1.1 | Lost & Found

i. ghost

 I N D I G O

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to love or to be loved. Does it make that ache in your heart go away? Does it make the burden upon your shoulders lighter than it already is? Does it mean that you can live freely instead of being caged into the folds of the deepest parts of your enigmatic soul, where everything is dark and bleak? Maybe being loved makes you see a world of colour instead of the monotone rainbow that I see every day.

So what exactly is it that makes you feel loved? Is it the warmth and familiarity? The safety that you feel when somebody hugs you? Is it the ethereality of human touch? Or is the starry eyes and warm chocolate smiles they give you? Don't look at me, I would never know. But what I do know and believe in is that the eyes see what they want to see.

Maybe your eye mistakes the glistening twinkle in your friend's eye for that of a long-lasting loyal friendship when she actually spent the morning spreading malicious rumours about things you never did. Perhaps your eyes conveniently chose to ignore the fact that your best friend was using your favourite pen that disappeared from where you kept it in your pocket after she hugged you. I do not trust what I see. Things are rarely as simple as we see them. However, as cynical as that may seem, it is true. At least it has been in my case.

Proof of this? The words scrawled across on the locker in front of me.

The words that currently adorn my locker were ugly, broken words that have been scribbled across its glossy front like it is done in a hurry. Funny how something done in such a hurry can leave such a long impact on another's life. And the person (or people) who've done this have used the same sharpies I keep handy at the back of my baggy frayed jeans. I had been staring at those words for the past five minutes. If somebody were to come to me telling me not to feel bad or cry, I would stare at them with my large brown blank eyes. Feeling is the problem. It's always the problem. But not the hurt or pain I should've felt. The problem is that I don't feel anything. No pain, anger, agony. Nothing at all. I am numb. But numb is good. Numb protects me.

And right now all I can think about is the fact that the janitor had extra scrubbing to do. And perhaps the fact that whoever wrote the word 'Loser' has curled the edges. That person has potential in caligraphy. A static silence fills my brain instead of the hurt I should be feeling. It's my ninth year in this school. Everything is the same. Nothing better, nothing worse. And while somebody might take this as a good sign, I couldn't help but realise that this time 'Freak' was written in a teal sharpie instead of the usual purple.

I wonder what I've ever done to these people. Why do they hate me so much? It could be my faded brown eyes - not the kind that looked like sweet chocolate or warm cocoa on a freezing wintery night - but the kind that held so many shadows that it looked blank and haunted. Maybe it's the fact that I don't care to socialise. Maybe it's the fact that somehow my jeans are a little too musty, my eyes a little too emotionless, my freckles a little too stubborn, and my personality a little too cold.

I'm practically a ghost. I float the hallways noticed, sometimes catching the eye of an occasional bully, but other than that, it's ok. My mind gives me company. They call it being alone, I call it enjoying my own company. You would think that it's better at home, but truth is, I don't even know what the word 'Home' means. It's just my mom and me in the apartment all alone. She used to be different: Reading me the Wizard of Oz every day before bed, making my lunch boxes and never failing to add in extra chocolate to make me smile, working several shifts to keep us floating. But now Mom is under the illusion that she can find her yellow brick road at the bottom of an empty drained-out beer bottle. She's wasting her days away by doing so. But she morphed into this stranger the minute she declared the beer bottle was more important to her than me-

Gosh, I can barely even say it.

Saying it makes me want to wash my mouth out with soap and detergent to get out the sour aftertaste-

Deep breaths, Indigo, deep breaths. You can do this. You have been doing this.

My mind comes to my rescue. So instead it distracts me by looking at the people passing by from the bus stop I am sitting at. Every day I take the bus home because we don't have a car and we had to sell my bike to pay rent. And every single day I watch the people make their way past me like I'm nothing but a ghost.

Look at me! I want to scream, Can't you see the way I'm hurting and breaking?

But then I remember that it's no use because you can't fix the shattered. People can be so ignorant. You never know if the social butterfly sitting next to you in biology was actually emancipated that day or if the quiet goth in pre-calc was actually a math genius. Such was my unfortunate case. I hopped onto the bus fighting the jostling crowd of college students and cubicle employees. I took my usual spot at the back of the bus. I sat against the window seat as my hot breath condensed against the cool glass.

I could see my tired reflection in the glass.

Messy short chestnut hair so brown it could be confused for black, hung in loose curls around my face, half-tucked at the back by a butterfly clip. Dull brown eyes that looked like the colour of faded brown cargo pants after too many washes with stains of paint splatters on them. Worn out just like my frail heart. Weariness and grief resting on my nose which had a constellation of freckles. Pale skin with a slight honeyed colour. I was far from pretty. I was perfectly average. Neither too pretty nor too ugly. Never too attention-grabbing, a perfect ghost.

Before the beer bottles controlled her life - Mom used to say that beauty actually mattered on the inside. That I was beautiful because of the involuntarily beating heart that kept me alive, in this wondrous world full of opportunity. Chase your dreams she used to say.

People could be so oblivious.

Just like I was.

But now, I'm much better off in the world inside my head. A world in which I can vision sunsets and poetry prose. A world in which I can take mental pictures to fold in the gentle crevices of my heart so that I can paint them later. A world in which there is no hurt. A world in which I'm not a ghost.

But deep down I know it's all in my head.

That world is only a daydream, far from the grasps of reality.

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