Confession #1

I guess
I'm not as much of a
monster
as I always thought
I was. I'm not
as far gone as
I've always believed.

Little facts of my life:

I don't cry.
I'm strong,
but never in the way
people expect
when they hear that word.
Strength
is a word used to
express how someone deals
with the world around them.
I don't deal.
I smother.

I'm an excellent liar.
It's crossed my mind
on more than one occasion
that I'm a
pathological liar.
Whether that's true or not,
I don't know. Sometimes
I feel like I'm
diagnosing myself through
WebMD. All the symptoms
line up, but
the conclusion is always
something
bizarre and ridiculous.

My eyes show everything.
I've always been a
strong believer that this is
an undeniable truth. Even when
I was little
and being bullied because
I don't believe in God.
It's why I'm so good
at picking up
underlying messages. I can see
them in the other person's
eye. But this world doesn't
teach us to look
at each other. It just allows us to
recognize that the space
around us
is in use.
We don't care
how others feel.

I am lost.
But there's not a
map for me to find or a
path for me to follow.
Even if there was,
I'm too far
inside my own head
to see it laid out
before me.
I am lost
and I am blind.

I don't trust anyone.
I immediately expect
people to betray me.
I have no reason to.
I've never been betrayed
by anyone.
But I see it all coming.
And I spend my
whole life waiting
for that shoe to drop.
And if it doesn't
drop on its own,
I make it drop. I don't
like waiting
for the inevitable. I'd rather
it just be put out
on the table so I
can move on.

I am a walking
contradiction.
One of my new favorite
movie lines. It's true beyond a
doubt. I want others
to just put it all on the table, when
all that I put out
are lies and fancy stories. I say
I want to believe in
the best in people, but
I can't even accomplish that.
I don't trust anyone.

I never wipe away tears.
In the few
solace moments where I
do find tears, I
never wipe them away.
Not if I can help it.
They are a rare occurrence
in my life.
Like my own personal unicorn.
Or a sunset.
Unique
and beautiful
and nearly nonexistent.

I hide in the dark.
Even though I don't really like it.
I get scared of the
dark more than I care
to admit. Even as I sit here
typing to the light of my laptop,
I expect something to jump out
at me.

I scare easily.
Maybe it's because I have
so much to hide. I don't
like feeling out of control.
Not unless I'm crying.
I can't cry on my own.
In the few moments
that tears come, I'm
not in control. And I'll
hold onto those tears until
they dry on my skin.

I love quotes.
I suppose everyone does.
But I like the gritty stuff.
The darkness that makes
the world darker than me.

I can't tell him the truth.
Whoever that "him" is.
I've never been able to.
And I never will.

I won't see a shrink.
I don't want to be told
I'm crazy. I don't want to be
stuffed full of pills. I don't
want to be
shut away from the world.
That's enough to make
anyone crazy. I don't need
any more encouragement.

I'm invisible.
And I like it that way.
No one sees me for
what I am. No one
tries to fix me. I
don't want to be fixed.
I just don't want to be
broken.

My heart is broken.
I've long since accepted
this. I can feel the
pieces rattling inside me.
Broken apart like the
slate heart from Almost,
Maine. I should
carry the pieces around
in a bag. Maybe then
someone will take them
away and I won't
have to hear them rattle
anymore.

My soul is not broken.
I'm strong,
just not in the way
people expect. My heart
may be in pieces, but
my soul is not. Sometimes
I wish someone would
break my soul.
That would be easier.
I'd be a true empty shell.
Walking through this world
without any hope. But that
soul longs for
a complete heart.
For happiness. The one thing I'll
never be able to give it.

I'm a monster...

I just finished watching
"Ask Me Anything". Katie
has every piece of
a true monster, but I can't
call her one. She's not at fault
for the way she is. She was
molested as a child. Every man
in her life wants
sex from her. Or he sexualizes
her existence.
All except Joel.
But he's too broken to help her.
Maybe that was the point of him.
He's as broken as she is. They
found a friendship in each other.
It was a shitty friendship.
Only lasted a month or two.
But it was a friendship
nonetheless.

Both Katie
and Joel
had a reason for being
the way they are.
I don't.

Sometimes I fantasize
about what self-altering I
must have gone through
as a child to come out
like this.
Was I molested as a kid?
Was I attacked?
Was I beaten?

Sometimes I wish I was.
I don't know if I
was or if I just
don't remember,
but I have wished for each
of those things to happen.
Sometimes I do stupid
things to encourage them.
But then I
realize what I'm
doing and move along.

There was this kid in high school.
A boy. A boy who
I once considered a good
friend. Sometimes I think he
started to notice the
inconsistencies
that is my life.
I would help him
along as best I could. Baiting
his sass, letting him
read my twisted stories.
(One of which I
guarantee he could still
recite in my ear.)

He was the class clown.
We'd met in middle school,
but didn't become friends until
eighth grade Spanish.
He sat next to me for
a good portion of the year.
We sat in the front row.
Him just to the left
of the projector, and me
on his other side.
I don't remember much of
that year, just that I
bugged him to sign my
yearbook at the end.
He was a good sport about it,
even though I
knew I was being annoying.
I don't know why I
wanted that signature
so bad. But I did.

He became my savior
in high school. I know
he'd never know that.
I'm sure he just thought I
was weird for
encouraging the teasing. But
he was the first one
to ever
make a point to ensure I
knew he was kidding.
He told me he'd stop if
I ever asked him to. I doubt
he remembers that.
I don't know why he would.
I was just the girl who wrote
sick stories about a girl
raped by her own father and
who wanted to be teased about
some imaginary fling with
the awkward, smart boy
who sat on the other side of me.
The number of times
I told him we weren't
a thing and I was still a virgin...

I don't know
why I ever told him that.
I told him that all the time.
Nearly every day.
At least once a week.
He told me I shouldn't admit that.
Looking back, I think
he was trying to
protect me. He knew
what that would mean to
a particular type of guy. Maybe
even what it meant to him
on a certain level.

But I was never afraid of him.
I think that's why I could
say it openly. I wasn't ever afraid
of what he could do.
He's a good person.
He opened my eyes to a lot of
dark things in my mind.

As I think about it now,
two years later,
I was my happiest when I
was with him. He mostly
ignored me in school. And until
the end of those two years
together for English,
I pretty much ignored him too.
Our time together was the bus
ride home at the
end of the day. He lived in
the neighborhood across
the street from mine, so we always
got off at the same stop.
It was a good stop.
We had plenty of time
to talk, and we got off
to go our separate ways before
we got sick of each other.

I remember
when he stopped riding the bus.
It was about halfway through
senior year. He and/or his buddies
got a car, so they just
used that. The bus ride got
really lonely after that. Of course,
by then I already had
a crush on him. But I missed
the back-and-forth we had
done for nearly two years. (He's
the reason I learned
how to sass after all.)
I'd never minded bus rides.
I could daydream or write.
But after we had spent so
much time together, I suddenly
didn't like bus rides so much
anymore. I guess I just got
the shockwave that
everybody else had had for years.

I couldn't wait to get out of there.

And then I got out and
I never even got his
yearbook signature.
It's stupid.
But it bothers me.
I still have the
yearbook from middle school
where he'd signed it. He'd teased
me about bugging him. We'd
hardly even spoken back then.
I wish I could've seen
what he would have written
in my high school yearbook.
There were a lot of
things from the end of that
year I wished I had
handled differently. But I guess
that's how the world is built.
You regret all the things you
didn't do in the past and you
promise yourself you'll
never do it again
in the future.

I guess I'm
just the only one who's
recognized that as a lie.

Chloe Alex