Warm Water in the Dark

Two

You’ve perfected your camouflage. You mimic and you blend in and no one ever notices who you really are, what you really are. Why do you bother to act so normal in front of them? All it results in is empty friendships with empty conversations. You need substance but you’ve given up on the idea that someone out there can make it all better. You’ve given up on the idea that someone out there will make all the pain and confusion and emptiness go away. For a long time you were numb. That numbness was falsely calm and kept you from the realization that something is wrong. Something is very wrong because there’s no way that all the others with their smiling faces and excellent relationships feel what you feel and think what you think. The numbness was fine for a while, though. Emotions were a distant memory. But all you ever felt was nothing. Then you realized that it was better to feel the worst than to feel nothing because when you feel nothing you’ve lost all your will to live and you’re not quite ready for eternal nothingness. This scared you and so you started to think terrible things that made those forgotten and pent up tears flow. They fell and you felt again. You felt good. You felt sick. You’re sick. So sick. You have to essentially force yourself to cry just so you can remember you’re human and you feel too. In shame, you start to watch people. You see them laugh. You see them cry. You see them smile. Their faces are so magical. They feel and they form faces that convey. You lift your hands up and you poke and prod and stretch and feel your own face. Can it twist like theirs can? It can.