burden of looking after a kid. So, I guess you could say that my father was the first to reject me. In hind sight his rejection was the least cruel of them all; he just left, didn’t look back and didn’t pretend to care. My mother was the next to reject me, although it was only a half rejection- she still stayed around to raise me (if that's what you can call it). I say half rejected because she didn’t want me, she just wanted the check from the state that she got for keeping me.

The next rejection came when school started; you know how piranhas start to circle the one fish in the school that’s different from the rest? Swimming around and around him until one of them loses control and darts over for a bite, then, when the blood starts to flow they all start taking bites until they have eaten him alive? Well, I was the piranha in school that was different from the rest and the kids used to circle me, only they didn’t bite me, they devoured my will with their hateful words and accusations, day by day, year by year.