04 | who i am
It was fall vacation, and I spent most of it in my room crying. Occasionally, when I was with my family or going to soccer practices, I pretended things were alright. I smiled and laughed and looked normal. I've noticed it's easy to pretend. More easy to pretend than being real. What has being real done for me, anyway?
However, when I was alone, I felt like the realest me. Not the one in front of my parents or my soccer team. I felt like I could finally stop pretending. I could cry as much as I wanted, and there was nobody to judge me—except for me. I don't care about my opinions, so it doesn't matter if I judge myself (lol). I'm too busy caring for other people's opinions to worry about my own.
I laid in my bed, thinking about all the times I had done someone wrong, and it sucks knowing I can think of so much once I sit down and brainstorm.
Like, I remembered the time I had catfished my old friends for seven months and finding out that they had been calling me horrible things behind my back.
Bitch.
Attention seeker.
Psychopath.
Abnormal.
Haven't I been an attention seeker? Don't I want your attention sometimes? Am I not a bitch for not wanting happiness for Bianca with Johannes? Am I not abnormal?
You seem to think so, don't you? In fact, you think I'm very abnormal. Just check our saved Snapchat conversations, proof is right there. You laugh a lot at me and the things I do. I don't even try to be funny.
So maybe I do deserve all these insults I got in the past.
I guess I found so much bad things I'd done while brainstorming. That's why I cried a lot. I deserved feeling this ugly feeling of jealousy and heartbreak. I deserved self-pitying.
I'm a horrible friend. Everything I do is wrong. I'm just a terrible person.
In my family, you don't cry over friends or boys. I mean, I'm not even allowed anywhere near boys. My parents said that Muslim and Pakistani girls do not go around and make friendships with boys. It's what I've been taught since I was a child.
But I did. I befriended you. I'm a terrible Muslim too.
And that's where I laid in my bed, silently crying over Johannes, my friends who I catfished and my religion.
I'm just happy that I didn't cry over you too. Thankfully, you weren't anyone worth crying over. Yet.
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Memories of an Old Friend | ✓
Short StoryMemories of him, but he's not really dead.