With closed eyes she listens. So many voices calling out, speaking louder and louder, each one demanding to be heard. It’s so cold, it’s always cold. She shivers even when a jacket covers her porcelain skin and the sun beats down harshly. She tries to speak, to yell, but the rumble of voices overpowers her until all you hear is nonsense. Her cold glass heart beats for no reason, and it reminds her with every hollow beat that sounds throughout her chest. When it’s quiet, it feels the loudest. The deafening silence cuts deep like the words she wishes she could speak aloud. She is two people. She is who everyone sees, built up with lies and fake smiles until she has made the person she wishes she could be. And she is who she holds back. The girl that hides under the blanket at night and prays for sleep. The girl that cringes at the thought of being acknowledged, who wants nothing more than to blend into the background and be completely ignored. She sees both versions of herself every day. The girl she wants to be when she smiles and talks to her 'friends’ or when she does anything that draws attention to herself. Who she really  is only shows in the moments when she is ignored. When her smile falls from her lips and the voices begin whispering, starting another attack on the identity she created for herself. The voices attack her every thought and tear her apart, breaking down whatever she has managed to build for herself. Whatever happiness she has managed to hold onto dissipates and she is left with just the voices and the bitter cold. Her therapist always says that she was made for great things, that she would figure everything out one day and all the puzzle pieces would fall together and who she created smiles and nods along, happily agreeing while the voices whisper in the background. Oh if only. You have nothing, you are just a broken girl. Just another broken girl. You think people care about you? Everyone would be so much better off without you. She sits in her room at night, trying to scream, trying to yell. But every voice drowns her out until her cries for help are masked by the white noise surrounding her. How can she be everything people want when she is to broken to be anything she wants? When the voices calm, and the noise dulls into a static sound she thinks of her parents. The same people who used to spend every second possible by her side when she was younger are now distant and silent, oblivious to her struggles and pain that she suffers through every day. The voices blame her and she understands why. All the suffering is her own fault. She is the reason that everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. She is the reason everyone around her is in constant pain and the reason that everything around her falls apart. She came into this world a happy child, someone to bring her parents together, give them happiness and joy, but that's not what she did. She tore them apart and brought all the pain and torment that one person could bring.
It started with depression, and failure to understand. Something easily fixable. And then the voices started. The medication did nothing, but she wouldn't show that. She started faking, pretending to be who everyone wanted her to be and covering up the pain and torment she felt everyday. It was easy, the voices would edge her on. If you act like yourself, who do you think would actually notice you? As broken as she ever felt she carried herself through the day like the bent cover of a book. Jagged and poking out of place, clearly protruding, breaking the nice clean edges of everything around her. She was a contrast. A plain beige line on a colorful painting, a blurred edge of a face. She's imperceptible to the naked eye in the worst way. Completely unnoticed and shunned, shoved into the bottom of the box with the hope that she will never be found. All of the voices are screaming, yelling at her, demanding to be heard, forcing their way into her every thought until all she can think is what they say, and all she can do is what they want her too. With tears streaming down her face and her hand clutched over her heart she walks out her room. Unsure of what to do she locks herself in the bathroom, where the running water can drown out the roar of voices. She looks at the white walls, the cream rug and the porcelain sink and the voices all begin to whisper. Louder than they ever had before, shoving every thought away except for the thought of how clean everything is, how pristine and beautiful and perfect everything is. And how it would be a shame if it got dirty. She starts with the counter, the beautiful white sink. She looks calmly at it and gets her toothpaste, she knows it’s blue, a color she has never liked but now suddenly she thinks it would go amazing on the counter. She slowly squeezes the contents of the tube unto the counter and stares, even with the small mess it is still too perfect. Next is the make up. Steadily she empties every tube of lipstick on the mirror, every ounce of foundation on the floor and every other random tube or compact in the rug or sink. She was creating art, a black line here, bright red there, subtle pink and baby blue where the white still showed. She stands back and looks at her work. The small splashes of color look amazing in the white room but it's still not enough for her. She needs more sharpness, more contrast and more red. She thinks back to years ago when she cut herself. One small slice and blood was everywhere. The bright red bringing out how beautiful everything else around her was. But then she remembers the tears that she shed, begging the pain to go away, but she knew these thoughts were her own. The voices had stopped. She remembers the stinging sensation that followed and led to an unpleasant numbing that hurt more than the cold metal cutting through her skin. She remembers how good it felt to be in control, how good the silence was. Until it wasn't quiet, until the voices started whispering. They wanted her to hurt, they wanted her to bleed. She remembers how thin and cold the air felt and how the urge to continue was strong, but not as overpowering as the want for the pain and voices to stop. She remembers the sound of her mom's steady knock sounding through the bathroom and without hesitation she opened the door, hoping her mom would stop the whispers. With blood still dripping down her still tender wound she watches her mother's eyes go wide as she quickly came in and shut the door. Her mother's crisp cream nightgown crinkling with her every movement. With wide eyes she pushed her daughter down to sit on the toilet seat, and began cleaning the mess. All the while talking to her daughter muttering about what would people think and how could she do this to her. That was years ago but the feeling that her mother never cared never left her mind.The numbness sets in once again and she stares blankly at the floor that was once covered in her blood and she snaps. She rifles through the medicine cabinet until she finds her dad's razor. She stares at the sharp edge and thinks of the sweet silence that would follow the blade and shakingly she cuts. The blissful silence is only interrupted by her own whimpers of pain. She keeps going. Cutting more and more, hoping the pain won't last and voices will never come back. She clutches the blade between her fingers and watches the blood run down her arms and fingers, dripping on the white tile, marring the pristine appearance and making the room look as broken as she is. She begins to feel light headed and all the colors blur together until all she sees is her bright red blood and her mother in her crisp cream nightgown.