Faking Smiles

24th January

I've had enough.

I can't keep faking it anymore.

I thought I could but I just can't.

I went mute.

I didn't speak to anyone today. I didn't listen to their problems. I didn't try to make them feel better about themselves. I was just there. Existing like so many other people in the world.

I stopped pretending that I was happy and showed them the real me.

The one that doesn't laugh at shitty jokes.

The one that tells you the truth exactly the way it was.

For the first time in my life, the image I had on the outside was the exact reflection of how I felt on the inside.

Blank.

Empty.

And Alone.

Everyone thought that I was just having an off day. Maybe something had upset me and I didn't want to talk about it.

But that wasn't true.

Because if it was, it meant that every second of every minute of every hour of everyday of my life I was having an 'off day'.

Which in the end just makes it a normal day.

-💀

I found out just how sharp staples are. I found a broken one off the edge of a display board in my classroom. Hid it in my pocket until break time.

Dragging it across my wrist didn't give me the satisfaction I thought it would. I've been told I'm some what of a perfectionist and seeing the jagged uneven lines across my skin made me want to cringe.

In my head, all I wanted was to change it. To erase and start again. To make the lines straight and organised. I thought I could make this the one thing in my life that I could control. That I could have on my own terms.

I guess life couldn't even give me that.

They were only three lines. Three short random lines. But even those couldn't give me meaning.

I thought someone might have noticed. Even with the bracelets on my arm.

But no one did.

And somehow that made me feel worse.

A part of me didn't want anyone to find out. Didn't want them to know.

But the other part wanted someone to care enough to realise. To demand to know why. To knock me out of it.

If anything, I just felt so much more invisible.

And not even a fake smile the next day could hide that.

-💀