Are You Awake?

|A sea of trapped voices|

There were only two things Cari had grown to hate throughout the seventeen years she had managed to stay alive. One was the small smiles she would receive from strangers, simply because she knew that was something they felt like they had to do. It was something people just did. It didn't have any meaning behind it, just a pair of tight lips doing what they had to do. When she was little, she thought those smiles were given to her because people genuinely wanted to. Because people had their hearts filled with too much love and wanted to share their love with everyone around them. That was what her mother had told her anyway. Therefore, five-year-old Cari would always smile so brightly at strangers, wanting to show them just how much love she had in her oblivious and naïve, little heart.

Growing up she quickly understood that there wasn't anything other than pity or plain nothingness behind all of those smiles. There wasn't love behind them, like her mother had told her it was. She hadn't ever experienced a smile out of love, with the exception of her mother's, of course. Her mother was the only one who ever gave her, and other people, smiles out of love. Cari's mother was one of those strangers she had told Cari about. She was one of those strangers with way too much love in their heart and wanted to share it with the world, no matter who might receive it.

Luckily for Cari, those smiles had stopped coming her way once she started elementary school and people started noticing Cari's flaws. And the once tight-lipped fake smiles quickly turned into laughter once she started middle school. Which led to the only other thing she had grown to hate; her body. It wasn't just Cari who hated it, everyone did, and Cari knew that. It wasn't hard to notice everyone's hatred towards her body, they weren't really subtle about expressing it. She was constantly reminded of every ounce of fat that shouldn't have been there by the bullies in school.

But Cari had bigger enemies in her own home, than at school. The mirror. The mirror in Cari's bathroom was the biggest bully of them all. And as usual, Cari stood in front of the mirror, in her bathroom, studying her body. She had spent the entire weekend in there, the mirror keeping her company. She turned from one side to the other, pinching herself everywhere she found too much fat. Then turned her front to the mirror and stared at herself as the names she has grown used to, flooded her mind.

Fat.

Ugly.

Beast.

Unlovable.

Mistake.

Fuck up.

You name it, Cari had heard them all. "Stop it," she whispered quietly, praying for the voices to leave her mind. But she knew they were right. She looked down at her half naked body and stared at the parts that stood too far out, silently agreeing with the sea of voices trapped inside her head. She placed her left hand on her lower stomach, squeezing everything she, and everyone else, wanted away. She let go of her stomach and looked back up in the mirror, finding more places that were too big – more reasons to stop denying the voices. Her hips were supposed to be smaller, her boobs should have been both smaller and higher, her stomach should have been flat, she, and everyone else, knew that. She heard it every day; how could she forget?

She shook her head as the first tear rolled down the cheek. Why did she have to look like that? Why couldn't she just be like every other girl. She lifted her arm in front of the mirror and pinched her underarm, looking at everything that never should have been there and let another tear escape her eye. "Go away," she whispered pleadingly in a trembling voice, trying to tune the overpowering voices out. She was sick of everyone telling her how everything about her was too big. She knew. She didn't need them to constantly remind her.

She let her arm fall back down her side and looked at her face as she cried. Why was she such an ugly crier? She had stopped crying in front of them at school, it only made it worse. Not only did she look like a whale, but she sounded like one, too. She knew that, they had told her so many times. Cari lifted her hands up to her hair and pulled it out of her face. Her double chin seemed bigger than the last time she checked, but she already knew, they had discovered it before she had and made sure she knew, too.