Separate

2. Control

"I can't help this awful energy, Goddamn right,

You should be scared of me. Who is in control?"

His name was Connor.

Connor O'Brien. And within a year of our original encounter, I decided that I hated him. We were placed in every class together in the eighth grade. In fact, we ended up sitting near each other in every single period. I can not remember the exact moment I decided to loath Connor or what he did, but I despised him with every inch of my soul. I couldn't stand to hear his overly cocky voice or look at his smug face. But in his defense, it was not entirely his fault. Everything about me had changed since we first met.

It started a few weeks after the field trip to Tennessee. I had gone on spring break to Hilton Head Island with my best friends Carson, Rose, and Willow and my family for a week. I spent the whole trip in an unexplainable rage. The emotion was too much, and it felt like my insides were burning me alive. Things had gone south with my first boyfriend, and I blamed Rose for it. She had introduced to me this boy, and I found out she had set us up because she did not want to date him anymore. It was typical middle school drama but we had to live together for a week. I was not able to deal with the intense anger. I wanted nothing more than the fire inside my body to subside.

"I want to throw myself into the water and drown." I had whispered only loud enough that Carson heard it as the four of us stood on a pier. I had never seen such shock on Carson's face. She quickly grabbed my wrist and walked me off the dock to a bench under a willow tree and tried to get me to talk about it. But I had no idea what to say to explain why I said it. Other than I wanted the fire to be extinguished.

Later in the week, things got worse. I had decided to confront Rose because my boyfriend had told me that he did not love me just her. We stood in the kitchen while I was cooking breakfast for my friends. I was trying to focus on the bacon, but I could not stand Rose's presence, and it led to a full-on screaming match in the kitchen. The fire inside it built up, and it was unbearable. I would not even look at Rose I just kept yelling at her while I focused on the blue flames cooking my bacon.

Suddenly, Rose and Willow screamed as the stove erupted into flames. Carson quickly grabbed the fire extinguisher under the sink and put out the fire. But not before It had caused damage. The bacon was ashes. I grabbed the pan and dumped the wasted meat in the trash frustrated but my inner flame had calmed like some of the heat had been released through an exhaust pipe. But my relief was interrupted by Rose's wails. I tried to turn and see why she was crying now but Carson had grabbed my arms and thrust them under cold running water from the sink. It was only then that I noticed my hands and forearms were on fire. It was odd because I could not feel the fire on my skin. It had burned me, but I felt no pain. In fact, I felt better even though I was covered in second-degree burns.

Things got progressively worse from there. Rose and I finally made up, but there was damage done. Slowly, over the next eight months, I started to change. I became distant from everyone. I alienated all my friends to the point that they gave up on me. I exchanged my love for One Direction and Lana Del Rey for Asking Alexandria and Bring Me The Horizon, and my colorful tank tops for long sleeve black shirts. I dyed my dirty blonde hair dark red and started wearing dark eye makeup. I started hanging out with the girls who liked to dye their hair, drink, pop pills and slit their wrists. My parents put me in intensive therapy. They diagnosed me with major depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. A lovely and psychotic mess which was precisely what I was.

I exchanged Carson for John Williams who was an emo boy wannabe. I was self-destructive because it was the only thing to keep me from burning alive.

I eventually started dating John. Not because I found him interesting or attractive in the slightest. But I needed desperately I find something that tamed the flames inside of me. All I wanted was for someone to understand me and to feel wanted. So when Rose suggested that I give John a chance after I denied his advances multiple times, I decided that I was going to use him to fill the void in my soul. It was Rose attempting to make a peace offering after the events of Hilton Head.

John was still best friends with Connor and Zain. The trio was well known for being a group of assholes. Zain was just annoying, calling John and me emo faggots and acting like we did not understand his offensive humor. Little did anyone know that I too had a twisted sense of humor as well and I just desperately wanted to find somewhere to fit in.

Connor was an entirely different story. He was extremely Christian, had gotten a buzzcut and never stopped talking about bacon. Everything about this boy screamed white supremacist school shooter conformist normie. And I hated it. I made up reasons in my head for him to hate me too. Anything to give me a reason to hate Connor. In all actuality, there was no reason to hate him. In fact desperately deep deep deep down I wanted to be close to him. But while he was not mean to me in particular, he would destroy John on the daily.

"John, my dude" I recalled him saying on a morning before Georgia Studies class had begun, "Have you ever tried to cure your depression with bacon?"

John went on to mutter something about how bacon can not cure real depression to which Connor countered that John did not have "real depression." It angered me so much that I could feel the flames rising inside me. So I turned to my new found way of coping. The only thing that made me feel any better and more in control. I had to let the fire out.