NUMB

Prologue

N U M B
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Drown me
in a million wrongs
but I'd still
float.
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I'd like to think that when someone gets to read this, I'm not dead.

I'm not going to deny the fact that I'm firmly set to hide these, but I'm hoping one way or another someone will find them.

That you will find them.

It almost feels oddly alien how days seem to take years, and how yesterday seemed too long ago to remember.

Staring at my locker made me rationalise that. I observe how aged all the ink oxidising onto the chipping paint was, even though I know some of them are fresh from yesterday morning. I notice how much the new ink were a lot more darker, and a lot more painful compared to the ones that have more numbered days which everybody had already seen and yet disregard. The words blink back at me, as though it's raising its hands for me to pay attention. To read each word once again, until it's everything left in my vocabulary. I refuse to let it knock the paper like wall protecting me, and so it eventually ends up to be one melted mess of braided lines and curves, and the wafting toxicity of each word. It blurs my vision, but still, I can't tell the difference. Almost like it's part of the bigger picture, as if it was meant to be there.

It's completely bizarre to me still. How I can feel pain, yet none at all. The fine line separating the opposite sides of the spectrum dripping away—what's pain, and what's relief? It lets you believe you're still walking on this murky, smoked bridge but in reality you're barely walking on a flimsy thread. The trance I'm feeling is still unclear to me. Almost like a dormant volcano, simmering beneath the earth. You don't let it consume you, but it's there.

I think at some point you do get to be immune to pain. It's like the more shards that pierce into you, the lesser the negative space is used for the next blow to hurt and somewhere along the way it all just stops. Because there's no more room, and you're just stuck there. It's painful and yet...static. If it were something tangible, it comes halfway but not all of it at once. Some part of it sinks into you and it's just trapped in there. You accept that it's trapped, and no matter how much you cry about how they hurt you it just never goes away. And somehow you're partly numbed.

It feels strange. Talking about pain, I mean. To recall. To write. We get to remember and rewind, and repeat the process and I couldn't handle that. I still can't. I think that makes me weak as a person. Maybe it has always been a part of me, a distinct characteristic that makes me easier to be preyed on. For you to prey on. You and most people say it's basic genetics, because I don't fall far from the tree, and that usually makes me remember the first time you hurt me. You didn't do the dirty work, but it still scarred me deep nonetheless. I don't think I will ever forget that, because all I did was stand there confused and wounded. And silent.

Somehow what they meant made more sense because I stayed the way I did.

I like to think that everyone of us had experienced some type of bullying as we grow up. Usually it's circled around the petty reasons. Who got to be called the teacher's pet, or who gets the weird nickname because of the ethnicity they were born with. Something in the lines of that. The whispers are less intimidating, and the names called are childish and stereotypical, and it usually just comes to a stop with a quick trip to the principal's office. Along high school I guess that partly fades, and now it's merely just the dark whisper telling you some people might still be talking about how you're too nice with one of the professors, or that you act weird and you can't keep friends.

I'd like to think that was what I experienced that day. I still like to think that maybe, all of this would stop with a quick trip to the principal's office, and a solid agreement with a suspension threat at the end of the discussion. But the walls felt like a hundred feet tall, and I felt every syllable clogging my throat by the second and I knew. You just stared. You watched me slowly crack under the harsh sole of your friend's boot.

I wanted to say something. Anything, really. But my mouth stayed shut as I looked at you, waiting for some type of reassurance that I wasn't what he called me. I wanted justice but I never had that. I think I never will.

You didn't really say anything the first time. You stood there with your eyes boring slits into mine, an invisible wall built over everything and the stoicalness almost knocking me over. I couldn't climb pass that wall. I was too scared to ask you, even though I desperately wanted to.

The second time, you started laughing. I was sitting in the back and I really didn't get what was so funny about my mum getting trashed everyday, but it seemed like you and your friends found it incredibly hilarious. The third? You told me yourself, after you accidentally knocked me over. Instead of apologising and helping me collect my books, you glared right through me. I never imagined you being so cold. But I guess I never really knew you that well to begin with.

Now, it's somehow like a mantra to you. A prayer you kept on repeat and it's almost deafening. You took a step further than anyone, and instead of slashing my back with knives, you gladly faced me and jammed the knife straight into my heart.

I tried to ignore the throb of betrayal as much as possible. But the type of emotion that sears through me when I hear you say I'm lesser than everyone else makes everything in me break lose.

You are my friend...aren't you?

I wanted to believe you didn't mean it.

I want you to tell me that you didn't mean it.

But that's just not how it goes.

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Mature Content and Audience

This book contains issues that concern mental health. There will be references to attempted suicides. If any of the said themes trigger you, please refrain from reading this story.

TRIGGER CAUTIONS: This book contains bullying, harassment, violence, abuse, depression, anorexia, self harm, mentions of rape, suicide, etcetera — that may set off triggers. Proceed with caution.

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