That's My Story

I’m Sylvia. I’m 18 years old. My life was going great until suddenly it all turned upside down. Love, drama, revenge, betrayal, happiness, and a miracle… My story has it all. Okay, I’m going to dive right into it. I have so much to tell you about!

I have a very weird phobia: I am afraid of touching and even looking at belly buttons. I know it’s silly.  In fact extremely silly. But it is what it is. The belly button that we all have is the thing that turns my life into hell.  “What do you mean exactly?” you might ask. Here, let me break it down for you. One, I can’t touch my own belly button. Two, I don’t let anyone – not even my mom – touch my belly button. Three, I can’t touch anyone else’s belly button. Four, I can’t look when somebody is touching their own belly button. Five – and this is the worst – when I see someone whose belly button is exposed, I can’t look at their belly because I fear that they will touch their belly button.

My name is Annie. I’m 15 years old. About three years ago I found out that my mom was not actually my mother. Turns out she kidnapped me from the hospital. My life was turned upside down. They wanted to change my name! I can’t get used to my new family. I’m so unhappy and I have no one to talk to about these things. Let me tell you everything from the beginning. To make sure that you don’t get confused about who’s who, I’ll refer to the woman who brought me up as my fake mom. The woman who gave birth to me and who I’m living with now, I’ll call my real mom.

My name is Debbie. The moral of the story I’m about to tell you is this: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.    Eric and I have been friends since kindergarten. We always went to the same schools. We’d say hi when we saw each other. Sometimes we’d say “How’s it going?” and chat for a little.  In high school, we were in the same class so I started seeing him every day. But we still didn’t talk much beyond just saying “hi how are you.” Once I noticed him staring at me in class. But when I looked at him, he immediately looked away.  I didn’t think for a second that it may be because he liked me since he was one of the most popular guys at school. He didn’t have a girlfriend but a lot of girls liked him. As for me, I was definitely one of the losers. One night, something really unexpected happened. I had just gotten out of the shower. As I was drying my hair, I got a message. I looked. “Hi Debbie. It’s Eric.” Eric? Did he even have my number? I was so surprised. He must’ve gotten my number from one of my friends. Why did he text me so late in the evening?

I’m going to tell you a story about my sister Bethany and our dad.  I watched it all happen from the beginning. I tried to intervene but it didn’t help because my dad wouldn’t listen.  Like every good father, our dad does everything he can to provide us with the best of everything. Unfortunately, he’s very unlucky when it comes to business. He is a waiter and I know that he is really good at his job. But for some reason, he can never stay in the same restaurant for more than one year. Recently, he was working at an Italian restaurant and he was on good terms with his boss.  But when he saw that another waiter was being treated unfairly, he quit his job. On such days, he comes home with flowers. When my mom saw the flowers, she knew right away that he had quit. Next morning, as we were going off to school, dad was looking for a job online. We all knew that he’d find a new job pretty quickly because he always did. Sometimes, we’d get back from school and he would already be working at another restaurant. This time, we were faced with an unexpected offer...

I’m Hannah. I know people don’t like it when someone calls themselves beautiful. But for the next 10 minutes, I’m going to tell you about what a pain it actually is to be beautiful. I’ll tell you about my own experiences so you can see that it’s true. Unfortunately, that’s part of my reality. I say “unfortunately” because I’m sick of being beautiful. In fact, I hate being beautiful now because of what happened last month. I’ll tell you what made me delete my Instagram account in a minute. Why do you think I don’t like being beautiful? There are so many reasons! Where do I begin?

I’m Aubrey. I’m 16 years old. I want to tell you about something that happened when I was 14. It was a really difficult situation. I had information that would change the life of the person I loved the most. I couldn’t decide whether to share that information or not. It was one of the hardest times in my life. Wondering what I’m talking about and what I ended up doing? Let me start at the beginning. Four years ago, my mom, my dad and I had a happy life. I loved them both. But I was more attached to my mom. To me, she was the best mom in the world. She was a very loving mom.  I never wanted to be apart from her.

My name is Nora. I have a very rare genetic condition. When I tell you what it is, you might find it appealing. You might even wish you had it. But once you hear the whole story, you’ll know that it’s not something to wish for.  That’s because reaching my age with this condition is considered unusually successful. The formal name of my condition is congenital insensitivity to pain. It means that I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel any aches either.

I’ve lost 160 pounds in the last two years and now I look like this. It wasn’t easy at all. There were many obstacles I had to overcome. Unfortunately, one of them was my twin sister Summer. I’m going to tell my story from the beginning and hope it will inspire anyone who wants to lose weight. Like many things, losing weight starts in the mind. If you start without convincing your mind, it finds a way to trick you.  So you can’t continue the diet. My suggestion for people like me is to think about all the reasons why they need to lose weight and make a list of them in a notebook. Don’t start before you’re completely convinced.  I still can’t believe I lost 160 pounds. When I started the diet, I was 275 pounds.  Now I’m 115 pounds. I wanted to lose weight healthily so I did over two years.

Hello guys. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you my name. Because some people might recognize me. I’m not ashamed of what I went through. In fact, I’m pretty proud of myself. But my parents might be uncomfortable with what I’ll be sharing. That’s why I decided to keep my identity a secret. I hope you understand.