Inside is dulled, I don’t feel much. Inside is a shell, mostly vacant, aside from a few tendrils of perseverance for civilization and refusals to abolish independent thought. This is how I evolved for survival. Inside shut down, and I’ve yet to find the reset lever.

The mirror shows an aging face I never can recognize. A mother’s eyes, a father’s mouth, nothing to call my own. My shoulders slump with the weight of a heavy history. My legs and belly are thick with the stares and comments of people who can’t look past my skin. My heart breaks with every bite of food I must ingest to survive because you made me this way.

My loneliness is as vast as the desert and as wet as the ocean. I curl up to wet my cheeks and pillow. I reach out my hand to my mother.

People let me down. I let people down.

I am not smart enough.

I am not successful enough.

I am not pretty enough.

I am not outgoing enough.

I am not enough.

I hold the paw of my best friend. I am enough in that moment.

I let go. A familiar hateful voice flows in, overpowering my own self-deprecating voice.

You’re less than an animal. You’ll never be good enough for anything beside fucking. You made me do this to your mother. It. Is. All. Your. Fault. You killed her. It. Is. All. Your. Fault.

Like I am brainwashed. Like clockwork, it’s there. He’s there. Invading my safe space.

The TV drones, the train passes, a branch scrapes against the glass. It’s all ambient. There’s a blur in my eyesight and my mind is 30 years in the past and 30 years in the future. Death lays in there, a constant dull drum beat, reminding me that I am no master of time, but that time is the master of us. You can’t reach me here, please leave a message.

Do I come check the voicemails and missed texts? Do my legs work today? The questions each sit in a chair around a table with a single bullet – loaded revolver. Everyone is smiling. Everyone wears hats and has painted fingernails. Everyone is drinking their tea.

A little girl with long blonde hair and lice, two missing front teeth, and dirty clothes gives me a piece of paper ripped from her sketch book. I unfold the crumpled piece of paper. It reads, “Will you ever be enough for you?”

I scoff. I am fine. No one wants to love someone who isn’t.