My Life's a Fermata

Largo

The mirror reflects my shadowed eyes, a side effect of never sleeping well. The eyes were dull, covered by too-long bangs that I never took the time to cut. My mom thinks I'm busy from school, and I don't bother to tell her things she will never believe. Nobody in the world will ever understand.

I like school, the noise and activity is guaranteed to drown out the little voice in my head. giving me a few hours of being "normal". but there's a corner the noise could not reach, and it seems that the little voice would always hide in that shadowed corner, messing with the depth of my thoughts, thoughts that I don't even know existed. It's also at school when I feel most helpless.

I don't have friends, everybody thinks I'm weird. Unnatural. I sit where there's no sun. Occasionally, even the teacher forgets I exist. I don't stand up when the anthem plays, nobody ever notices. It's there where I get the most noise, people always forget I have ears. I wish I was back in Elementary school, when the voice didn't exist in my life. Do I even have a life nowadays?

I don't think so. All my consciousness is controlled by the hissing of that little voice. Never too loud, but never fading away. It was the worst in the silence, when every other sound backs off to amplify the whisper. I wear earplugs whenever I can, to drown the voice a little bit. But it's impossible to ignore when I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep, knowing that even my dreams are controlled by the voice. The voice is impossible to ignore.