I look next to my friend who sits on a couch next to me, glassy-eyed, and lifeless. I glance around the dim-lit room as smoke wafts through the air and fills the room and the bass of the music pounds. My mind begins to spin, and my heart beats rapidly. I hold a cup filled with vodka and my hand shakes. I try to close my eyes and escape the loneliness I’m feeling.

I’m told I have it all, that I’m privileged. Good grades, a loving family, a great school to go to. Yet the perfection that I strive for has led me down a road that is oh so unforgiving. The weight and pressure of every weekday builds up until the weekend when all I desire is to feel numb. To not think about what awaits me, the problems that I have to deal with, the suffering that never seems to end. To not think about the boys that don’t like me, and the friends that claim they will always be there for me.

So this is what it has come to. My friends say it’s okay, that this is something every sixteen year old does. I tell myself that they’re right, just to ease the feeling that gnaws at the back of my head.

The facade of white suburbia where I live is soccer teams, bake sales, good grades, caring parents, but what lies behind the walls is too ugly for anyone to see. It’s filled with tightly wound, bored teenagers that will do anything to satisfy their craving to feel autonomy, and I cannot say I am an outlier.

What eats at me the most, is that I’ve never said no. Not once. I’ve never stood up to my friends and said, “Hey, no this isn’t for me.” I’m a coward, and that is what I hate the most.

As I am writing this I can’t say why it is that my life has come to this. A life where all I crave is to feel nothingness. But I do wish before this downward spiral began that could have realized that there is pain even when you cannot feel a thing.