6:16 AM. Sleep it off, wake up the same.
6:34 AM. I should be getting ready but instead I sit on the makeup-stained bathroom counter, staring at pieces of other people's lives on a small white box.
6:57 AM. I need to leave. He's going to be late and it will be my fault. Why are my shoes squeaking? I'm laughing at it now but sometimes it makes me self-conscious. I don't want people to hear.
7:03 AM. I throw wilting salad greens into a Tupperware that doesn't quite close right. I know I will be hungry but the fat over my ribs had me crying myself to sleep last night.
7:15 AM. I'm walking out the door. My sweater slips off my shoulder, exposing my still sunkissed skin. It's colder than I thought and this bothers me more than it should. I can't help it.
7:32 AM. I enter the coffee shop. It's warmer here and sometimes I sweat but I don't want to take off my sweater. There is a man here who scares me. Is it kindness or something else?
Time passes the same everyday. Twenty four hours and not one of them seems more important than the last. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing it right. I am young and able. Isn't life supposed to beautiful when you're this young? Or do the big people lie to us? I'm convinced there is never a prime for human life. We live, we die. Everyone has problems. We're all the same.
Stop feeling bad for yourself, I shout from some place hidden behind my skull. No one can hear me. No one can hear the tearing at my insides and how hard my heart is beating. But I can hear the tearing and the beating and now I feel sick. I can't tell if I need to vomit or cry. Instead I sit and stare at my computer screen, pleading that the man and woman beside me don't realize that I am drowning. I don't want help.
My first class starts at nine and I'm staring at the time on my phone. Every minute I check to make sure I'm not late. I'm obsessed with time. I can't be too early and if I'm late everyone will look at me when I walk into a room. If I leave at 8:38 AM, I can walk to class and have time to use the bathroom beforehand. If I leave at 8:50 AM maybe my professor will begin class early so I don't have to sit in silence, watching everyone else live.
I'm obsessed with watching too. I like to watch people and imagine what they're like. I will never be able to really learn about them because I am afraid. I am too boring but too complex for anyone to like. My voice will shake and my words will not align. It's best if I do not talk, so instead I quietly observe. But I cannot do even this in peace. I fidget. Does my leg look fat if I sit like this? Are my eyebrows furrowed? I'm going to get wrinkles and I look mean to people passing by. I am eating this apple but I know I look disgusting eating it. My mouth is open too wide and people think I am an animal. Eat slower. Don't eat at all.
Some people call it being a worry wart, overemotional.
I know that it's much more than that.
When sleeping at night is not just sleep but a place to hug the bed covers because another human's hug doesn't suffice. When waking up in the morning and hearing the cheerful chatter of your family downstairs is enough to make you clench your fists and hold back a punch you want to inflict upon yourself but aim at the wall instead. When lies fall from your lips more than truths because it's easier to pretend than to hand someone the cracked pieces of your being.
These cracked pieces are seen as a cry for attention but there is so much that people don't see. There are mangled screws and nails, and dried up glue dangling from your very existence, evidence that somewhere, sometime, you fit together perfectly. Somewhere, sometime, you were strong.
You can't fix this yourself.
But God, how you've tried.
Written by: Ana Luz Jayme
1 comment:
This is a really great piece, very relatable too.
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