moments (part 2)

Halloween passes. I can never escape myself enough. Every unfamiliar face is one I used to know, every mask is one I've worn myself. Laughs and screams battle each other between street lights.

Car shop workers offer me soft summer eyes and a hand on the shoulder in hopes they might replace a fatherly figure as they teach me automotive safety precautions, to men outside of gas stations ogling my ass, asking me why I don’t have a man to pump my gas for me, to a buzz on my phone that lets me know my happy pills are ready for pick-up right down the road. The sugar of halloween candy I poured into children’s buckets cannot compare to the high of my sugar pills, the ones I’ve popped since I was their age. The crash waiting for them at the end of their festive buckets will not compare to the oppression of reality’s daily dose.

The man at the shop asked me my name after he finished repairing my key— a thing he shared in hushed tone that he was not technically supposed to do but that he’d make an exception for the lone girl who walked in on this bleak Monday morning reeking of apathy. He asked after the payment was made, after the shared purpose of an interaction between strangers had concluded. A flicker of irritation and a beat of silence lingered before I answered him. He hunched over the counter just slightly and repeated the mispronunciation of my name. I corrected him. He smiled and said it was nice to meet me. I will never see you again, I thought, muttered a thanks, then walked to my car that, sure enough, switched on first try. I cried because it felt nice that the man asked me my name, and because it felt nicer when he cared enough to say it right. Then I sped off because I could feel him watching me from behind the store window.

My mom tells me I look sick again. My family hovers, the stares linger. And I do feel sick, probably more so than meets the eye. She looks at me as though I’m contagious. And when I thanked her this morning for handing me a plate, she let silence be her answer, so I know she thinks I am. That silence served as my punishment for existing too much, so I sauntered up the stairs to the cage I call my own, hearing the heightened lilt of her voice as she offered to brew my brother’s coffee, an offer of warmth she withheld from me. Meanwhile, my father embraces me with venomous reminders of trials I am guilty of each time we happen to stumble upon one another; my most recent offense being my failure to greet him at the door of the garage he enters from, to avoid us from where we live just up a flight of steps.

The sting of slaps upgraded to the sting of silence and scrutiny.

My hands are shaking. My joints ache. My eyes feel heavy. My breaths require labor. My insides have been scooped out only to be beaten right before me; I watch them bleed and would feel grateful that they are no longer inside of me, if I could but feel anything at all.