You have no idea what it’s like to be me. You have no idea what it’s like to sit at the kitchen table across from your dad who’s shaking like the biggest earthquake is happening inside his body. You don’t know what it’s like to watch as drips of sweat roll down his face because he’s struggling that much to use his fork. You don’t know what it’s like to have gone a summer without being able to make fun of him for using tanning oil to get so tan. Because he’s pale. His skin practically see through, his blue veins stripe him along with patches of black and blues and you wonder where he got them from. They make you cringe. You miss when he’d have cuts up and down his arms from gardening and when you’d ask about them he’d shrug and say whatever. Because now you know every like scratch and bruise is like a death sentence to him. But you don’t know. You’d never know that this is what I have to watch every night. On the Outside Looking In by Jordan Pruitt.

You have no idea what it’s like to be me. You don’t know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed. To physically not be able to get out of bed because you can’t see any reason to except that they’re forcing you to. So you get out of bed and eat because they say you need to but you see no point. And you can’t help but feeling like you’re wasting the air because you don’t plan to do anythign with it. And you try to think back to the day before when you had so much ambition, so active, so okay but that person’s gone today. So you go back to bed because 15 hours sleep wasn’t enough. You get woken up by someone who informs you that you’re sleeping the day away. You wonder when the day will come that they’ll tell you you’ve slept your life away and your life is over. You don’t have to pretend anymore. You don’t have to struggle anymore. But no, it’s just another day gone. With you don’t know how many to come.

Then there’s that trapped caged voice that for most is their conscience but not for me it’s my reason and it’s that 5% of me that keeps pushing through. And it tells me not to waste my life, to make a change, to feel better, be better, live better. It tells me to get out of bed and do something. Do what? Go watch Daddy writh in bed and breathe heavily and cringe as moves? Go watch Mommy’s face when you finally tell her what’s wrong, watch you kill her with every heartbreaking pain you feel? I stay in bed. And this is when I find that middle ground of 5% and 95% both hate what I’m doing to those around me. Those who know this me. The hidden one. They both hate this me. I hate me.

You don’t know this me because I smile. Because I joke because everyday in front of you is another Broadway play. Do you realize that? That almost everyday I’m in front of someone it’s an act? An act that everything is alright and on the best of days maybe I’ll believe it. But it doesn’t take much to bring me back. A seat across from him and his agony. A phone call asking how we’re doing. A stressed s*** from the mouth that I wish I could stop hurting. It doesn’t take much to remind me that it’s just an act, it’s not real. My happiness is not real.

I sweat and I shake because I’m rational. Because as much as I want to stop hurting everyone around me, I won’t allow myself to anything rash. And as I type my veins are popping out of my hands and each heart beat shakes my entire body because I’m losing control. I never completely lose it anymore. It’s not possible. Thanks to the bottle on the counter. Or is it in the cabinet so no one can see it?

You don’t know anything about me. Because I won’t let you. Because I’ve hurt enough people.