Do you hate me?
I think that as they talk over me continuously, drowning out my words as they strangle my emotions. Happily smiling each other’s faces but never looking each other in the eye, their gestures look empty to me, but they look happy. It’s all about how you appear. A smile painted seamlessly onto my face deceives them; I lie to them every second of the day as they care only enough to grasp the appearance. My role is like that of a kabuki play, my emotion rarely changing and my actions set and unchangeable, played to a tune of appearances. Underneath are the scars they leave every time they ignore me, block me out, or hurt me. My true face is hopelessly mangled and ugly, and if revealed, would widen their eyes and create a wonderful topic for them to gossip about. But I wear a mask, and never take it off.
People preach about acceptance, friends tell you their feelings, but no one will accept mine. I’m cut off, a severed, diseased limb amputated from an unwanting body. An abandoned limb, with the life slowly bleeding out of me. The emotions have long ago drained from my eyes through unseen rivers of tears and the feelings have left with every breath I breathe. I am cold, calculating. I am surviving. I pray for someone to take up a pen and draw me a smile, take up a brush and paint me a tear, but hands never touch me, not truly. They touch my skin, run through my hair, maybe wipe an eyelash off of my cheek. But they leave no warmth, no trace as they pass over the armor I put on by the layer every morning, never bothering to take off when I go to sleep. It’s getting thicker. Soon, it will be too much, become to heavy, and pull me down to a point where I can’t get up.
I ask, do you hate me?
The wind whispers maybe. It makes me cold, and I shiver.
And I put on another layer of armor.