my thoughts never seem to come out the way i want them to. always a little too jumbled up to make sense to anyone except me. it feels like i'm the only one who gets me/knows me sometimes. but maybe you know what i'm talking about. when you just don't have the right words—or you do and you just can't find them—to say what's on your mind. it can be like a mental cage. how do i tell them i'm not like them, but i'm okay? that i'm done trying to be top tier, i'm done wearing this persona all day and shrugging it off like a hoodie before i go to bed at night, waiting for a second alone when the cameras finally shut off. i'm tired of my life not being my own anymore, of every moment i live belonging to someone else. speak, they tell me, but only when we tell you to. use your voice, they say, but only for the words we have shoved into your mouth and forced down your throat. i'm choking on this person they've made me into. i'm not myself. i don't recognize the man who stares back at me when i look into the mirror. he's a figment of my imagination, but he's real too, a different soul inhibiting the body i thought was my own. a little lost; a little left of center. and you're the first person i ever knew who seemed to understand any of that.
