Beige

Chapter Twenty-Five

Alexis Monpettit

All of my life I have been told that I am a disappointment. That I will never offer anything good into this world. That people will look at me and see someone who wallows in the darkness of her own self-pity.

I've been told I'm a waste of the gift of life. That every breath I take should have been oxygen for another person.

That I'm a bitch, a whore, and a sad little girl.

You see, there are limited options as to what a teenage girl could do when these things are pressed into her brain, every day of the year.

She can reject them, and fight against the user of the words. She can argue and state that she is none of those things. She can convince herself that those are the opinions of one person in her life and that there are so many other people out there who are going to love her.

Or she can accept them.

She can take every single word that's spoken and repeat them to herself daily. She can write them down in her journal, and read them over, and over again until she starts believing every word. And soon, she won't have to try to recall those words, because they'll come across her brain without her thinking about them. They'll appear at any time they want because she no longer has control; she lost that control when she started to believe them.

And that's what I did.

I have believed everything that the voices in my head have told me. They influence every decision that I make, and every thought that runs through my head. They have control over me.

Had.

They had control over me.

I won't lie and say that they have totally disappeared, but I have noticed that my head has been more clear recently.... Well, ever since Harry came into my life.

Ever since Harry entered my life two and half months ago, it's been as if those voices have become muted. Or maybe I just don't pay attention to them anymore.

It's like he's brought me something to focus on, another state of Oblivion to drift off into.

Him.

The way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, or how his left dimple indents his cheek, more than his right. The way that his two front teeth are bigger than the rest, yet still fit so perfectly in between his lips. The way that every morning when he wakes up, he pats the bed where I lay, making sure I'm next to him. Or the way he mumbles gibberish in his sleep, between light snores that sound like a cat purring. The way he has never let me open a car door, or the way he always makes sure I eat when I'm having a bad day. The way he doesn't care, when I have to light a joint to fall asleep most nights, or the way he lets me be alone with the ocean when he knows I need to rant.

He's a piece of art that I don't think I could ever stop studying.

And the thing about art?

It makes you feel.

Over the years, I've become numb. I haven't allowed myself to feel certain emotions because what's the point when you're just going to end up sad again?

But that's the thing, I don't find myself to be sad anymore, waiting for the small glimpses of what a happy life looks like.

Because the thing that makes me feel had told me that I didn't need to try so hard and that I was enough, just as I am.

And that was everything I needed to hear, to feel everything.

I was never expecting Harry to come into my life. The moment he touched me, it was as if my body was shocked back to life, as though his simple touch was the defibrillator that woke me from my state of Oblivion.