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bagelgarlic-blog · 5 years ago

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#1. Plato’s Cave

What kind of person am I to those around me? Am I the hot-headed sister that starts every fight in the family? Am I the jittery classmate that talks too much and too little? Am I the unhygienic friend that always has dandruff in her hair? Or am I the difficult roommate who can’t stand the smallest of noises?

I’ve been called many names, a few of them ever pleasant. I was the girl no one wanted to be friends with. She’s dirty, they said. She smells. How long did she not shower for? A week? Maybe it’s been a month. What do you mean you’re going to ask her? You’re only going to stutter. Cue laughter. Not the friendly, loud, harmonious one. The echoing, the nervous, the sudden kind. It is the laughter I’m used to.

It is the laughter that I carried with me for as long as I can remember. It was there, everywhere I went. It taught me to be the person I am today. Don’t raise your head. Don’t speak up. Don’t stand out. Did someone laugh at you? You will pay with punishment. You will want to shove a knife in your stomach, over and over. But that’s not going to make the laughter go away. It’s only going to add to the echoes.

Deal with it. You’re an adult now. Every person goes through it. You’re a coward. Just learn to be like everyone else. Learn how to do make-up. Learn how to smile. Be on social media.

Be normal.

Why can’t you be normal?

It is not a question anyone bothers to ask, really. It is the question I torture myself with, a question with a potential answer that no one could really give two fucks about. My mother turns to me with that huge fake smile of hers and says, you’ve always been special to me.

It’s funny. I don’t hate myself. I hate everyone else. I hate judgement. I hate eye contact. I hate the cave I chose as my refuge, the entrance wide open. I hate watching the campfire as it dies. Its shadows fade. I hate knowing I have to bring it back to life. But I like it this way. No, they say. You’re going to be cold without it.

It must have been three years ago. I stopped responding to my only friend’s texts. I stopped scrolling through Facebook because every post was another stab in the stomach, made from a different knife. The kind that doesn’t hurt, but scares the shit out of you. By the time I was in my second year, I had built a wall from drawers on wheels, boxes, and a chair and crawled inside, hidden from my roommates. The mental part of personal space was not enough. I must not see anyone. But more importantly, I must not be seen. I think I found comfort in it.

Hey, maybe Plato built my cave.

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