HIRAETH

1

Something is wrong. I can feel it. 

This name is wrong, it does not fit.

This body is wrong, it does not fit.

This world is right, yet.... it still does not fit. 

I don't understand it, I don't understand how I can feel this way. This terrible sense of wrongness has pervaded my life since before I can consciously remember. I am too old for my skin, but that cannot be right. Do you ever get the feeling that someone entered your home and moved everything just enough that it feels right, but you walk into everything anyways? That's what this world is like. This body is worse. It's as if someone has completely redecorated my home while I was away, and now it's foreign. 

Nothing is right, but I have no words to describe it. 

For a high school senior, I don't act like a teenager. It's not because of exams or homework, either. I've always been a bit different like that. I don't have friends, and I'm fine with that. I'm fine with being alone.... until I get lonely. It's funny, isn't it? Alone is good, but lonely is terrible. I am always lonely, but just under the surface. Like a constant hum that becomes background noise- it's always there and everything would be too quiet without it. Actually, there always is a background hum, and this one isn't a metaphor. It's in my head, but it's real. How could that be? That, and there's the drone of the fan. Seriously. I swear it's always boiling hot, even in the depths of winter. I miss snow.

I moved from Canada when I was twelve. That was six years ago. I've spent a third of my life here in Satan's literal asscrack, a small town you may have heard of. It's called Phoenix, Arizona. Well, not exactly- you wouldn't have heard of the name of the town I live in. Phoenix is just the closest city. Everything is still strange for me, on top of the pervasive wrongness I always feel. I've tried to get used to this place, but it still doesn't feel like home. 

I'm an outsider. An observer. My town may be small, but I doubt anybody would know me beyond a vague, 'Oh! That guy! Yeah, I've seen him.'. I don't mind it. I like being alone. I'm used to being average. I try to be, at least. I don't want to stick out. Despite all my best efforts, though, I'm an honors student and in advanced placement classes. My parents couldn't be prouder. 'A literal angel', they call me. Yeah, right. Just because I don't make trouble and I always have done well in school. I don't party, I don't break curfew. I don't even have one, since I don't go anywhere. 

Well, not exactly. I have problems, I just don't let them see it. Mom and Dad are too puffed up and proud to notice. I guess they have enough on their plate with my younger sister to worry about. She's a living trainwreck. Fifteen, angry, always sneaking out to smoke weed with her group of friends at three am. A real joy to have around. I know this how, you may ask? It's kind of hard to miss the screaming matches. That, and I've seen them hanging around on the banks of the river. 

I don't sleep much. I guess that's okay. I don't seem to need to. (Just give me coffee and there won't be any problems, more like.) On nights like tonight, I walk through the woods behind our house. I can hear Natalia and her friends giggling- sound carries this close to the river. 

But the sun is coming up, and I need to keep up appearances and 'wake up' on time.