for answers, in case you were interested.

They knew, better.

I use commas at my discretion, without care for the English language.

And perhaps one day you did too. And perhaps one day you will regain that strength, that strength that made you resilient, that made you brave. Not this, not this girl bawling behind shuttered doors of affluence and arrogance. You draw the blinds shut and you tell me they wont come this way, and I tell you that its alright, I really didn’t need the company.

The world looks different when you view it from a certain altitude. I look out, and there is some part of the middle east moving below me. That’s the odd thing about flying, it feels like the plane is the one that’s stationery, and the worlds turning in order to catch up with the destination your mind has already reached.

Leaves you baby, if you don’t care for it.

You hold tears, you hold tears through dinner and through lunch. You make people cry, you get called a monster. You don’t apologize, you don’t know how, when people reach over to hug you your body stiffens suddenly, your arms hang awkwardly at your sides- you don’t know what to do with them. Is this bravery, you wonder, your so scared of getting hurt that you entertain no emotion, not good nor bad. And people think you’ve become the physical manifestation of light as a feather stiff as a stone, but in reality its just some disfigured coping mechanism that you’ve adopted because you don’t know what else to do.

You make people cry- that a bit pathetic isn’t it? You stop for a second and figure that perhaps it’s the nicotine deprivation, the fact that you’ve been sober for three days- perhaps these things are making you this insufferable cause of persistent lashing. You open your mouth, and terrible things pour out, you try to smile but your muscles let you down. People look at you funny, harsh, they figure. What happened to make a nineteen year old so bitter and resentful? Im not bitter you say, just honest. And in those words, you whisper the thousandth lie, choking back tears, always, through lunch- right until dinner.

And through it all, you catch glimpses of yourself in television screens and shop windows, and cringe, you cringe at the return of insecurities that have paralyzed you. It started out as a reality check that manifested itself into the loss of a naivety that perhaps signaled the end of childhood. The reality check made you terrified of being alone, it made you paranoid. Insert: anxiety attacks, locking yourself up for days, anger fits- all the good stuff. You then turn to your body, and torture yourself. Ugly, ugly, ugly- you scream, over and over again, physically holding your skin and squeezing it until your entire body boasted blue and black scars. Ugly, so ugly, ugly to an extent that if someone gave you a compliment you felt even more exposed, to an extent that you stopped going out, you stopped getting out of bed- you were too afraid to be judged.

And now here you are, sitting on a first class seat to no where, hoping that this little bout of purging will last you through the next two weeks, after which you have the luxury of returning home for four eagerly anticipated weeks. And then, you go back, you didn’t want to, but baby got herself on academic probation. Not because you failed something, but because you had a 3.8 first semester and a 2.8 the next. That’s quite a fall, said the dean, you’re grades will be watched, as will you. And your parents look at you, and ask you what went wrong and you blame it on math, they don’t need to know, they will never know.

Everytime I have tried to tell someone they have laughed at me.

Or told me what to do.

Or looked at me as if I was crazy.


I have become really really really bad at being normal.