The Girl With the Eraser Tattoo
If You See Her, Ask Why She’s Crying in Lyrics
I remember her.
Eighth grade. 1988 into 1989. Calhoun Middle School in Denton, Texas.
Thirteen going on wrecked.
Fourteen by spring, but she never really felt like she made it out of thirteen.
She wore torn sneakers, oversized band shirts, and acid-washed jeans—band names inked in 8th-grade calligraphy in black Marks-A-Lot with lines of safety pins—not because it was a phase or rebellion, but because it felt safer to look tough than broken.
Ozzy. Guns N’ Roses. Whitesnake. Bon Jovi. Metallica. Mötley Crüe. Van Halen. Cinderella. Queensrÿche. Poison.
Not just music. A wall. A scream.
A language that understood without asking questions.
She is me.
That year, I tried to tattoo “OZZY” into my ankle with a pencil eraser.
Not because I wanted pain, but because I needed to mark something that felt like mine.
I needed to feel something.
I had run away from home due to extreme emotional pain I had no words for – just actions.
My parents thought a new school across town might help.
It didn’t.
It just gave me new hallways to disappear in.
The lockers changed, but the silence followed.
My body was there, but my voice stayed hidden.
That was the year the abuse from neighborhood strangers – men, boys – deepened.
That was the year my life felt like a silent nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.
And that was the year I learned I was a writer.
The year before, I threw my straight A papers away so I wouldn’t look too nerdy.
Summer school for failing English turned out to be the unexpected birthplace of my rescue.
One teacher noticed: ‘This girl can write.’
And for the first time, I wondered if words could become my way out.
So I wrote.
I wrote darkness.
It would be decades until I learned to write the Light.
I had a cassette Walkman tucked in my backpack.
I memorized every intro, every scream, every solo.
Every guitar riff, every drum solo, every chorus felt like someone breathing next to me when the nights were long and my thoughts were louder than my boyfriend Jason’s drumbeat.
I rewound songs like prayers.
Metallica’s Fade to Black:
(I wanted to live – again.)
“Life, it seems, will fade away
Drifting further, every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters, no one else”
Ozzy’s Crazy Babies:
(I longed for real joy.)
“Crazy babies never say die
Born to live on a permanent high”
Bon Jovi’s Born to Be My Baby:
(I wanted to belong.)
“We’re two kids hitching down the road of life
Our world, our fight…
…’cause you were born to be my baby
And baby, I was made to be your man”
Whitesnake’s Is This Love:
(I wanted real love.)
“Is this love that I’m feeling?
Is this the love that I’ve been searching for?”
I had radio-ripped mix-tapes for days.
And all of them told pieces of my story before I had the vocabulary to name it.
Now, decades later, I see her again.
The girl with the burned ankle and the silent scream.
The one who tried to look fierce, but who folded like a crumpled party napkin when the lights went out.
The one who turned the volume up because no one asked her to speak.
And if I could tell you anything today, it’s this:
Don’t dismiss eyeliner, band tees, and burn marks as rebellion.
It might be a cry.
It might be the only way she knows to say:
“Please see me.”
I needed someone to ask:
“What are you able to tell me about what’s going on?”
And now – I am that someone for others.
And it wrecks me every time.
Because I remember what it felt like to never be asked.
Because broken doesn’t mean beyond repair.
And not every “phase” is a phase.
Some seasons are simply survival.
Some are story.
Some are sacred ground where the enemy tried to take us out—but failed.
If you see a girl like her today—ask.
Don’t dismiss her.
She wants to live.
She longs for joy.
She wants to belong.
She wants to be loved.
Don’t rebuke the music before you read the message behind it.
Her pain has a playlist.
Be the one who listens long enough to rescue her.
If you are the one who (still) needs the rescue…
If you find yourself in this story, or lost in a decade where all the lights dimmed along with your hope, maybe it’s time to heal.
You heal this way:
1. Surrender to the God who loves you. You’re not too far gone, too complicated, too broken, or too late.
2. Ask Him to hold you and to bring to memory only what will help you heal. He’s a gentle Father.
3. Ask Him to show you where He was in that part of your story. He wasn’t silent. He was present – even in the dark.
4. Ask Him to release you from that place.
Lately, I’ve been asking Him to walk me home.
When I feel trapped in a moment, a memory, a heartache – I ask Him to walk me out.
Once, He even let me imagine my late brother Mark walking me out of a horrible situation I thought I’d never escape.
5. Once He’s walked you home – don’t go back.
Don’t replay it. Don’t rewrite it. Don’t sit at the door of your old prison with the key in hand.
He never wastes a single hurt.
And I’m grateful – even for the season I just described.
Because somewhere, some other woman is silently hoping someone will notice her,
or notice that the little girl inside of her is stuck – there – and needs someone to help her get safely home.
I pray we never miss her again.
