Playing Pretend

sneak peak into my mental health

Even before her best friends dropped her back off in front of her house, she knew it'd be a while before she saw them again. Not because she was going anywhere, or because they were going anywhere, but because she needed to not go anywhere for a while. All of a sudden tired, she lay her head against the window and focused on keeping her eyes open and her smile light while her friends sang at a ridiculously loud volume just because they could. One left turn, one right turn, and a quick goodbye, love you, later and she was up the stairs and into her bed as quickly as possible, successfully dodging the curiosity of her family so that they would leave her alone for the night. Bags in hand, she spilled onto her bed face first and breathed in her white bedsheets. She let herself fall asleep for just a few seconds before pulling herself up, one limb at a time, one bag at a time, towards her vanity. Once her new clothes were neatly folded away and her new books were thoughtfully reorganized along her closet's dark shelves, she was out of distractions. She tugged her jeans and top off and slipped into long sleeved sweats. It was thirty degrees hot out, but a little extra warmth to her was nothing a nuisance compared to the possibility of her parents walking in and seeing her scars. Her parents hardly ever walked in, but just incase. Sighing in familiar disappointment at her reflection in the mirror, she knotted her hair up above her head in a perfect little twist and then climbed back onto her bed, her home, her heaven.

For an indefinite moment she sat there, staring at nothing but seeing everything. Her mind opened wide with sober thought possibilities and she let them satisfy her imagination. Soon she felt like she needed more distractions from the darkness that was now entering her mind. She considered the book of poetry on her bedside table. She wondered if her wifi connection would cooperate long enough to let her stream a movie. She thought about painting her nails, cleaning her room, making a cup of tea, doing sit-ups, downloading new music, making her bed, or braiding her hair. She considered killing herself. But when she stood up to peek through her curtains, it was already black outside save for the distinct brightness of the moon hanging low in her window frame. She let the curtain fall back into place and turned herself to the light pink of her bedroom. It was easy to tell she was afraid of the dark, afraid of the night, but harder to tell that she was often afraid of herself. When she lifted her phone off the floor where she'd left it, it lit up with unread, ignored messages. Looking at it now, it seemed to her like a whole other life. One that came before her, and one that she knew would still be there after. 12:52am stared back at her in big white numbering. She clicked it off in her hand, saw her reflection in the black screen, forgot the time, and clicked it on again. 12:53am, 11%. She knew if she didn't plug her phone into its charger it'd be dead by morning, but she didn't care. As she slid it across her bedside table, she wondered what it was that charged her so that she woke up still alive and functioning every morning. Almost laughing, she shook her head in realization that she wasn't, in fact, alive or functioning.

It was quiet when her eyes fluttered open in the almost afternoon the next day. Instinctively, she reached for her phone but quickly put it back down when it proved still dead from being neglected the night before. She lifted her legs above the hot blankets and blinked up lazily at the ceiling. When she didn't hear voices within the walls of her normally bustling home, she curiously stepped over the side of her bed and pulled herself into the hallway. Still groggy with the night's long sleep, she called into each room and listened for noise. But she didn't hear the familiar sounds of her family, and rounding the corner she saw that all the shoes were missing from their spot in the front, except for hers. Most of the windows were open, as they usually were, and she could see that it was a beautiful day outside. She closed her eyes in front of the white kitchen window and smiled at the thought of having the house all to herself for the day. It didn't even cross her mind to be upset that her family had gone somewhere without her. She was happy they didn't bother her. She spun around the main floor singing and dancing alone, feeling the ecstasy of her mood. She was happy and sad, and all the things in between. Hoping to make her light hearted feelings last longer, she skipped to the pantry and pulled out the family medicine basket from the highest corner. She dumped the contents onto the counter and sifted through them until she found everything she was happy to find. She quickly lulled them all down into her stomach with three quarters of a glass of water. Then she dug in the fridge for the old bottle of something whose label she couldn't read because it was in Italian, but that was clearly marked 40%, and chugged a whole lot of that down too. She imagined everything swirling together at the bottom of her stomach before dissipating slowly towards her head, where it would engulf her mind in a hazy, happy cloud. She laughed thinking about how she could never get caught because her parents would never even think they'd have to catch her. She knew they wouldn't notice their collection of pills slowly depleting, or the borrowed sips from the alcohol they always left lying around, because they hardly noticed her. She liked it that way. Being left all alone in her house for an uncertain period of time didn't seem to her like abandonment, but rather as trust. Mistaken trust, mind you, but still trust.