A Paper Town For A Paper Girl

Chapter 1- Childhood

.Chapter 1
My story is a sad, long winded one with confused sexuality, abuse, self harm, and happiness. I suppose this is an auto-biography of the sorts for the people i'm sharing this to to understand me better, or even anyone who stumbles upon this.
So let's start out when I was about 8. I live in this little town in Michigan, where everyone knows everyone. You knew the roads like the back of your hand, the names of every kid within three grades of you, and I dont care about the diversity shit anyone says, White Europeans ran this town, And basically only white people live here due to an "incident" years ago, a race issue, and though it was in the '60's and '70's people of color wont move here because of the thing that happened. Another thing- we were all pretty wealthy. Upper/lower middle class citizens. I was aware of this, and so was every other kid. We felt safe, and never felt the need to worry about anything.(Even when we should have)
I had everything i'd ever want. We were the "model family". My Dad was employed, my parents had been together since college, I was cute, and dressed well, and was extremely well liked, I had a brother a year younger than me who was a nice kid, even though I give him a hard time.
But at 8, I knew I wasnt the same. Honestly at 8, I dont think there was such thing as "popular" but I was well liked. I would say stuff and people thought I was extremely funny for some reason, And I didn't really like it but you cant just tell them to fuck off, so I rolled with it. I also realized in third grade I was not the same as everyone else. Everyone wanted a boyfriend or whatever and I had a "boyfriend" but I felt myself attracted to girls as well which scared me more than anything else. I couldnt really tell anyone this because I'd experienced firsthand what being "gay" was like in our town when I was just 8, which if you think about it is pretty fucked up. They'd get pointed at, laughed at, talked about. But I wasnt gay, yet I wasnt straight. So I buried the hatchet, and just tried to ignore it.
Around a year later my Mema (grandma) got diagnosed with cancer. I told everything to her, (except this obviously) and I was scared because at 8-9 my parents were hiding a ton of shit from me, because they saw me as little, And needing to be protected.
She passed away when I was 10.
After that I started questioning things. Like I had been brought up in a Lutheran Church, but God had never miraculously "talked" to me like everyone said. I questioned my existence, and tried pushing away from these idiotic "friends" of mine, but they thought, of course, I was joking.
And that is when you could say my drastic behavior started.