Moon Struck

Chapter 1

I escort myself through the barrier that separates my fictitious student life from reality: the classroom door. That’s the thing about lessons: your mind mutates to act the way a student would, focused on the lesson, yet unaware of your life that stands outside that barrier and the life that resembles you. My name is Mellissa Gregory, and I define myself to be undefined and bewildered. I believe that we can’t validate that we are one person, because we all change; we act differently in front of different people unconsciously, therefore forming different personalities.  We are unsure about who we are, but not about what we feel. Happiness or unhappiness is a feeling, not a personality – You feel sad, but you are not sad. My name is Melissa Gregory and I feel unhappy and imperceptible, but I am undefined.

 I hear my name “Melissa” being called from my teacher, Mrs. Peth. Her eerie eyes always crept into the most fundamental places – in this case it was my tumblr that I attempted to suppress throughout the lesson.

“Meet me outside this classroom right this second, Ms. Gregory.” Mrs. Peth articulated. Without an answer I stumbled across the classroom, dragging my shoes making irritable sounds that I knew Mrs. Peth never admired, but at that moment nothing in the world could make me tend for these flaws: the way I walked, the way I talked, even the way I breathed seemed to exasperate everyone and anyone in close proximity – including me. I hate everything about myself, and I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking that within the 10 meters of this fallacious room, especially Mrs. Peth who stood impatiently with the same relentless face that covered her as if she had never felt any emotion, or perhaps felt too many, just like me.

“Now what do you think you’re doing using your device for the wrong purposes?” she said, still staring into my soul as if something thought-provoking lay behind my very beastly looking eyes.

“Sorry miss, I just… I just wasn’t quite interested in the lesson, and well, I decided to amuse myself by using my laptop inappropriately.” I blurted out, without even thinking my sentence out.

“Whether or not you agree, I will be taking your device and confiscating it for as long as I wish.” She turned around and decided to leave, but turned around and said

“- Oh, and you also have a detention with me at lunch and after school Gregory.” Contently, she flicked her dehydrated and impaired few strands of hair that stuck of her hair tie like a broomstick; she was practically bald.

She left with a smirk on her face and left me with yet one more thing missing from my unnecessary life, as if I hadn’t lost everyone already, including myself. I lost my friends a long time ago, my family that I’ve pushed away, my grandfather and everything that assembles me, and now I’ve lost my lunch break and time at home after school. I don’t especially mind missing my lunch; I rather not eat. Eating seems as though its an unessential need that we require, all it does is make you fat and feel inadequate – or at least that’s what ana tells me. She’s the girl in my head, the girl who bids to make me starve myself. I had, or perhaps I should say I have an eating disorder. I conceive myself as fat and overflowing, yet I know that I shouldn’t reduce anymore or I’ll hurt myself, as if I don’t hurt myself enough already. I’ll die but maybe that’s what I’m really hungry for.

I look up and finally decide to immigrate into my psychology lesson, but perhaps at the wrong moment: they were talking about depression, self harm, and anxiety and the bonds between them.  Conveniently, I have all of those ‘diseases’, but I like to call them misunderstood immortalities.  Yes, I do have depression and I do have panic attacks and I do self-harm, but that doesn’t make me infected or diseased. By cutting myself, I feel as if I am in control, calm and as if a reset button had been pressed into my mentality but most significantly the knife sinking into my appalling coloured skin was easing the pain, yet generating a different kind of pain at the same time.  This pain reminded me that I was real, that this ‘hell’ that I’m living in wasn’t a dream. I needed to harm in order to expel myself for being the disastrous person that I am, and to clear the fog that replaced the capacity of my incapable brain.