“Homework!” I choke, “I’m doing my homework.” I hear her mumbling her annoyance from the downstairs. Of course she talks loud enough for me to hear, it isn’t a secret that she’s disappointed in me. My body shakes, and small beads of sweat gather on my forehead. It doesn’t register that I’m making myself physically ill with worry. I grasp the brass door handle trying to steady myself from the in vertigo that’s setting in. My view pulls away from my body and I can see myself standing there at the doorway of my room, shaking, grasping the door, knowing that if I let go I’ll fall through the ground. The feelings are tormenting, throbbing pains of worry. Circling, choking pain. And than all at once I collapse on the ground, my feelings manifesting in small amounts of water flooding from my eyes. “I can’t do this anymore,” I cry. I curl myself in the fetal position and sniffle quietly to myself. And what makes it all worse is that nobody knows, I alone burden all my pain.

Morning comes faster than I want it to. I wake up knowing that this is just a prelude to the hell that I’m going to face today. At this moment I’d sell my left arm for five more minutes of sleep. I take a shower, dry my hair and put on makeup. My costume is complete and I’m ready to deceive the world once again. I sigh to myself as I look in the mirror. The dark brown hair, the green eyes, I’d be a whole lot prettier if I smiled once in a while. I smile at myself but it looks unnatural, forget it I’ll never be pretty.

I gather my stuff, all my sloppy junk, and stuff it into my back pack. My mom looks at me, an undeterminable blank stare. “You ready?” she asks, banging the keys impatiently on her thigh. I sigh, boiling all my emotional turmoil into a single breath of air. I shrug my shoulders indifferently and trudge off to the car. The air outside is frozen, stinging cold that chills through even the thickest parts of my coat. The lawn lay sprawled in front of my house, frosted with sparkles of dew frozen on the tips of the blades. “Have a good day,” my mom calls from the car as I slam the van door behind me. I know that she means well but through all of her ignorance I have no need for her. I whimper a small smile in return. They’re all like that.

It’s a shame that my parents gave up so soon. After all the pubescent years of rejection that I had given them; I suppose they just decided everything now was just a matter of hormones. Even now as I emerge out of that phase of life, they’ve decided it’s just easier to shrug your shoulders and blame the pain on something uncontrollable. There small effort to find me leaves us distanced and awkward. The want for them is throbbing, for just something as simple as a small hug. But our fear of rejection keeps us clinging to our comfort zones and leaving me alienated and alone. Sure I have siblings but there lives are made up of recess and Scooby Doo. How can you explain suicidal thoughts to a six year old?