Hell is a teenage girl

Hell isn't a place. it's a body.

It's my body, stretching, twisting, breaking itself into a shape I don't recognize. My skin is an ill-fitted dress, stitched together by expectations I never agreed to wear. My bones creak under the weight of a thousand whispered judgements. Hell is a teenage girl because they tell you to be quiet, to be polite, to be small. But they don't understand the kind of fury that comes from always being looked at but never seen. From being loved only when you fit their picture. From being too much and never enough at the same time.

They take pieces of us like we are fruit left out in the open, ripe for picking. Their eyes undress us before we even understand what it even means to be bare. It's hand that don't ask for permission. It's walking home with keys between our fingers, praying We make it to the door. They rewrite our screams into silence, turn our bodies into crime scenes we are forced to apologize for. She shouldn't have been out that late. She shouldn't have worn that. She shouldn't have- 

We are always the ones who shouldn't have.

Hell isn't fire. It's a party where everyone knows each other except you.

It's standing in a circle that doesn't have space for you, hearing the laughter that doesn't belong to you. It's offering yourself in hundred different ways- louder jokes, softer smiles, swallowed opinions- just to be noticed. Just to be wanted. Just to be something other than forgotten. Hell is sitting at a table where they talk around you, like a ghost wearing skin. It's tagging along, always a step behind, because you're lucky to even be here, right?

But hell is also their eyes on you, and that's somehow worse.

It's the weight of a gaze that drags over you like a slow-moving knife, peeling you open without ever touching you. It's the way they joke- as if your discomfort is something silly, something imaginary, something you should thank them for. It's knowing you are not a person in their eyes You are a thing. A concept. A body.

You want to disappear. You want to set the world on fire.

But hell is not a place you escape from. It's a place you learn to survive.

So I stand in this circle that doesn't want me and smile with teeth sharp enough to bite. I walk through the streets where their eyes linger too long and dare them to speak. They tell me what to do but I refuse to fold myself into something digestible. I carry my rage like a weapon, like armor, like a promise.

Hell is a teenage girl. But if I am hell, then let them burn.