Anthological

Prologue

Words: 512

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There are many types of broken. I know of two.

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>First, you have the people who know they're broken.

>They build walls around their brokenness. 

>Some of them glare and decide to try to hate people, because people did this to them. They know and understand pain, and accept darkness like a friend.

>They do not bother with the tape, with the meditation, with the therapist, with the fixing themselves, knowing that it's all meaningless anyways. They're broken. Nothing will change. 

>They glare at people who try to fix them, because they know that these people are too late. They aren't polite, but most of them aren't rude. They're just there, and they don't want to be.

>Some of them, knowing they're broken, try their best not to bother people because they are afraid that even more people will hate them and that absolutely cannot happen. 

>No matter what your first impression is to them, they will believe you hate them and are just really good at hiding it. They know they're broken, but they either believe that they can fix it, or a significant other can. 

>When this doesn't work, it just further proves to themselves their worthlessness.

>In this type of broken, you either don't care to the point of numbness or care to the point of insanity. And to them, there isn't a way out. This is forever, this is life. But if this is life then death must be so much better, right?

>You can imagine what that thought process leads to.

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-Second, you have the people completely unaware of their being broken.

-They go to the extreme to please people they love, people they don't know, people they just met, and people in general.

-These are the boys and girls smiling into a mirror late at night, trying to look for flaws, trying to fix them. So they can be perfect and whole and complete. 

-These are the boys who try too hard, who do general boy things not because they want to, but because it is expected. And you must always rise up to and even exceed expectations. (Alwaysalwaysalways.)

-Varsity, basketball, slang, clothes, bepopularbepopular, be cool, be everything everyone wants to be. Work out and eat and make offensive jokes you don't really understand.

-And there are the girls.

-The ones who try to work out and not eat and shave and buy clothes and be proper and sexy and study and get good grades and socialise and be nice and be popular and savage and be a femme fatale and an innocent little girl all at the same time.

-And they don't know that this is messed up, that this is an example of society breaking people. Because this society has conditioned them to think that this is normal. 

-And being perfect is the ultimate goal in here for them. And people are telling them that this is perfection. And that perfection is also not being broken. Therefore, they are not broken. Simple logic.

-And the fact they can't be perfect at all, let alone be perfect and whole at the same time approaches them  as they grow older and realise that this  is not easy. This shouldn't be expected.  And they break down.