Shut In

How had this happened? Why was this happening?

The girl checked her phone, scrolled through the endless Snapchats and other notifications; nothing—then, out of the blue there was a ding. She compulsively checked her phone again and was surprised to see a message—an actual message from one of her friends.

Do you want to hang out today???

She swallowed. She had no plans today, or the next, and of course she wanted to hang out—of course she craved human connection, human touch, social contact, but....but...

She rolled over on her bed as the afternoon sun shone through her window. How could she tell her friend that every time they hung out she felt more and more alone? Like a pit behind her eyes, she felt it growing every time they saw each other. She rolled onto her stomach ad opened up her laptop. Maybe if she ignored the message and played it dumb with some shitty excuse about being at work or having her phone on silent all would be forgiven.

She turned off her phone as a wave of guilt washed over her. She wanted to text her friend and say "sure, let's hang out today! Where do you wanna go?" But at the same time she also wanted to confess. Confess that the dark humor that had once sent her into fits of laughter, she no longer found funny, or her ability to keep a deep conversation going had drastically dwindled over the year. She wanted to confess that she could no longer hold connections and that she was sorry that all of her friends had become acquaintances.

Then again why had this happened? She knew the answer—the answer she could never get out of her throat. She was jealous: jealous at all the other people that had wormed their way into her friendships and had taken her place. And she was angry that she had let it happen. She had seen it coming but had brushed it off; her friends were free to do whatever they wanted—they had no obligation to be with her. And through the fear of being unwanted she isolated herself here, in her own room, with no one except herself and her toxic thoughts.

Why was this happening? She knew the answer to that to. It was happening because she had let it. She had isolated herself and as a result she had lost her ability to connect. She went onto YouTube and started watching some murder documentary. She had lost her friends and she had let loneliness become her default setting. She turned up the volume. This was happening because she knew what to do, and knew how she could stop this cycle where her thoughts fueled the emotions and the emotions fueled her thoughts. But she wouldn't.

She had become accustomed to this way of life. This life was predictable, and in a way she liked to believe she was psychic because she could see the future—her future. Her future was like a twisted, bumpy dirt road headed straight down to a messy house where everything outside was bleak and unpredictable: a house where the days would waste away into the nothingness.

Gazing up at the ceiling she let the thoughts consume her, feeding a boiling rage. She wanted to throw her anger at someone but she knew that that was unfair; it wasn't their fault—it was hers. But the frustration was still there, boiling inside her. She was a leaky faucet trying to hold it back, but she needed to let it out. With one arm outstretched, she raked her nails across her skin. Within a few hours all evidence would be gone; that was the nice thing about scratches: they never drew blood or cut the skin. They just turned it red and no one would ever notice them.