Open Wounds

         It’s your breathing that captures your attention first. Ragged, struggling for calm; each intake of breath is longer, more drawn out than the last, a desperate undertone beneath each of them, stronger every time. You dislike it, dislike how little control you have over yourself. Too inconsistent, too unpredictable. Too weak for you.



         Your eyes stare before you, not taking in anything, beyond caring of your surroundings. They’re lighter than mud, but they’re still slightly murky, marred in imperfection and they don’t dart left and right; you don’t let them. You don’t like what little control you have, how much you struggle against showing panic, showing disagreement; showing resentment.



         Mouth set in a line, face expressionless except for a small, fake grimace that barely passes off as a smile, you walk amongst them seemingly without intention; yet your purpose is clear in your mind. Don’t break. Don’t you dare bloody break.



         Their voices, you know it’s not in your head. They’re real, and you detest its reality. You don’t hate the voices themselves; you can’t. You’re not allowed to, and you won’t cross the limits because your own conscience won’t let you, flawed as it is. The droning, the high-pitched squeals and the unwomanly guffaws envelope you, encasing you in a bind you’re unable to, desperate to escape.



         Your body sags, exhausted at the façade you keep up, drained from the emotions you bottle. It’s unhealthy, they say, but they’re not you, are they? They don’t walk in your cheap, knock-off shoes, they don’t face the lies, the delicate layers upon the truth, hear those voices again and again. They’re not breathing hard like you are, their eyes aren’t dilated with the effort to look and not stare instead, nor are their hands jerky, constraining themselves from clenching them into cold fists.



         Fury and despise are your foremost emotions; calm and terrifying, threatening to take over you, control you, own you. Deprived of your desire and wants, your self-destruction is close, too close. It’s them who instilled these emotions, the owners of those slightly familiar, happy, taunting voices. They who slash at you and leave the wounds open, bleeding, yet invisible to their own eyes. Perhaps they aren’t aware of it, but they’re not you, are they?



         You detest the pain constricting your heart, even more hurtful than those unseen wounds. It squeezes, tighter as you gasp for more air; it feeds on your desperation, your fear and want of the vague familiar fading into a stranger before you.



         Revelation slaps you soundly in the face as you realize just how much you want the vaguely familiar to disappear completely. You need them to become strangers, to look at you without any ounce of recognition, because it’s that close, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter which one’s thicker; there’s always something better. That’s what everyone says, right? That’s what the world, the cruel, sick world whispers into every unwilling ear.

         At last you’re granted the key out of the bind they keep you in; but you realize there is more than one lock on it, and the key only fits in one. Your mind screams in frustration and agony even as the grip around you is loosened, even as the key is grabbed from you and you’re as helpless as you were before. Even an animal in a cage is able to prowl around in it, while the most you could do is take large a lungful of air every now and then, careful not to overdo it.



         All you ever wanted to do was run away, but nothing’s ever easy, is it?