Since I was having trouble with everyone being able to read this the first time that I put this up, I took it down. Since I had a few more days with it, I have touched it up and added a few more details to it. Please Review. Thanks for reading.

I hope this will, at the minimal, inspire you to take a deeper look as to who Lauren Tanner is.

The Monster Within.

I said something horrible. Again.

It makes me hate myself. Again.

Underneath my caucasian skin, I feel my stomach turning in that way that it does when I know that I have hurt someone on purpose. It begins by turning in the opposite direction and then it compounds itself. Then it somehow will curl and then spin slowly around. A ferris circle. Except this time it isn't for pleasure.

I keep my smile plastered on my face like Barbie. Because that's who you think I am. Because you don't see me any other way.

Sometimes I find myself wondering just how exactly I became just like this plastic goddess. Was it because I said something? Because I somehow look a certain way? Was it because you thought I should be her, and therefore, have become?

It's these questions that bring me to the root of who I am:

Did I create this monster? Or did someone do it for me?

I purse my lips and hold them tight. The smile is now gone from my face as you walk away and head to over to Sasha, who always gives you praise. Who always greets you warmly. Who always manages to find something great in you, even when you haven't.

Not me.

I wish so badly that I was you. I wish that I was my best friend. Ex-best friend, I mean.

I turn away and head over to the beam. My home. That familiar feeling of four-inches and loss of gravity has my heart calmed. Lately, though, that feeling hasn't been as strong. Maybe it's because I've lost my footing in a sense. Meaning that I haven't been winning the gold for beam as often since you've become champion. I've lost my confidence in where I stand. I've lost who I was at the Rock.

Another thought comes to mind and I wonder how I had come to associate home with the beam. Was it because I had always won? Was it simply home because I knew I was good at it and it was clearly my domination?

I know how messed up that is. Home shouldn't be where there are gold medals aligning the walls and where champions lay. It's where the heart is.

So was my heart just dead-set on winning?

Maybe. But ever since losing my best friends, since knowing that for sure my mother will never want anything to do with me, since knowing that I will never have a loving non-druggie mother in her place, I've found that my heart is dead-set on another thing.

Not being a loser.

Losers end up with no one but their ex-best friends' boyfriends because they're easy. I loved Carter so much, I loved him ever since I was young when I first saw him at the Rock. It was an obsession of a teen girl who worshipped her idol. And when I had finally gotten him, I gave what I knew I could only give away once: my virginity.

My v-card now swiped, I needed to have him. I needed to prove to those around me that virginity and love and romance and all good things that make up the world are true. That the girl can end up with the guy in the end and they can love each other.

I wasn't going to be like my mom and dad.

I wasn't going to be like the sluts who my dad dated after.

I was going to hold on to my true love who had taken my purity away.

And now I'm with Carter and I know he doesn't love me. But I don't care because the need to prove is greater than the hurt I feel knowing this. I have to prove that romance through sexual union is lasting and real. In essence, it will prove that all of the sex my dad has had hasn't broken the spell of true love.

Or, at least, I can prove that firsts can last and never become part of the past in faded memories. I don't want to let my love once again fade away into static and then shut off completely.

I hold on to you just because I have to prove that I can make relationships work. That maybe if I hold on enough, I can make you love the woman I am.

You let me do it because you're a teenage boy who likes to fuck a Barbie.

I take a moment to realize that nobody has bothered to notice that I am just standing at the beam. No one has come up to ask me if I'm ready. No one has come up to ask me if I want a spotter. No trainer has come up to command me to learn a new trick.

I've done this to myself. I know that. I'm the one who has driven you all away.

And these are just the consequences.

But I wish so badly that people could see past the surface and the walls I have set up. That they could see past this monster exterior and see that maybe I have a heart.

But then I'm reminded that it's obvious that I don't. Because if I did I obviously wouldn't be doing and saying the things that I do and say.

I wish you could see that I really do care. That every time I do or say something that is just extremely horrible and repulsive, I hate myself a little bit more. That I punish myself just as you punish me with your cold glances and stony exterior. Your hate towards me is clear.

I wish you could see how much I hate myself too.

When I met with a therapist once, he told me this, "Be the person that you yourself would want to be friends with. And if you can say that you would like to be friends with, ya know, yourself, then you must be a good person."

I could never be friends with myself.

You couldn't bare to be friends with me any longer. You couldn't forgive. You couldn't ask me why. You never bothered to wonder if maybe there was something wrong. If maybe I needed someone to talk to. Maybe I just needed someone to listen.

Hell, I couldn't even stick it out with being friends with me even if we were family. My own father can't dare to be with me. Late nights working at the winery. Late nights with his sluts and whores. Late nights with the business partners also known as his bar chums.

He sits and laughs and has fun with his comrades.

I sit and laugh and have fun in a darkened bedroom sitting near my vanity with the faint light of the streetlight flooding into my room as it looks upon a paper-ruled stomach where my secrets still stay hidden.

I just needed someone. I just wanted someone to care. Someone to listen. Someone to want to listen and care.

But all I end up with when the day is done is myself in a cold bed with tears down my cheeks and ears flooded with sexual moans of love that was all a façade from late-night drinks that seep into my room from the master that is just down the hall.

I hate my taunts, my bickering, the rude words I say.

I hate my schemes and my lies and the cursing.

And then I come to the pivotal question that we all silently dare to ask, "Lauren, why do you do it? Why don't you change?"

Because I'm a loser. And secretly, if you hate more, and then I hate myself even more, it will be easier to leave.

To go. To vanish. To disappear.

When I lay awake at night and dreams have yet to come, I ponder what would happen if I died. Would you be happy? Would you dance upon my grave in sweet joy?

If you did, I wouldn't blame you. I just hope that you would dance hard enough that your stomping would somehow hurt me in a physical and emotional way that I could feel your hatred. So that I can ingrain it against my skin and my heart forever.

I think about how I would do it. Would Barbie look beautiful at her grave even if her head was blown to pieces and she was bloody and scarred all over? Would Barbie still be beautiful if she was black and blue? Would Barbie still be beautiful if she had red lines across her skin like lines on loose leaf paper?

Tell me your words of hate against me and I'll write them across my skin in neat and pretty letters. Tell me what you hate about me and I'll scar it on me forever.

I lay a hand against my stomach and I feel my stomach turning.

I lay my other hand against my stomach and, from memory, my palm is laying right across the deepest line I've ever drawn.

I shake it off and look up.

No one is here to question. No one here to wonder. No one here to ask.

When there's no one here, I'm left all by myself to ask these questions:

Did I create the monster I am?

Or did you?