𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐀 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝

XLIII

Janes pov
"She'll be okay?" I ask, adjusting the nurse's hat atop my head and with it the veil that falls over my face–just to my nose.

"She'll be fine," one of the sisters—Lilian—says as I look over my shoulder to see a nurse unconscious in a patient's bed—hands bound, limbs strapped to the metal for good measure. I might I might, I should feel remorse, shouldn't I?

I should. But I remember her.

I remember her hands—the same hands that helped held me down, the same hands that forced pills down my throat and god, her face, the same face that stared back at me as screamed for help, for a chance to be something other than what they labeled me as—what they subjected me to. To be believed in.

I remember her so vividly that I dig inside every emotion, flip over every base of my being, every thought and corner, every dark alley, and yet—I can't find it in me to feel bad. No, I can't seem to feel a thing—not when I used to be the one drugged and strapped to a chair just a few weeks ago. Not when I used to scream for her help, definitely not when my blood still stains the same chair she's now tied to. One of the many stains they hadn't even bothered cleaning up.

No, I can't seem to find it in myself to feel this human emotion, not anymore. And maybe, maybe if I were anyone else, maybe if I hadn't spent my time trying pleasing people, maybe if I didn't fucking care what people thought of me, maybe if I just stopped giving and giving and giving and giving—maybe, just maybe then the realization wouldn't be so suffocating. Maybe then I wouldn't feel bad for something so normal. But for me? For a girl whose spent her entire life trying to be something different than what they brushed me off as—whose very existence depended on what people thought of her—in the end, I was proving all their hypotheses. I used to deny their theories, used to cry and shout that I was a good person, or even a person at that. In the end, they were right.

In the end, Henry was wrong. He might act heartless, might act like a monster—but the blood stained on his hands aren't nearly as dirty as my existence.

I tried, I swear, you have to believe me—I tried so hard to prove them wrong. But I'm tired.

I'm tired of giving so much of myself for a world that doesn't give back. I'm tired of the dead ends, of all the failed attempts. I'm tired of feeling like I'm playing make-believe, of feeling like a plastic barbie in a world of real people with real personalities and real lives and real smiles and real homes with real windows that they leave open—when I have to close the blinds to mine. I'm tired of feeling like no matter how I look, no matter how good my grades are, how well I act, how many friends I have—I'm never one of them. I'll never wake up happy, not when I have to try so hard to be what they do so effortlessly.

All my friends, all my classmates, all my peers, and all people, the media—they know versions of me. Ones I've created to cater to their every preference, every expectation, every need—and for what? In the end, they don't know me. Not really. I can tell myself they mean it when they say they like me, that they do really need me, do laugh with me. But the words I love you become so shallow when you know they don't know you well enough to say those words and mean them the way you want them to. No one really loves me—no one but Henry. Henry who tore down my walls, just to help me strengthen them. Who glued the pieces of me back together, using the air from his lungs to let them dry. Henry who has seen every evil thing in me, and loved me anyway–even before I ever allowed myself the privilege to love him back.

And when he says he loves me, I don't question it. I've been touched inside and out, front and back—but none of those times compare to the wings of butterflies that brush against the insides of my stomach when he says those three words—and I curse him, because he knows no one can say them and mean it the way he does.