I have to wonder, sometimes, if I will spend the rest of my life coming to terms with who I am and where I fit into this crazy world. It seems to come so easy to other people, to find that little niche where they belong and spend their days in relative peace. They have never had a meltdown in a crowded grocery store, or felt tears running down their cheeks on the bus. No, those distraught moments are saved for the safety of their homes, behind closed doors, where no one will ever see their weakness.

It’s like, that moment of clarity never dawns and I’m left sitting in the dark wondering if the light of understanding will ever grace my face the way it graces the faces I see when I walk down the street. They seem to understand each other. Why can’t I understand them, and why can’t they understand me? Do I speak in tongues too fluid and fast for their ears to register? Then its my turn to wonder if its even worth opening my mouth at all, when all they understand are platitudes and spurious commiseration, and I have neither to offer. They turn those blank stares upon me and wonder what that murmur was they heard when there is nothing to see here. Please just move along. I’d like to be able to breathe again.

It’s still dark in here, and my flashlight is starting to flicker.

In my dreams sometimes I’m just like them, normal and average and able to understand. In my dreams I can speak with them. In my dreams I can fly without broken wings. So why then do I wake up in a cold sweat and wonder where I am when I know full well that in those moments it isn’t my flesh that is lost? I guess I know the answer to that one, that where they see the trials of an existence like mine I see the horrors of an existence like theirs, so lost in their own illusions that they cant feel what I feel, or see what I see. I would rather feel too much, than learn to be content with never feeling at all. They want me in their world, but that’s only because they are unable to witness mine.

To wallow in their suffering is a foreign concept. To see it for the fact that it is and stop fighting its inevitability must seem like giving up when you are surrounded by those who have nothing better to say than the sun will come out tomorrow. And what will you do if it doesn’t? Those hollow words are meaningless in the face of a future that cannot be predicted. I don’t see it that way, but what do I know locked in this little box I have created to protect myself from their prying eyes? Nothing, it seems, when they only take my words, hear what they wish, and attempt to show me the world in black and white.

I never wake up in a panic when I dream in full color.

Feigned

“So you think you know me?” she said to them. “You think you know what dark and desperate secrets hide behinds these eyes? You think you know what terrible truths lie locked behind these pale and bloodless lips, what it takes to satiate the demons whose poison burns through my veins? What do you know, what could you know, when I have never opened my mouth to speak and instead was content to let you believe the lies you told yourself.

An angel in the dust is all they have ever seen, her halo still shining dimly through the layer of dirt and grime that a lifetime of crawling through the mud has left behind. A sweet and innocent child scarred once too often by reality to really be considered beautiful if not for the golden aura of expectations they have built to cage her.

“Fly” they whisper back, “it is your purpose”

It’s a simple as that, or so they think, to take the proffered hand and rise to greet the sun. To shake the dirt from her soiled skin and spread her wings to dry that she might soar.

“This angel you see, this torrid reflection of grace and hope, is a mirage at best. Why do you choose to fill your life with lies? Why do you claim acceptance when you can’t even see the truth? Why else waste your breath without even stopping to ask why. I bear these scars like badges of honor and this sediment like a shield.“

“Besides, I never learned how to fly without broken wings.”