You can't even see me when I'm standing right in front of you.

Ermm... I'm not really sure what to say about this. It's probably really confusing and stupid, but it's just my own personal rant, so it's really not meant to be top-notch literature. I'm just one of those girls who can't seem to get people to see who I really am--out of fear, more than anything--and it's really starting to bother me. I wrote this during a sickening spurt of self-pity yesterday, and though it's a little embarrassing, I can't help but share. Enjoy, I guess :P.

I may not vomit after every meal like all the pitiful girls you’re used to hearing about, but I’m far from a healthy human being.

I may not let the tears fall down my cheeks as I struggle to sleep each night, but every morning my smile’s still as dry as dust.

I may not have the scars to mark and bleed my pale wrists, but my heart is another story.

But you wouldn’t know that, would you?

Let me just tell you now, without any more of those useless hints I keep insisting on sneaking your way… I’m tired, friend. I’m tired. And I know I’ve told you all this before—come to school complaining about the way I can barely keep from collapsing to the floor—but I don’t mean it that way, anymore. I never meant it that way in the first place. You need to stop taking things so literally all the time.

You know I don't cry, I never have. But does that mean I'm never sad? Never upset or depressed or lonely? I have feelings, you know. Strong one's, sometimes, and just controlling them is like trying to swallow hot coals. But I keep telling myself over and over again not to let the tears fall, and somehow I've managed to obey my own commands. I don't cry because that would be foolish. There are some people out there who have it so much worse than me. Who are cold, and starving, and unhealthy, and unloved. And here I am... another little rich girl in another little rich town with another little rich lifestyle. It would be pathetic to cry in my situation, so I don't. I keep reminding myself to keep strong and contained and happy.

But I'm failing, and you don't even know it.

Remember your birthday party? Remember how we all crowded around your cake after dinner, talking and laughing and giggling like the idiots we were--we still are? Remember that? I do. More than I would like to admit, actually. I remember how we started playing that stupid game, answering those stupid questions, all in the need of inflating our own flimsy egos. Which of us was the most hilarious, we asked? Most intelligent? Most fun? We’d sat there for hours— naming names, debating as fiercely as lawyers, giggling like the maniacs we were—and it was fun. It was really fun.

I remember the way my heart squirmed when we came to the inevitable question of “Who's the most creative?" I tried hard not to expect anything—I’d told not a single person of how I so loved to write, of how boring reality had become to me over the past few weeks, of how I often laid awake at night dreaming and imagining and existing on different, more interesting realms than my own—and yet… I had hoped. Hoped that maybe, just maybe, you had sensed a little bit of that creativity in me. Hoped that I wasn’t as good a liar as I had thought.

But no. It was stupid. I sat there in silence as I heard name after name bounce around your tiny room--none of them mine. Many argued that they themselves deserved the title, brandishing their words like honor-proving blades, but nobody noticed the way I just sat there and said nothing. Like I always do. It didn’t matter what you knew, I thought to myself. It didn’t matter. It was good that you had no clue as to what I was hiding, what secret part of myself I was too afraid to share. It meant that I was a good liar. Just as good as I'd always thought.

Yet, somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.

And if that was the only thing, maybe I wouldn't remember that moment so darkly, but a few minutes later we came to ask “Which one of us is the happiest?,” and my name shot from your lips like a bullet.

“It’s like you’re never upset!” I remember you telling me, the rest of the girls nodding in agreement, listing example after example to prove her point, “You’re always smiling, nothing we say ever bothers you!”

And I remember nodding and giggling and agreeing with you all, trying to hide the way my insides shriveled up and died within me. And it didn’t, it shouldn’t, have mattered that you couldn’t see what I was trying so desperately to hide—that had always been my intention, after all—but somehow I found a part of myself breaking at your words. I just wished you would’ve been a little more perceptive. I just wished you could’ve seen a little piece of who I really was. I just wished you knew.

But it was a stupid wish. Childish. I can’t expect people to know me if I don’t give them the chance.

After that party, time passed like normal. You never had any idea that you’d ever said anything wrong to me, and I never gave you any reason to suspect. I just smiled some more and laughed some more and giggled some more, and I was just like that happy-little-friend you always expected me to be. So gut-wrenchingly cheerful all the time; that’s what I was.

Somedays, I recall, you’d come to school with that grim expression painted on your face, and I’d take one look at you and immediately know what to do, pulling together my next statement in my mind.

“You look cheery today!” I’d remark each time, and you wouldn’t laugh, but I could always tell that you appreciated my dry humor just by the way your eyes glinted in their sockets. And then you would tell me what was wrong, and I would nod and listen the whole way through. And by the time you finished, I spoke and I apologized and I was sympathetic to your problems, even on those occasions when I knew you’d only pushed them on yourself. I was nice and I was kind and I thought a lot about how to respond to you on different days, in different moods, at different phases. I wanted to make you happy with me. I wanted to make a good friend.

You never noticed how unnatural it always was for me to be around you. For me to be around everyone. There you were, always doing what you wanted to and saying what was on your mind and being who you were without a second thought, and here I was. Hiding and cowering and covering myself up like the silent little fool I’ve always been. Painting my face to look just like everybody else's. But you... you never had any layers, never had any reason to have them. You were who you were, and that was it. No useless masks, no hiding parts of yourself to please others. I’d always admired that about you, you know. But you’d never realized it was special. You thought everyone was like you. The world was a box of judgements, and you were the standard to which everyone was compared. So why bother looking deeper into me? You saw my surface, and you thought you saw it all. But I just wished you’d thought to look a little deeper. Maybe you would’ve been surprised.

It’s stupid. I’m stupid. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to worry about this. I don't want you to worry about me. I never did. But it just hurts sometimes, you know? It hurts to hide and cower and be afraid every minute and every second of the day. And maybe you never knew it, but that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing for so long, now. Just because there’s no tears streaming down my face, just because I’m laughing at your jokes on those dull Monday mornings, just because I'm able to shrug off your insults whenever I feel your judgement descend upon me, doesn’t mean that I’m not falling apart. Because I am. I’m falling apart at the seams… and who’s going to save me if I’m the only one who knows it? You’re one of my best friends… and if you can’t even see who I really am, then who can?

No one. I’m destined to live a life of self-isolation, and that hurts even more.

But you should know by now. You should know that sometimes the worst kind of scars are the ones you can't see. That if you apply the burning coals of fear to any situation, you can turn any amount of bitter sadness into falsified joy. That smiles mean nothing and tears mean nothing and nothing means nothing... not when all the pain is internal. I can lie and avoid and logic my way through all my emotions in my chest, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't make them go away. And I need help. I know I need help, but I'm too afraid to ask.

Please see. Please. This is childish and pathetic and God, I hate myself for saying this, but I need help. And I never wanted to be that person begging for other's to save them--you've seen how independent I can always be, how much I work and work to do things all on my own--but I'm starting to realize that there's nothing left for me to do. Something is wrong with me. I'm breaking my own arms, twisting my own heart, chopping off my own tongue. I'm drowning in myself, of all things. Not physically--not in the way the others are, the way that people can see--but mentally. I'm killing myself without even letting this smile leave my face. And by God it hurts so much.

I've never known how to let people in, and a part of me has always hoped that you'd be able to teach me. But it was a foolish part. You know how I've always been so foolish.

I'm sorry. I never meant to bother you. I just wanted to let you know that not everything in the world appears the way it really is. Not everything in the world really is the way it appears. But you probably already knew that. You just never expected that rule to apply to me.

Maybe one day that will change.... but I won't get my hopes up.