Chapter 2: Backstory
Katara POV
I suppose I should really start from the beginning.
I was in 8th grade, the last year of middle school, and my brother, Sokka, had just started 9th grade. Life was good, great even.
I got straight A's, had amazing friends, a strong bond with my brother, and was popular with both my schoolmates and teachers.
But then it all changed.
Sokka started to become more distant. He was more tense and wasn't the brother I looked up to anymore.
He hung out with the wrong people, and became crude, disrespectful, and arrogant.
He would barely talk to Suki, Toph, Dad, Gran Gran, or me, but when he did, it was something like "Move," or "Can I have...".
It went on for a bit, and with each passing day, he became more and more of a shell of his former self.
It finally came to the point where Suki, Toph, and I made him choose: his friends and family, or his popularity.
If you paid any attention last time, you know what he chose.
I went from having the perfect life to being hurt and abandoned by the one who I trusted most.
I felt hurt.
I felt betrayed.
But like they all say, time heals all wounds... ...and it did, kinda.
I got my grades back up, and managed to rebuild myself over the course of my final year of middle school.
My life had been like a piece of glass that had broken into thousands of pieces, but I managed to repair it so that only one piece was left missing.
I thought it would stay that way...
...and then 9th grade came, freshman year. For the first time in about a year, Sokka actually spoke to Suki, Toph, and me, managing to reopen old wounds, but also give me some hope that he wanted to fix things...
..but it wasn't what I had thought.
He said he could and wanted to make us popular, to get us to the top of the social hierarchy.
We all considered it, wondering if giving up our lives as we knew it was worth being with our old friend again...
...but I saw what the "popular" group was like, and I didn't want to be like them.
They were horrible, the kind of people that I had promised myself before entering high school that I would never become or want to be.
So I said no.
I only wish Suki and Toph had done the same.
I became the social outcast, abandoned by the people who had been my friend since kindergarten, and Toph, Suki, and Sokka got to the top of the social ladder.
They avoided being seen with me at any cost, but when they did end up within 10 feet of me, they, along with their 'friends', made my life as miserable as possible.
I went from the happy, upbeat girl I had been only months prior to gloomy, quiet, and wondering why I should wake up in the morning.
My life had become a living hell.
I was hurt and the betrayal dragged me into depression.
Depression became the ocean; Death was the ocean floor, depression was being in the ocean, and all the good things in life were what kept you afloat and alive.
I was about halfway down and Dad and Gran-Gran were the only things that kept me from taking my own life.
It would only be so long until I hit rock-bottom.
I was high enough in the ocean that I was able to mask it...
...but all that bottling up only made it worse.
I started cutting; Within weeks of me starting, my arms and legs were already covered, without a single square inch of skin left unscathed.
There were times when I would nearly beg for the spirits to take me away to the spirit world, where I hoped I could not feel the pain.
But then there were times when I would wish for anything, anything, to give me a purpose, a reason to live.
Little did I know that my wish would be fulfilled...