"Tell me, have you ever felt this way?"
You told me once you knew what it was like to be alone in a room. People surrounding, chatter blossoming, yet your insecurity and loneliness thriving like never before. You told me you knew what it was like to wear a shell and any outside words would bounce off of it.
Do you often feel misunderstood?
I feel like I cannot make people understand. I lack the courage. Or perhaps not much is left to understand. I hide, and they do not see it.
Hide from what?
It is not the from that frightens me. What I'm hiding terrifies me. I'm flirting with thoughts I'd never thought I'd conjure. And it's not a place others have not explored before. But regardless of how many venture there, it's still as misunderstood as ever.
Perhaps it's dismissal you want to avoid.
Yet it's not so cruel to be dismissed. I find dismissal easy to bear. That is, if your words have been considered and weighed, and only then dismissed. Otherwise, I wouldn't call it dismissal. I call it ignorance, avoidance. Both so easy to impart.
Do you think, on some level, they realize this?
I don't believe anyone does. It's easier to appear happy even though you're not. It's easier to mask sadness underneath happiness, than to hide happiness underneath sadness. Have you ever tried it?
There is no denying that when you see a smile, you assume, almost on instinct, that it comes from joy.
Who would ever think twice? No one, not even I, would give a smile a second thought. Where it's coming from, is it genuine? Does it -as poems always say- speak louder than words? I don't believe it does. It's silent. What else could it say? I don't blame them for not noticing.
Do you want them to notice?
I do wonder if things would be different if they did. It's strange. From the outside, one would see a crowd of friends, or at least acquaintances of mine. Yet if asked deeper questions about yours truly, they wouldn't be able to give one answer. Because delving deeper has never been the point. I want to assure you, it is not that I have trouble opening up. In fact, they'd tell you they've never met anyone so talkative, so open, and happy. I do not know how to change that. Or if I want it to change. On some strange level, the image that they created seems so nice, I sometimes find myself wishing it was real.
And it's not?
No. No, it isn't. And it's sickening that something so opposite, so different, could actually hide beneath that. I blame myself for that. As I should be. I should've shown myself. Somehow.
What is the point of writing this?
A point? I suppose there should be one. But now I face the same dilemma. Should I have not written anything? Staying quiet is much easier. And I can only assume that some consider the time taken to word these thoughts as lost and wasted. I don't believe it does me any good. Nowadays, every place is filled with thoughts of mild anguish, and the common advice is "cope".
But I did write this. Just a few lines. For the sole purpose of actually reading my own thoughts and listening to them again. Of watching them progress. For better or worse.