She listens, but she does not speak.
She thinks, but but she does not express.
She writes, but she doesn't share.
She loves, but does not believe she's loved.
She smiles, but she is not happy.
She has blue eyes, but they are empty.
She is Ally.
---------------
I had a therapist, once. My mother thought I was acting 'depressed', and that 'ever since you stopped talking, Aliyah, you've changed!' and had sent me to one. I had laughed then. I thought I was acting happy.
The doctor --- or the shrink, as he said I could call him, with a fake laugh --- had a habit of twiddling his thumbs, like people always do in books when they were nervous. He was always trying to get me to speak. He had eventually given up. Told my mother I couldn't be helped. It hurt a bit, to hear him tell her in a hushed tone that I was hopeless. I don't know why. Most people wouldn't care.
But I suppose most people aren't shoved on stairwells. Most people Sargent pushed aside in hallways. Most people aren't empty, devoid of any sort of happiness or cheer. Most people don't have selective mutism. At least, not in my town of nine hundred.
Not where I'm the only unhappy one.
Not where I'm the only one standing on the side of the bridge that connects our tiny island to the rest of society, and wonders what it would be like to jump. If I would finally be happy. Free.
Not where I'm the only one who cries at night, alone where no one can hear, afraid to let others see my weakness.
Not where I'm known as 'the depressed one'.
Not where I'm me.
