I came into this world innocent. I was a baby. Babies don't worry about things. They don't worry about things because they do not know life. Babies don't know the harsh realities that come along with living in this world. People are born completely innocent. It is only a matter of how long they get to keep their innocence.

My innocence started deteriorating far too young. The family I grew was a dysfunctional one. An unhappy marriage lead to a divorce when I was only six years old. Fights between my parents were frequent and scared me. The divorce only helped a little. By the time I turned seven, I was already blaming myself for my parents' divorce.

I never had a chance to discover what a happy family was like. A fear of abandonment was all I seemed to have.

When I was in third grade, about the time I was turning nine, I started seeing the school's counselor regularly. It helped a little. When I first told her about my parents I cried.

Things seemed to improve, but by the time I entered middle school, I lost two of my closest friends. Of course it wasn't a big fight - it was just friends drifting apart. I ended up being friends with these two wonderful girls that I had known most of my life but never got the chance to know. We were "bffs," and nothing could tear us apart.

I was happy; the fear of abandonment temporarily forgotten. In seventh grade I was bullied constantly by this one girl; I didn't tell my friends. I cried almost every night until the girl stopped her harassment. Since then I've been timid around people and quiet in class because the fear of being thought of as a nerd or being disliked was too strong.

Then in eighth grade, a boy happened. A boy actually liked me and that was a huge confidence boost. This boy was the third person I finally allowed myself to trust, the other two being my two best friends.

I was stupid.

He asked me out near the start of December, a few months after we became close friends. A few weeks later, around Christmas when I'm in a different state on vacation, best friend #1 sends me a facebook message saying the boy is going to break up with me. After a few messages sent, I find out he had already asked her out before he had even broken up with me.

And she had said yes. It takes a lot to get me to trust someone, and something like that can break that trust in a second. I never heard the boy's side of the story, I felt I didn't need to.

It takes almost two months for us to become friends again, and our bond was greater than ever. We overcame a struggle and that brought us closer together.

Oh, if only high school wasn't a different kind of monster.

At the start of freshman year, I had my two best friends, and the boy was out of the picture. That's what I thought at least. Really best friend #1 was dating the boy again, for about the fifth time, but she didn't tell me. The only thing I knew was that she was letting the boy say rude things directly to me. In my mind, friends don't do that, and maybe this wasn't a friendship I wanted to be apart of.

I never talked to her again. My other best friend also stopped being friends with her, as it turns out the boy had started to like her. The boy ended up breaking up with the ex-best friend for a final time to be friends with my best friend. I considered him a friend too, but I never fully trusted him.

A while down the road, the boy asks my friend out, she says yes and tells me right away to make sure I was okay with it. I was at the time. The boys insults toward me never went away, but my friend did put in a little effort to stop him.

Eventually I learned the truth about what really happened over that Christmas break in eighth grade. The boy hadn't asked the ex-friend out. She had told him I didn't want to be together anymore and she wanted to date him. He believed her and gave up on our "relationship." Learning this frustrated me, and to this day I still don't know if that is information I wanted to live without.

While I was done with this ex-friend, she wasn't done with my friend. The ex-friend became a power-hungry bully, feeding lies about my friend to anyone who would listen. That included the mother of my friend's boyfriend. The mother hated my friend and made their relationship impossible. Upon hearing some of the horrible things she was doing at the beginning of class one day, I burst into tears. The teacher asked if I would tell him what was wrong and if there was anything he could do. No, of course there wasn't anything he could do.

My frustration grew and I did something that I deeply regret to this day. The ex-friend casted her magic and told her lies to get me into trouble at school. My father was called into the office, and it was there he learned about everything I have written above - everything from my seventh grade bully, to my "relationship" with the boy, and the fights with my friends. I couldn't stop crying and my dad comforted me.

Problems started to ease up and my life was finally starting to look up. All of that trouble was behind me.

Except I realized it wasn't. My friend, the girl I knew since my days at my daycare, started acting like less and less of a friend to me. I would say something and she'd give me an annoyed look. It seemed like every other day she would talk about something negative. Either she wasn't "feeling well" or she was just talking negatively about things in general. I didn't like the negative, especially since I never felt anything positive from her. I stopped talking to her. The boy, the one who had once liked me enough to surprise me with a Christmas teddy-bear, started bullying me. Whispering things as he passed me in the hallways at school. My old "friend" started giving me dirty looks and started acting like she was superior.

I never looked at her or her boyfriend intentionally. I always ignored them. "Best not to give them any reason to be more rude," I thought.

Walking to dump our trays after lunch, another friend of mine told me, "She keeps glaring at us whenever we walk pass." I just roll my eyes and say I don't care. I do care, and it doesn't feel good.

Almost a year has passed since then, and I have been relatively happy. My family still has its struggles. My group of friends is pretty great. In a way, I've been content with my life.I can't just forget my past, and I can't just forgive those I used to be friends with.

A nagging feeling is always itching at the back of my mind. It's a paranoid disturbance that keeps me on edge. I spend my days waiting for another weak chain to break - for another friend to be lost. There is not a single person I would refer to as my best friend. I'm to afraid they don't think of me the same way, and I am not ready place that kind of trust into a person.

The combination of a fear of abandonment and trust issues has lead to a fear of commitment, and I find myself jumping to get out of any boyfriend/girlfriend relationship I find myself in.

I don't want to be like this, and I fear these problems won't just go away. That's why it affects me greatly when people say things like "You have to learn to forgive," "Just move on," or "Those problems aren't real, you're just making a big deal out of nothing." Even when these types of things are said to others, I find myself troubled. People who say this just do not understand what it is like to have a past full of troubles. They are fortunate enough to have functional families and friendships.

Their ignorance to these real social problems lead those like me to hide, and hiding is one of the worst things a person could do to themselves.