I've never liked parties. They make me feel like the whole world is coming to cave in on me. Shouting and voices and laughter swallow up whatever rational thoughts I think and it turns me into anxiety. I become anxiety. I am shaking, my chest is heaving, my eyes can't focus on the people around me. It's all too much.

Maybe if .y parents didn't like parties I would want to go. But it's just not fun when I've been told to enjoy them since the day I was born. It's just not fun when you don't know how to have fun, father. It's just not fun when your brain turns you into a thunderstorm, father.

I've injured myself when I am anxiety. I pick at the skin on my arms, chew my lip too hard, dig my nails too deep into my flesh. I have scars from where I've scratched away the skin, I am nail marks on my arms from pressing too hard. It's all too much.


But I want to be a teenager. I want to go to parties and I want to make mistakes and I really want to have friends but...I can't. I won't allow myself to. I hold myself back. I can't even talk without feeling like a burden. I want to change But there's really nothing about me I've been able to shape. Sure, I would like to talk to people, but do people want to talk to me?

And I want to take trips woth my friends to the coast and stop at gas stations and get slushies, I want to make up stories in the woods and pretend to be a knight. I want it. I want it all. I always hear people talking about that kind of stuff, and I know I've never had that. The people I like don't like what I do. They want sports, parties, guys, defying their parents, cursing, not a childhood. I want to be like them, but I'm stuck in the naive fantasy that I can ever get my years back. It's all too much.


© Salem Ferrel, All Rights Reserved