I am the fourteen-year-old-girl who will never know how to extract a simple joy from life such as savoring the taste of goat cheese and honey on a plain cracker because I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. I starve myself to fit a mold I wasn’t made from while wearing clothes that turn-on pedophiles and cutting the skin that I will never feel comfortable in.

I am the seventeen-year-old-boy who dresses all in black and draws skulls on everything and listens to Pantera. (Not really listen but more like play it extremely loud so it’s more of just a ringing in my ears and a way to keep people away). I play violent video-games with lots of guns and people dying and I embrace whatever else is out there that represents death and destruction. I do it to make people afraid of me and to hide the fact that I’m more afraid of them.

I am the twenty-one-year-old-mother of three who is stuck in a loveless marriage with an abusive husband and whatever other cliché you have for “getting-married-too-damn-young-and-not-knowing-any-better”. I would leave but I don’t know how since I never had to make it on my own, never finished high school, never had a job, and because there are three beautiful souls that I need to protect so they can have a better life than the one I’m living.

I am the thirty-eight-year-old-virgin three-hundred-pounds and living in my mother’s basement pining for Japanese anime characters with big eyes and even bigger boobs. I have hard drives full of porn and I frequently masturbate even though it has been five years since I could look down and see my penis. I am virtually-married to an orc, three elves, and a dwarf. All the love that I have ever felt was virtual and the only thing that is ever real to me is the pain of being so alone.

I am the sixty-nine-year-old-woman with four beautiful children and seven grandchildren and a husband who I buried a year ago and who I never told that I was a lesbian because my generation wouldn’t let me. I found my soul-mate in a senior living community and we spend every moment we can together. She likes tea and kittens, I prefer coffee and dogs, but we are in love and we are going to spend the rest of our lives together – happier than we ever thought we could be.

I am the eighty-year-old-man who lost his true love to time, cursing God for giving her the eternal life that He refuses to grant me. The only reason I’m still alive is because of a promise I made to my beloved on her deathbed that I have yet to keep. I promised her I would find happiness without her.