They say to me “you are so damn quiet.”

They pass judgments like they know everything about me - while I’m left here feeling like I have to live up to other people’s expectations of who I should be, as they pass on hurtful insensitive comments.

No one ever stops to think that maybe my silence is my self-defense

that maybe I’m just so damn terrified of judgment – of critical eyes tearing me down from the inside out for everything that I am and everything I’m not - terrified I can’t be good enough.

So stop calling me quiet. Stop calling me shy because I’m not.  

I’m scared out of my mind.

 

And on top of that I feel like the worst son in the world because my mama –

            my mama sits at home alone shooting me text after text on her phone like

“baby I love you,

          baby I miss you,

baby come home…”

and I’m here pretending like I never learned how to work a phone…

acting like I’m too damn busy to be her son, when behind the scenes I’m sending late night messages to people who I barely know at all…

These are the same people that are wrapped up in the swing of dances and parties –

enamored by the ritualistic practice of naming days of the week after varying degrees of drunken callousness, just to have reason to throw their bodies at the nearest slob they see hanging loose in the corner.

And I am here walking through the crowds thinking to myself:

“Goddamn. There must be something better to life than just this.”

 

       So tell me how fucked up you can be when you can describe your life in just three letters like

“OCD”

or in four syllables like

“anxiety”

or maybe in one sentence like

“I feel so alone in a crowd of 3,000 because the only people I could connect to are 200 miles away from me.”

How fucked up am I to have to take pills every day to feel like a semi-functional human being?

How fucked up am I to be able to stand hours away and watch as my closest friends destroy themselves day after day?

What can I do when my friend looks in the mirror and sees corruption rather than perfection –

when I’ve got friends who are hallucinating,

friends who tell me that they are tired, so tired of breathing,

friends who are cutting themselves into ribbons?

What the fuck am I supposed to do when my best friend drinks herself into an early grave, when she loses her virginity to some douche-bag her memory couldn’t even save?

She will look right into me with tears in her eyes and she will say

                    “You couldn’t even call?

                      You couldn’t even text?

                      You couldn’t say one word –

                      NOT ONE GODDAMN WORD TO SEE IF I WAS OKAY?”

 

 

…I am speechless…and I am ashamed…

too ashamed to say that I am sorry. I am so sorry that I couldn’t be the friend that you deserved…

…sorry that I can’t do shit, cause I’m trapped here in the lives of children pretending to be adults complaining about their stupid underwhelming lives.

Normally these are thoughts that I’d only share with myself. But, you know what?

Fuck it.

I’m losing my mind, and I need someone to tell me I’m not crazy for once….

 

  I’m feeling like I’ve let people down

      like I’m turning into something cold,

            like I’ve broken every promise I’ve made to myself

    and to everyone else who has made me

 myself.

 

So, there.

I just said it.

I just let everything spill out that I’ve bottled up for months and do you want to know how I feel?

I feel better.

 

Change in oneself begins with the self. Stop stuffing the bottle. Stop the silence. Stop the fear. Stop the pain and say something. To someone. Anyone.