I know what I look like.
I look like someone who has her life on track, someone who is quiet and composed most of the time. I look like I'm having a good day.
Well, I'm not. You say you don't believe me when I tell you I'm a scatter-brain. My thoughts are an entangled ball of wool with their stray ends sticking out in all directions.
You say I speak less and when I do, I say the right thing. Honey, I've got so many things going on inside, and it is so hard to choose. Choosing scares me. So I choose silence today.
I'm not too polite but I suddenly am when you come and flow your negative energy into me thinking I'm a pipe, but I'm a vessel. I'm a vessel that fills and spills. I'm a vessel that is starting to crack, but will continue to stand. I can't tell you to stop.
I'm twenty two years old and I'm supposed to have it under control, yet I don't. I'm supposed to have it all figured out now that I'm an adult, but to me it's just a mere number and I'm still the same child, mama.
I love food, but I'll say no to it when I'm sad, lonely and depressed. I know I stress eat, but I also skip meals. I stress eat and I skip meals. I'm fat and I'm skinny.
I've always loved sad smiles. They're equally sad and beautiful.
My sister panics a lot and I don't. It looks like I don't. But I actually don't. She would wail, complain and cry. I sit, stare and smile. The sad smile that I like so much. I panic. I panic. But my panic knows no outlet. It knows no outlet because there is no outlet.
They say I'm brave and strong, firm and stone-hearted, I had a pistol pointed at me once, and I talked about it casually the same day. With the same smile. The smile I like. The smile that saves me.
I'm not stone-hearted, I can't kill that spider on the wall with its long, curly legs so I decide to make a pet of it instead until someone else kills it.
They don't know I'm afraid too, I'm afraid of myself and a few more things. When I say, 'God, I could kill, right now.' I don't mean anyone else. I mean myself.
I'm perceived as a little screwed in the head when I say I deserve pain. And smile my sad smile.
But when I'm sad, lonely and depressed and saying no to food, if you bring it to me, I'll be grateful.
I may look like the stray animal you just took in and offered food and shelter. A little quiet, a little shy, and a lot reluctant.
I'm inspired easily. I read words, beautiful words and I get filled with the urge to create some of my own. I don't know how to write. I place word after word after word after word. But I may be lying. I'm mindful of my words but not my thoughts.
It's a good time to be alive, I tell myself. Writers write what they please, and how they please. It's raw, it's out of place, scattered just like my thoughts. And I feel at home.
So I pick up the courage the writers plant between their words for fellow writers and I write my own. Just the way it comes, just the way it is—all over the place.
I don't allow myself to be vulnerable except sometimes like this one. And believe me, I can already taste regret crawling up my throat like a gag reflex which I swallow down stubbornly.
And I wonder how long I can keep up.
