Why I can't be me?

Only chap

"Freak."

"Loser."

"Ugly."

"Nerd."

"Teacher's pet."

"Baby."

"Fat."

"Weird."

Faces flew through her mind, all of them sending an insult her way. She only ever had one question.

Why? Why do this to her, hurt her. Why pretend to be a friend and then use her? Why make her think their different only to hurt her like all the others.

"I use to be able to be myself. I had so many friends, then they decided because I cared for everyone, even those who hurt me, I was too different to be seen with, because I can make a new world or adventure come to life on a playground, I must now be shunned. Why can't people let me be me without judging, without shunning, without pretending to be okay with it?" She thought as she sat in bed.

She was wanting to go to sleep, create a new world in her dreams, but every time she closed her eyes, they were back. The worse ones were the faces who said no words, they only laughed or gave faces. They were the worse because she'd trusted them, thought they were different, but she could only conclude she was wrong.

She knew what the faces said she had studied them, learned faces. Since she realized they choose her she'd studied. Learned what people's faces did when they laughed, how to tell a real laugh from a fake one, and the most important difference, how to know the difference between laughing AT someone or WITH someone.

Once she'd learned those, she moved on to other emotions, happy, sad, mad, upset, and even more.

She did her best to master them, and she got good at it. She could almost always tell when someone was trying to fake an emotion, that's one of the reasons people thought she was weird. She'd ask, 'what's wrong?' when someone was upset. A lot of the time, they hadn't told anyone they weren't alright, so it came as a surprise when she'd asked. That's why they'd called her weird.

Different people had become her friends, but in the end she'd realized they weren't really her friends. Some used her to get A's, some to learn secrets to share with everyone, some to learn all the weird things about before turning on her. There was only ever a few people of 4 throughout her life to actually be a friend. One moved, one drifted away, and one that changed schools so she rarely ever saw them, and one who never had classes with her and too many activities to count. At school she had "friends", people that we're nice to her and fun to talk with, but it was only ever at school. As soon as school was over the talking was done and it was a game of, 'don't make eye contact so you don't have to talk'.

She wanted to be herself at school, be as weird as she really was and to be everything she was, but after half a year of getting teased for it, she stopped. She pretended to always be happy, so people wouldn't see how much the teasing effected her. She always gave complements, because she knew how it was felt to get none from people outside family. She was nice to everyone because she felt no one deserved to be treated mean. She excluded no one because she hated the feeling of being included by everyone.

People still picked on her, but she showed little to no emotion. She was done letting people hurt her and see they won. She put up with it for 5 years before she found a place she thought she could be herself. A church. Over the course of 3 years there were six people in particular she enjoyed talking with and sitting with for a couple months a seventh person came about. This was until one day.

She was running late to service, having made food later than planned for the fellowship following. She slipped into a pew and soon noticed to sisters talking about her, trying to keep it a secret, and not doing the best job. They were talking about if their was room for her to sit in the pew, most of their family being in town and all. Then the brow haired sister gave her a greeting. Last time one of the sisters, with brown curly haired (same as previous) and often away at college during the winter, had said ' hey, how are you?' they had exchanged greetings before she had said, 'all of my family is in town this week, do you mind sitting somewhere else so we may all sit together?'. That hadn't bothered her. It was polite and greetings had been exchanged first. In the case for that night it was all but rude and the she took note of the blond's face. She was almost appalled by the fact that the girl was sitting there that night. The girl brushed it off for now.