A Reaction

Just to get this portfolio thing jumpstarted, I figured I should post my first official piece of writing. This has been drafted to the extreme and was used as a spoken word piece for my AP English class's end-of-year creative project.

I

I am amazed by the amount of pain a group of letters can cause. Split them up and they mean nothing, but in joining they are a living entity, a pulsating mess of black and white that beg for your attention. I began to read with caution, but they cut at me like the scissors I used to make you that card back when I was still happy. Nothing would have changed if I had closed the window and shredded the printout. I knew that the words were waiting for me somewhere. I could not avoid everything that welled up inside me and reminded me of that year.

When I saw the email I was elated. Any words that come out of your mouth are so perfectly strung together, so well placed, and I still envy you for that. Like everything you sent me did, a smile spread over my face as I scanned across the screen, hearing your voice in my head read the words aloud with those little pauses you always added. You still cared and it showed and I’m still not sure if I can ever thank you for that. But that’s not the point.

As I opened the document you attached it was like someone peeling wallpaper, carefully and smoothly. I felt the rawness of my insides; aware of the cold around me and the fact that my feet felt like bricks of ice, ready to sink me to what awaited. My mouth opened not to speak, but as a weak attempt to express the heavy, drugged feeling that your words pulled over me. I did not even feel the dampness of my tears, just my body pulsating in this odd sadness that felt something in between nostalgia and grief.

I know I should be happy that you are so optimistic, and I feel the weight of the guilt that comes with being the complete opposite every day. You are both still the same and different, and though I like that, I cannot help but think of the old you. Or at least my version of the old you. I am so angry that I am not happy and that you can still seem to be same after all that has happened in the past 8 months or so. I feel like I know so much about you and nothing at all, and these contradictions confuse me. I just want to know the real you before you leave. I need make sure that you cannot answer all these questions that I think of so constantly.

I look down at the floor in disappointment like always and my fingers catch my eye like those sirens I see in the rearview mirror, jarring and normal at the same time. I am so purple, so purple that I cannot understand why anyone would love this percieved color of royalty or good judgement anymore. My fingers ache gently, reminding me of a sickness that is not always visible. You are cold and useless, they say, the pain staining my senses with disgust at myself for giving in to such a human flaw. This negativity, this passivity, is a special kind of ugliness that sits underneath my skin. All of this old blood, these bruises, that permeate my thoughts and decisions, drag along a constant loathing, leaving pieces in every corner of my mind.

I want so badly to be positive, to be looked up to, to feel as loved as you must be. I applaud you for resisting the world’s attempt to swallow you whole, to let it take you  like it will in what seems so soon no matter the physical sense of time that passes.

II

Life didn’t feel like an ongoing chore when I was in your presence. I wanted to change, to learn. And I still do. I just wish I didn’t have to involve so many people that I can’t stand. I know this is one of those life “rules”, but I think there deserves to be an exception from time to time. There is for everything else at least. But I am never the exception. I am always the rule, the example.

These people that I continually put up with seem to make so much noise. I shrink into what is left of myself when my name is called by one of them. The sound hangs in the air waiting for me to reply, but I can never bring myself to ignore it. I fear that I might miss out on something, disappoint someone. Their voice gets louder, the pitcher higher, Megan. Hey Megan! MEGAN! They do not seem to understand that volume urges people to move further away rather than closer.

III

Sometimes I like to imagine myself as a letter or piece of punctuation, a question mark for example. It looks like me when I am trying to sleep - on my stomach with my feet swung off to the side because my bed is too short to hold me. Why can’t I always be a question mark? It would be so easy to just lay there and require someone to think about you, to act upon you, to react to you.

But I am not a question mark. I am nothing, or at least I cannot figure out what I am. I cannot fit myself in a box. I am not predictable. But yet I continue to have these expectations for myself like I fit a mold. I use goals and expectations interchangeably, setting myself up for so much failure and disappointment. And I cannot accept failure. At least I think I can’t. Who knows anymore? Isn’t this failure, resorting to typing words at 12:43 AM in a desperate attempt to justify my emotions and make them feel worthwhile and useful. I can’t even say this all out loud. I am too scared that is will sound forced, fake, and meaningless and I can only stomach the courage to acknowledge them in my head.

Acknowledge is such a sad word. You have taken the time to notice something, but not given it your full attention. I acknowledge you in the hallway, but that does not mean I like you. I am recognizing that you and I are passing, seeing each other in a moment and nothing more. It is like how I have started to acknowledge all of these emotions inside me. I know that they are there, but I am afraid to dig myself into them too deep. There is no end once I start, as I can either coast in purposeful ignorance or become buried alive, never to be seen again, changed in so many ways that I am not sure if I or anyone else want or can handle.

Am I supposed to feel all this at some point in my life? Does it make me a real human, someone special, someone who has felt something profound? Is this deep set loathing a passing phase? Or another thing to keep in my closet? Does it make me nothing more than this empty and bloated sack of skin and blood and tissue that complains, that annoys, that wonders? Those two negatives with a positive; that is me, that is definite.