Marissa Bailey: fifteen, female from Boston born May 5th, 2007. The math doesn't seem to add up, now, does it?

It isn't often easy to be honest, or to even sugar coat things that sound harsh to you, and a lot of times things are left unsaid for just that reason. But… what if those words you swallow back are dying to get out? What if it feels like you'll just explode if you keep them in any longer?

Enter LiveJournal.com

On May 5th, 2007, I created Marissa Bailey, a girl who would tell my stories, all of them, but not from the sugarcoated, non-offensive, tainted view. No. Riss Bailey would tell her stories -- my stories -- exactly the way they're seen through my eyes.

And, thus, Riss’s LiveJournal, summerpainted, was created.

I'm a very social person; my family thrives off ‘networking’ and knowing so-and-so who works with this person who can get us a good deal on a computer. And with a family of six, I quickly learned how to deal with numerous types of people and began to develop responses and reactions to each type of person I met.

From ‘the liar’ to ‘the mysterious’ to ‘the comic’ to ‘the blissfully ignorant,’ I began to categorize people I knew, comparing them and their traits to easy stereotypes in my mind. I began to pick and chose traits I thought I should adopt from them, things I could learn, and separated those from the things I didn't like and wished they would change.

And as I posted in summerpainted more and more, people from my everyday life were included: my best friend, my friend's little sister, the annoying kid who sat in front of me in algebra. I was trying to classify them from what I knew about them, what others said, what I didn't know about them.

My goal when I started the LiveJournal was to classify people to not only help me better myself by adapting to the characteristics I found right about them, but to also open my eyes to how many different types of people there are out there in the world. I explored the personalities of some of my friends who are polar opposites, like ‘the leader’ and ‘the doormat.’ One day, I wanted to eventually have the courage to show everyone what I honestly felt. Everything started out that way.

What I was blind to seeing was, as I took on the life of Marissa Bailey and tried using her to find honesty, I was still lying. I'm not that girl, I'm not Riss Bailey, I'm me. You can’t seek honesty if you deny yourself from it right away, so the question of ‘why am I still doing this?’ came up a lot.

Using summerpainted, I joined communities like _feel_infinite_ and todayirealized, and posted entries there about myself; my dreams, my complaints, my hopes, my let downs. I was still hiding behind the mask I called Riss, but want to know why I never lowered that mask or got rid of it?

When I was her, people listened.

With each post, I’d receive comments from a variety of LiveJournal users, each offering advice or a relative story. They didn't care that I was fifteen and under five feet, or that I get high honors in school, or that my younger sister is adorable. They care about what words I put out to them, about how I opened up to them, and how I related to them.

I’d get comments like:

stephyh on June 19th, 2007 01:42 pm (local)
Hi. I definitely think you and I are basically the same person. I'm soo glad there's someone who thinks like me...especially complaining about complainers!

misslynxcatgirl on June 19th, 2007 03:37 pm (local)
I can relate to just about everything you've said here.

louderr_now on May 29th, 2007 04:35 pm (local)
I can't figure out why, but I found this entry really beautiful. Maybe its because I understand how you're feeling, maybe its something else.

And with each comment I got from a different person, it felt… unreal. I could sit here, on my couch or my bed or at my kitchen table, and what I wrote mattered to someone. Someone out there went through the exact same thing I did, or is going through it now. People were reaching out, and I just needed to find the strength to reach back.

This started out as a story about how I hid behind a name and was able to say what I really thought, to help me learn more about myself and the people around me. But what ended up happening was on a grander scale than I ever expected.

I learned that I'm not alone out there in the world, people can understand. They could recall being fifteen and going through all the same changes I was as well as I could recall being thirteen and being thrust into the world of a teenager.

I know I can't hide behind Riss forever. I’ll have to learn how to just step up and deliver things as is without having a different way to let it out. But, I'm glad I had Riss. Even if I was the mind, this girl I created became her own character. She became the type of person that I wanted to be.

Now I have a new challenge, I have to learn how to meld Riss back into me. Back where she started. After it all, I'm wiser, and with this new knowledge, I should be able to learn from my mistakes and grow, taking everything that happened to Riss with me. Once she and I are one again, perhaps things will get better and nothing will have to be kept hidden.

Once upon a time there was a girl who hid behind a fake name to get her stories out. In the end, she learned how to let her stories speak for themselves.