This Girl

   There's this girl I know.  She goes to my school, and she's pretty much in all my classes.  She's the kind of girl who can be nice to almost anyone, but also has a smart comment for most anything.  Maybe sometimes she acts like she doesn't care, and maybe sometimes she's lazy, but grades (among a long list of other things) are super important to her. She's kind of girl people like to ask for the answers, but sometimes she doesn't give them. Sometimes, she doesn't know them.
   She tries hard to make everyone like her, and it kinda seems to work. I think she's grown to like herself and to be herself, but she still has those days when insecurity slithers back into her brain, and she slides inside her hard, protective shell. She's the kind of girl who watches and listens. She takes her time getting to know people. She's the kind of girl who hesitates to call an event "First Annual", because she's afraid to make that kind of committment. She takes her time letting people get to know her.
   Loyalty is an enormous deal to this girl.  She can't stand when people lie to her, and she cries when friends don't seem as much like friends.  She's the kind of girl who would never last a week playing the dating game, because the first breakup would tear her apart, piece by piece.  She doesn't like to give up on people.
   She's the kind of girl who makes a mess every time she bakes, randomly drops things, and manages to wear a white shirt every chili, taco, or ketchup day.  She is the kind of girl who wonders what purpose there is to raking leaves, besides to jump in the piles.  She feels a strong desire to straighten the things that are crooked, plus fix all the other problems in the world.
   This girl grows attatched to the characters in the novels she reads.  She's the kind of girl who knows a word's spelling and meaning, but can't say it right because she's only seen it in books.  There are some things she is too afraid to say, but she writes them down because they have to get out somehow, before they explode from the depths of her heart.
   She's the kind of girl who prays about the people who tick her off, the people who are sick, the people who are boys, the people who need love, and the occasional football game or snow day.  This is a girl who knowswhat it is to be stuck, to be trapped in the deep, dark pit of depression.  This is a girl who has been resced by God, and she will never, ever go back.
   This girl. Is me.