One day, Matthew just... turned off and shut down. Like a switch had been flipped somewhere deep inside and he didn't know how to turn it back on because it just really wasn't as straightforward as flipping a physical switch. He didn't know if there even was a way to go back and fix himself, change himself back into what he was expected to be...

But not what he wanted to be, because his choice never mattered. He wasn't supposed to have wants, a message reinforced over and over again, beating the message into him over the years. It was never explicitly said but he knew that if he wanted something then people saw him as selfish...

Nothing was ever explicitly said but he still felt like a trained dog. It worked. He broke. He was broken and with each day that became more and more obvious as the shattered shards dug further in and he bled. He couldn't deny that his existence just wasn't right.

Matthew couldn't feel anything anymore. Years and years of trying to be noticed and 'earn' the love of everyone around him who gave it so freely to others but never to him... Matthew was tired. He had given up so much of himself and so much of his life in the pursuit of belonging and it was all for nothing. One day he just woke up with the harsh realisation that no matter what he did, some part of him down to the very core of who he was... just wasn't welcome here.

Not that he was unwelcome... just simply not embraced... like everyone else was.

And it was a feeling he had been fighting with misplaced optimism for a long, long time. There was no big 'aha' moment. Just one day he woke up and he couldn't convince himself otherwise that everything he had been desperately trying to delude himself with was the truth. That everything was okay and he was okay.

Because it wasn't. He wasn't. No matter how hard he tried he was still left aching and nobody was going to soothe that ache, let alone even notice it. Despite the fact they caused it.

So Matthew switched off and stopped trying, catching no one's attention. No one was looking. No one noticed. The inkling that he'd been forcefully shoving down for years finally couldn't be ignored any longer as reality dropped a cold bucket of water on his head. He was invisible. Nothing he could do would ever change that.

It hurt. And he was empty. Every ounce had been drained from him and he just stopped working. He couldn't function like he used to. He didn't even feel like a person anymore. He had the features that resembled a human but in place of where his humanity should be, he just felt a stark... emptiness. He was a vacuum. He had no idea how to fill it. He once thought he knew and that living, being accepted like everyone else was the answer but now it was just an impossibility. He would never, will never get to have what everyone else was just given.

He felt alienated and he couldn't stand it. Why was he singled out and why was it something that couldn't be fixed? That ache ate him alive. Swallowed him whole. It was unfair and he wanted more than anything to make it fair. A fantasy and he knew it, but he still yearned.

They were adults now if only the technicality of the law. Eighteen was a teen and that was still a child. But Matthew still hated how it took him until he was eighteen to realise. After eighteen years of simmering under the surface, gradually gaining heat and traction as one small revelation led to another and eventually he was a frog in a pot of boiling water and he couldn't deny that the water burned any longer.

So to save his own skin he jumped out of the water but things weren't any better, there was no greener grass. He had been irreversibly damaged by the boiling water and he couldn't feel the difference being out of the water, if there was any difference at all.

And now he was stuck that way. Nothing changed, not even when everyone walked across that graduation stage and then ran off to start their real lives. It was the final nail in the coffin and all it did was confirm his world view and with great apathy, he didn't even feel anything at being right.

Should he be mad at them for using and discarding him without even caring? Or should he be mad at himself for letting it happen? Because he let it happen. It didn't happen to others simply because they just didn't allow it, right? He couldn't find the energy to be mad at all. He felt nothing. He was nothing.

Months had passed and it was quite the change since leaving school. Everything that had been his reality until then was ripped away and now Matthew was left in a new world. It was a funny feeling. Everyone he knew was taking it in stride and moving onwards and upwards. Free at last from the system and environment that defined their life until now.

But the cruel revelation of his life held him in place because he needed to mourn the years he lost chasing something he could never reach.

He rotted alive.

Until one day he could mourn no longer.

Like a rubber band pulled taunt, held at maximum tension and strained, it was only a matter of time before it couldn't hold its shape anymore. He snapped.

Snapped. That made it sound violent and bad. It wasn't in fact; it was inspirational. He couldn't mourn any longer. Couldn't wait and was finally filled with an urgency to move before it was too late because he couldn't take another second.

Matthew had been giving away his possessions and slowly dwindling his room down to nothing. If a few short trips he passed on everything to thrift stores and charities. He had no use for anything. He was more than ready to leave this life behind. Some vindictive part of him thinks that if they do find out he's gone, he didn't owe them any closure or explanation. Bitterly, he hoped it caused them even the slightest amount of distress that he'd been put through his entire life and in an ironic turn of events, they chased him.

Worst of all, that was all he had ever wanted... until now. He couldn't bear seeing them again. He'd snapped now. No longer a useful rubber band. Thinking about trying to be useful again made him sick.

Matthew's room now just looked like a guest room. Fitting, since he felt like a guest in his own life. Was this because he didn't want to bother anyone with cleaning it out after? Or malicious compliance in some sort of way, making this whole scenario that everyone was oblivious to into some giant metaphor? He doubted anyone would give it a second thought. As if he would get the satisfaction of people reading into anything instead of just shrugging it off.

Regardless, Matthew left some strategic things there to be found, but only if someone cared enough to actually look for them. Despite his earlier decisiveness, Matthew spent longer than he would have liked debating what to leave. Even with his looming hope to be free, he still couldn't leave something that hadn't been thoroughly considered and censored. It made him feel ashamed, but he just didn't trust anyone with the full truth. He'd never been validated before and all he could picture was dismissal. He could never let himself be honest with them, it scared him too much, even in the face of finality.

But no matter how Matthew felt, he wouldn't be here to see any reaction. For better or worse. He wasn't a slave to their emotions and he'd done enough walking on eggshells. Besides, there was a chance he would just... fall out of their memory and they'd never even realise he left or find his clues. Matthew didn't know what he'd prefer, but strangely enough, he felt nothing when thinking about it. He could take either outcome because he didn't have to take the outcome. It didn't matter. Nothing did.

Leaving things behind was stupid but Matthew imagined he did that because even if these people didn't love him, he loved them. So much that it had hurt. So much that he had ruined himself or rather, they ruined him. Maybe both. Despite logic urging him to, he couldn't turn his bittersweet feelings off towards the only people he ever knew. Logic said to hate them, human complexity made him feel like throwing up.

Matthew felt weak to still want love and approval even though he knew he wouldn't get it. It made him feel worthless, even more so now that he was aware of it.

But Matthew couldn't mourn any longer. Decisiveness spurred him onwards.

If they wanted to, they'd find out what happened. Maybe.

But little did they know they had already seen him for the last time.