Synergetic-scrutiny

“I wish I could tell you I like being alone. Or that I sit by myself, away from the crowd, because I enjoy it. But the truth is I’m lonely… I’ve been lonely my whole life.”

Had you asked, I could’ve told you I’m not doing especially well at being alive.

do you remember the first time you were called annoying? how your breath stopped short in your chest the way the light drained from your eyes, though you knew your cheeks were ablaze the way your throat tightened as you tried to form an argument that got lost on your tongue. your eyes never left the floor that day. you were 13. you’re 20 now, and i still see the light fade from your eyes when you talk about your interests for “too long,” apologies littering every other sentence, words trailing off a cliff you haven’t jumped from in 7 years. i could listen to you forever, though i know speaking for more than 3 uninterrupted minutes makes you anxious. all i want you to know is that you deserve to be heard for 3 minutes for 10 minutes for 2 hours forever. there will be people who cannot handle your grace, your beauty, your wisdom, your heart; mostly because they can’t handle their own. but you will never be and have never been “too much.”

I spill pieces of my self here and there in between the conversations and silences. Hoping that people will notice and piece it together. But nobody cares. Everybody wants to make sure they are understood, they don’t want to waste their time understanding others. People say the right one will see you. How can anyone see me when I am scattered all around in everything neglected? How can anyone see me when I am so good at cover-up? At hiding? Being invisible? I am so lonely and so sad and I want to be loved like those girls in all the books and movies and maybe for that I have to take chances and stop pushing away everyone who tries to show some affection. People get tired of me. My tantrums. I am too much. Too quiet. Too serious. Too misunderstood. But… I am terribly lonely too. Why can’t anybody see that? Well maybe because I am good at hiding. At cover up. At concealing everything that might make me vulnerable. Strip me naked. See what I do in the darkness.

I want to know you whether you’re afraid of sharks or spiders death or love. I want to know if it’s grammatical errors that drive you crazy or the people correcting them, if you’re more comfortable shaking sand out of your hair or snow, if you prefer coffee or tea, bars or board game nights. I want to know which of your friends you’ve cried in front of, if you’ve ever laughed chocolate milk out of your nose, or kissed someone you didn’t love. I want to know you the you beneath the layer of small talk always kept shined and smudgeless I’m just hoping one day you’ll invite me in.

“What a beautiful wedding.”

I am feeling out of touch with my body: it feels like something I have been given to look after. When I bathe I feel I am washing it, not that I am bathing. She likes that I speak of it as a thing I take care of, like a costume or a small animal.

I write poems about flowers but can’t manage to keep any alive. I spent a whole summer when I was fifteen not going to bed until the sun was up because I thought the dark was trying to eat me. Even now, when I bleed, I expect demons to seep out. My days are arranged by color; my brightest moments are always shimmering in pink. I’ve cried at too many sunsets and not enough sunrises. I don’t live anywhere near the water and can’t swim so I’m always falling in love with boys on the west coast. I collect song lyrics instead of stamps. I won’t be content with my body until it’s covered in ink and I don’t mind looking at it in a mirror. Home still feels like just another empty word I don’t fit into. I’ve never broken a bone and I guess that’s my consolation price for a jumbled mind. At twenty-one I’m still too small for most roller coasters, but can still fit on most swing sets. These days I sleep with lavender and blueberry incense on my pillow to try and keep the nightmares away. My heart is always straining against my rib cage, and I think one of these days it might liquefy and spill right through the cracks.