Sleepless

 I sit against the wall and face my rare reflection. What looks back at me doesn't impress me, but surprises me. Short face, rounded at the jaw, pudgy nose that is accented with vibrant blue eyes that stare tiredly back at me. I smirk, the only thing that I liked about myself. My hair is tinted a honey blonde, it's rough and lost in a loose braid that I had carelessly threw it in the night before. Sometimes I hate it, but other times when it was tamed, I feels like I actually had a handle on my life. I roll my eyes, I shouldn't be sitting here, reveling in a reflection that leaves a lot to be hoped for. I'm not extraordinarly beautiful, I'm just, well, a rather normal looking seventeen year old with an attitude. Nothing about me that needs be known.

 But as I sit there and mull and critique every flaw that I see. I feel my mind swirling in several different ways at once. It's dizzying. I don't know what I feel, it's confusing. Do I feel anger, or fear, sadness or anxiety? Do I feel all of them at once or just one? I grit my teeth and clench my knuckles till they become palour. I can feel myself twitching at not knowing the answer. I like answers, I usually have them, but this is one of the rare moments when I don't have a solution. I feel like the world is the villain and I must be the hero. It's almost the feeling of everyone is against you and you have the answers, but they are just too stupid to listen to someone like me. I bite the inside of my cheek, but I don't have the answers. I feel as if I am on fire, ready to run and do something brave or stupid, I don't know, something like that. The flames lick at the edges of my heart, making it beat faster and faster, when in truth, it's beating at a normal pace. Maybe I just wish for the speed. On the other hand, I feel weak and unmoving, not able to even stand up from my position against the wall. I cross my arms, the dark and puffy circles under my eyes are a tell tale sign that sleep has not been my friend for a few nights. But though my body begs for some sort of unconsciencousness, my mind sings and whistles like train that is well oiled and cleaned. It babbles on precisely as my body begs for some sort of calm; but no, it rambles and delcares war on the precious time that is sleep. Besides the restlessness that I feel inside me, the only thing that is dormant is my will to consume anything. Of all things that could be dormant, why should it be the will to eat? Nothing tempts my pallette today, nothing did the day prior, or any day since. The hunger pains aren't there like most times, but the disgust for anything, even water in my mouth, is putrid. I refuse it profusely. For me, food and water are just things that are something extra. I don't like extra.
 

 I am in the mix of being normal and stable minded and being completely mad. My appearance looks only tired and smoothed over as I run my fingers through my dirty and tangled mane, trying to make myself presentable to my family that watches television downstairs. I lick my thick and dry feeling lips, they taste of sweat and dry skin. Good thing I'm not getting kissed any time soon. I have the urge to dress myself respectably, but also punch the mirror into shards that will only glare harder at me after I try and piece them back together in a panic. I want to scream out and pull at my skin, but then I want to act like someone who has a good head on her shoulders and sit up straight and not say a word. I look down at my fingers as they twitch and I loosen them from their tight and unrelenting state. My family knows nothing of how I feel at the moment, I am behind a closed and locked door- my only safe haven. They do not see the monster that paces in my ribcage and in my mind. It is a mixture of exhuastion and ire, a very painful concoction once you think about it. I feel rage, a fire, but then it's a calm rage with contained flames that seems like I can control. It is a strange emotion, the one I feel now. Almost like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of thing. I shudder, the thought of being described as something close to that monster frightens me.

 I take in a deep breath to calm my shaky breathing that seems to come out of no where. My hands are shaking too. What is wrong with me? I shrug as I calmly exit the bathroom, acting as if nothing happened with the staring battle in the mirror. A different person altogether as I descend down the stairs and take my usual spot on the brown couch. I smirk unnoticably as my family watches the program that has come on about Elvis Presley and his untimely demise. They don't know about me, and I'll keep it that way too. I can't have them knowing that being sleepless is the cause for my differentiating sides. I wish it wasn't like this, but...maybe I like this feeling, this sleepless feeling.