13: Brenda

Brenda had a friend, a guy who always tried to bend her to what he wanted her to be.

Weekly she saw him, meekly agreeing to try this, do that, say the other.  She looked bleakly at her future.

Changing was hard, rearranging her wardrobe and her diction, exchanging this Brenda she liked for one she wasn’t quite so sure about.

New Brenda was different, eschewed her old friends and the things that she loved and she knew, to be the person he wanted her to be.

Did he like Brenda more, this kid she did it all for?  Why did he forbid her to see anyone unless he says it’s OK?  Wasn’t he glad?

So hard she tries to discard the new old Brenda, he’s marred all she did and he tells her she’s fat and nobody would want her anyway.

Depressed by his words, she’s usually dressed in a shapeless sack that covers her up but she’s always distressed when she looks in the mirror and sees that he’s right.

But he made her this way, put these ideas in her head, made her want to cut deep into her arms and her thighs to make the pain stop from her lack of control.

Hitting her most days, splitting her lip and her will to be free, she’s gritting her teeth to get through another visit from him.

Brenda wakes up one day, another agenda lodged in her head and tries to mend a bridge or two she’s recently trashed, thanks to him.

Reaching out to old friends, her eyes are beseeching but inside she’s screeching ‘Help me to get away from him, please?”

When he called they were waiting, then they surround Brenda, again and again tell him to leave her alone.

Slyly he says he’ll go then, highly certain Brenda will stop him, shyly say come back, I don’t mean it.  But she tells him to fuck off.

Brenda is a girl you’d spend lots of time with and like her.  A true friend and you’d help when she needs you too.

She doesn’t need changing.