"Are you ready to present?" The teacher's voice trickled down the chalkboard, stirring agitated bodies. Heads lowered, eyes wandered away—to not come in contact with the pair at the front. After hearing her name be thrown into the ocean of sullen students, I saw her walk up to the front slowly, wary of what she'll be saying. She hasn't told me what her presentation was going to be on—which was strange since we tell everything to each other, from if we skipped a meal or embarrassing baby stories. Strange.
She began, "We are told that a writer writes from emotion, experience, brutal reality that hits them in their spine, cracking every speck of strength they thought they had. And then there's me. Writing about selective muteness, agonizing depression, death—trying to get you to understand the troubling thoughts that people have at three in the morning. Where do I get these emotions from? Experience? Harsh reality? When I'm just a student, like all of you are? A fish in a lost grand sea, hiding underneath behind our hair or books? Where do I get these sufferable stories from? To hope that you will pick up the message from the edges of my sentences? Where do they come from? Do they come from a mother who uses the quick wind to throw her words across her child's bones? A father who gulps down misery from a bottle, masking his lies by a bitter taste? Where the only thing keeping me sane is the thought of stepping out of the house; one day, someday, saying—well, I'll know what I'll say when that day comes.
There is a thin line between insanity and reality. I have one foot in each state of mind. By being in both parallel worlds, I can understand why three A.M. is called the devil's hour. I have seen hell, and it's splitting me into two. I'm just like you—I have eyes, arms, legs, have the same organs and all. Yet the one thing that separates me from you is what I have experienced. But that shouldn't mean that you should tell me that I have it easier, or someone out there is struggling even more. Everyone has their own degree of pressure and hardships. Everyone struggles. Don't you get it? Everyone. Not just you. Not just a homeless person sitting next to a store. And just because a person isn't homeless or dying or starving—that does not mean that they cannot share what they are feeling. Their feelings matter. Don't make them feel like it doesn't. And that's my speech about humans, who lack the capability of understanding that every human has their own heavy backpack of troubles. Even the rolling backpacks are heavy, okay?"
YOU ARE READING
therapy
Short Story"they told us that we needed therapy, as if medication and tainted words could fix broken toys."
