Here is a sour dose of truth, as bitter as cherry cough syrup…I am not real. I wear many hats in my life to play many roles – friend, lover, dog mom, caretaker, student, citizen, teacher, sister, daughter – I do what others do, eat breakfast, go to the gym, walk the dog, listen in class, buy groceries. In all aspects in life, it seems that I am real. I am just a lost cause, an empty shell, a non-existent. What I hide away is that my functionality is emulated based on all the good things I see in the world. What I hide away is that I am not functional at all. I am a wreck. I feel the world around me, and the beings in it, as one massive entity that weighs heavily upon me, as if I was swimming in jello melting in a bowl that someone left out on the sidewalk on a hot summer day. I can’t sleep, I just stare at the ceiling in low visibility and I hate myself for having such a comfortable bed and food in my stomach. I hate myself for giving myself the time to sleep and recover a bit of peace. I scowl into the darkness. My mind is only set on one thing, the suffering of others. Pictures flash across my mind in the darkness of where animals are at the precise time I am comfortable in my own home. The dogs being abused, raped, left tangled in a chain in a yard forgotten, snacking on their dead old owner for pure survival, being thrown into a pit of vicious fighting dogs to be ripped to shreds only to be taken out before succumbing to death, suffering from cancer their owner cant afford to fix, being screamed at and cowering pissing in the floor because they just don’t understand how their owner’s behavior only propagates their own misbehavior. And I try to run away from it, I am on my phone, I have the tv running in the background, I put on music, a podcast, an audiobook, I take pills, anything to help me escape from the truth. The escapes are only temporary and then there I am again in that sick twisted mindset, my heart being ripped from my chest, tears being choked back in fear of waking the ones I love. The anger swells, I feel hopeless and the hate for myself for my inaction and inability to find these needing animals screaming for help in my brain, I let them down. They die because I am no one special. They are tortured and are in pain because I am worthless. For my faults, they suffer.

I get no pleasure in much of anything. I am scared to do everything. Which I feel like I have no support from friends or family. I have trouble in social settings because I am genuinely scared of people, no one understands. People would think I am crazy if I let that out. I don’t like talking to people. People have hurt me and beat me and sexually hurt me, just like these dogs and other animals I love so much. I am scared to walk my dog alone at night, or leave early to head to the gym by myself, I am scared to walk on campus in broad daylight. What if there is a shooting at the theater? What if one of the bad men from my past find me here and steal me and take me back into what I ran away from?  I have no motivation, I don’t care, I care too much. If I could really be myself, I would never leave my bed. I would cry and stare at the walls and let life pass me by, I would be ok with being defeated by this cruel world and because I fear taking my own life, I would just let it pass from the comfort of my own home, isolated from the outside world, making a world in here that was ok for me and safe for me.

But, because of the people who love me, the people who see greatness in me, the people who cherish my intelligence and what I can potentially offer, I can’t let them down. I’ve already given up on myself a long time ago, but they don’t know that. I cry in the shower when I shower alone but they don’t know that, I cry when I am driving to school or driving home, but no one is around. And when I leave the solace of my car, or my home, or someone I love is near, I just take out a neat little hat and mask combo and I pull over a veil and I emulate all the things they need to hear and feel to make them feel safe and secure and happy. I don’t know why I do this, I don’t know why I choose to present myself as this normal person – I want to just be a normal person, I guess? Maybe. But I am not. I am empty. My body just wont let me give up, no matter how much my mind wants to.

This place we live in, it’s terrible. Human beings are terrible. I have zero compassion for the human race, or a compassion so encompassing that I rather place humans out of their sad existence for their own relief. I’m not sure. Guess it just depends on the day. People make me sick – with their really fucked up fetishes of children and dogs and rape. When you lose your humanity, you stop being human…I teeter that line, many people just surpass it. What one may do to another, so may that be done to you 100 times more. I cant block it all out – these thoughts that are more than thoughts, they’re truth – I cant block it out and function in the times that I am alone. I am overcome and overwhelmed and the anger is so great, that I break down into shattered cheap plastic like I had been run over by an 18 wheeler with a driver on a three day high from meth.

Life outside of my body is fantastic now. Life inside my body is a disaster zone, a war zone with decapitated bodies of all the former me’s that were created and subsequently bombed just to be replaced by a newer model. The professionals say that my issues aren’t something pills can fix, I’ve been on hundreds in attempt. They say the trauma of my life is too great and they say, ” You are a miracle, how can you function so well and so great?” and then bad days they say, “you know yourself so well, you’ve been through so much, you can get through this period also.” They don’t know what to say because who has been through what I have been through? Maybe so few people that psychology has a hard time understanding it because it hasn’t been adequately studied with a large enough pool. Other people who have it easier, they get easy fixes. Us, we get pity smiles. The human brain cannot in its capacity handle the amount of trauma that a few of us have been in and the doctors don’t have answers. It’s an entire new realm of science that is so taboo and rare, no one dare delve in unless they don’t fear losing themselves in the process. Grief and reality are a terrible mixture.

I just want help. I want to help others. I want to save lives and hurt who hurt the innocent. I want to be a vigilante and stand up for values and all that is good in the world and utterly destroy all that is wicked, 100 times worse than the wicked tendrils dealt to others. I want to lead a world of kindness and compassion, where no one feels left behind and those who prevented growth and understanding are smote from existence. I want to feel human for once instead of constantly feeling and identifying like an animal (since this is the way I was treated most of my life). No one knows this. Instead…here I am. A no one. Non-existent, living my small life in a small way in a small area, silenced by my fear and thoughts of inadequacy. Drowning in my jello. I come out of these highs-and-lows with always the same dreadful and sorrowful thought – I am just… not real. I am but a smear on life.