Hello, there, lovely readers.

I know I am BEYOND a terrible person. I have totally stopped updating any of my stories without a word, and I do deeply apologize – college is turning out to be extremely time-engulfing, more so than originally planned by a long shot.

(I also kind of lost inspiration for them. Sue me. I'm trying to get it back)

But this is just a oneshot. It has no plot, it has no humor (it's actually a bit sad), but I had this idea in my head (call it a bit of personal outreach), and I figured Fang's POV was the best way to share it.

Hopefully it makes you think, but that you can enjoy it.

Rock on.

Sincerely,

~Dancing On My Toes~

Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride. All rights go to James Patterson.

Fang's POV

It was walking down a sidewalk on a particularly grey, cloudy, cold, and windy winter day, in a sea of bustling people that paid me no mind, that I realized I may be unhappy.

Not the kind of unhappy that persists and endures through all kinds of weather and times and requires serotonin-enhancing drugs to overcome, but the kind that happens upon you at random times that you realize just hides in you, so deep that you don't even realize it is there until it surfaces and drowns you momentarily.

The sudden feeling of unhappiness, stemming from deep inside and becoming all encompassing, raged furiously - unbeknownst to the rest of the world. On the outside, I keep stone-faced, shoulders braced to the cold, walking forward like a mindless drone.

But inside, my mind was revealing with sadness and questions of why I was so sad when nothing had happened recently that was particularly sad.

I thought about how my former girlfriend, Lissa, had told me a few weeks ago that she didn't feel anything emotionally for me, and I thought about how used that made me feel, because she only liked me for friendly interaction and shallow physical attraction. I thought about how I felt so small and rejected – not because I wasn't good enough, because that insinuates that she was superior in some way, but because I felt I wasn't desirable enough for her to have emotional thoughts and feelings toward me when that was the majority of what I felt toward her. I thought about how I acted indifferent when she announced the news, when I had spent the previous week in a mixture of anger, anguish, and anxiety that had me on a loop-de-loop of emotional highs and lows and felt absolutely terrible, and at that moment all I wanted to do was strangle her or cry.

I thought about all my insecurities I experienced when I was younger, from my appearance to my physique to my lack of sociability, and it made me feel hopelessness towards future relationships happening and triggered desperate wanting for the broken relationship I had had to come back somehow.

I thought about how she keeps ignoring me and acting like I never existed at all.

I thought about how angry and unwanted I felt when she sent me drunk text messages after she had ignored me all day. I thought about how she never wanted to acknowledge our relationship in public, and how insecure and envious of others I felt. I thought about how quickly the physical relationship spiked, and how I didn't really want that, but I craved the emotional stake so much that I let myself accept some of it, and how frustrated I am that I let myself be so weak.

I thought about how no one knew how I really felt in that moment because I couldn't tell anyone how I felt.

I couldn't tell my friends because they have girlfriends and boyfriends that are perfect for them, and I can't tell them how every time they speak about how they love their relationship and how sweet their boyfriends/girlfriends are, I can't help but feel like a little shovel is digging into my heart in a mixture of jealousy and remorse that I am not allowed to have that - that no one wants me like that - and how I may never get to experience the happiness they are feeling.

I couldn't tell my family because they would just give me empty comforts, like "it'll happen someday" and "someone perfect is going to sweep you away soon enough", but believing those words is like believing in Santa Claus (even though you know he isn't real), and you are just making a fool of yourself to everyone else by embracing a lie – or at least something that can't be proved or validated.

I couldn't tell myself because the confession makes me feel hopeless and sad and all these things that drown me and make me feel awful inside.

I thought about how I'm a good person, and that people tell me I'm a good person and other compliments, but how it seems it is always the flawed or bad people that get the relationships and happy times, and I sometimes contemplate whether I should be a bad person too because it seems to work, but I don't want to change myself, and being a bad person seems like too much work, and I am too lazy.

I thought about how grey and windy and cold it was outside, and how grey and cold and tired I felt in that moment.

I thought about all the little sad things that have happened to me in my life, and I thought about how the sadness never really disappears, but just sits in hiding spots, waiting and compounding with other little sadnesses until it is a big sadness that rears its massive head on occasion, and how as I get older each day the sadness inside grows a little bigger, and there is no way to remove it, just ignore it, but it is so impossibly hard to just ignore sadness like that sometimes, especially when it is grey and cold and cloudy and you are feeling grey and cold and tired.

I thought about what I wanted to have for dinner.

I thought about how many thoughts I was having in the span of a few seconds, and how no one had a clue I was thinking about all of these things.

I thought about how other people could be walking past me with their minds swirling at a thousand thoughts per second, and how I have no idea if that is happening or not. I thought about how the whole world could be a mass of swirling people feeling their giant sadnesses on random cloudy, grey, cold days simultaneously but not letting anyone know and walking past every other sad person with shoulders braced and face blank, going from one place to another just trying to ignore the compounding sadness that we are all feeling instantaneously.

I thought about how sad I was, and how, although everyone might be simultaneously sad at the same time, I felt utterly alone.

And no one likes feeling alone in a crowded room.

But life goes on. People come in and out of your life. We constantly have to battle the sadness that grows and grows and grows and tries to eat us whole without showing that we are fighting at all.

We live for the next happy time, and those are the events that should define our life.

But sometimes, I can't help but be sad on those random windy, cold, grey, cloudy winter days.

What did you think? R&R would be lovely.