Just Watching.
You sit in your room. The touch lamp next to you is on medium setting, yet it seems so much brighter.
Over and over in your head you tell yourself to get up, get out and see the world. It never works. It's like there is no connection between your head and your feet.
You slowly look down at your body, your muffin top stomach as they call it. Your thighs have dimples all over them, cellulite.
No one believes in you anymore, little by little their inspiration in you fades away into nothing.
"Get up!" Your mother yells at you not really caring she might wake up your dad, and we wouldn't want that would we?
Your friends think about different things now, your head is a fantasy, one huge fairytale that will never come true. You imagine your life somewhere else, somewhere where things make sense, where people can look at you and actually smile, where people say thankyou and are warm and gentle.
You play with the hem of your flannel t-shirt it torn and ragged at the bottom but it's still comfortable. Your siblings are no better, they don't care if you aren't happy, but they're happy right? That's all that matters right? Of course it does. You love your siblings with all your heart, you don't care they are the skinny, athletic, talented ones, if they're happy, then your life doesn't really give a shit then hey?
Right.
Christmas comes around, your whole family goes to your Aunties for lunch, they're all happy and bright too, so naïve to what's really going on. Everyone laughs at your brothers jokes, he knows everything.
Your mum passes out the presents, two for you, just enough to carry right? Your brothers get piles and piles of gifts. Just enough to make them appreciate themselves a tad bit more. You go to the bathroom, just long enough to shed a few tears, look yourself up and down, make a disgusted face and leave. No one realised you were gone.
So if no one realised you were gone, no one would care if you left, permanently? No. You decide the best way is to drown, drown away everything.
You're finally left home alone; you draw a bath till it's nearly full. You shed no clothes, no need. You slowly but carefully place yourself in the tub, its freezing cold. You want to feel numb. You're up to your neck now. You know what's ironic? You see images flashing before your mind, a picture of your mother hugging you with such love, back when she cared, the day your younger brother was born, he was and still is so beautiful.
You're fully under now, submerged.
Your lungs are screaming at you to breathe, to open your eyes and see what's happening, but you block those noises out just like the taunting voices you're leaving behind.
Black.
It's over now, you can breathe.
Your mother fins you first, she screams and hugs you too her chest, pleading, begging for you to come back, your brothers run in from the screaming, they try to resuscitate you, it doesn't work. They're all crying on the floor by now while you're sitting on the edge of the basin watching everything.
That's what you'll be doing from now on, just watching.