nothing is broken.

This is pretty much the most emo thing I have ever written (besides some misguided poems several years ago). Please forgive me!

nothing is broken.

 

this is what she tells herself as she walks down the avenue, limping slightly thanks to a sock with a hole in it and rough sneakers.  her bag is heavy on her shoulder, dragging it so that she lists slightly to one side; thanks to the calculus textbook inside, she is going to have an aching shoulder when she tries to go to bed tonight.  her chest hurts (but not her heart) and she is repeating thoughts over and over trying to make it go away.  not that she doesn’t do this anyway.  compulsion is a part of her daily routine.

 

slowly she crosses the street, the painful sounds of coldplay in her ears, eyes both wet and feeling like they ought to be closed.  two days, and she is already bone-tired of repetition.  she can feel the hate in her heart, and the need to run.

 

if I got on the train and went too far, she wonders, what would happen? would she be happy, or would she turn around and go home as soon as she could?

 

in her head, as the tears well up, she jokes to herself about having her monthly nervous breakdown.  at least, she thinks she is joking.  she hopes.  the idea that she really does have some kind of problem is almost as scary as death.  but she does have these crying jags once or twice a month, usually brought on by the same person.  there’s a reason they were number 4 on her most influential events list.

 

I am tired, she thinks.  I am tired of everything but life.  she is sick of her friends and family; if she could, she would run away now and never speak to anyone again, make new friends and a new life in trainyards, riding to tomorrow on the last vestiges of the old west.  she is just so sick of everything.

 

she tells herself nothing is broken, but it feels like a lie, like the years-long fever dream she sometimes wonders if everything has been.  maybe she is so good at lying to herself she believes—but that is insane, and she is not, and so she lets it go in favor of stopping herself from crying in the middle of manhattan.

 

nothing is broken.

 

 

and yet, nearly everything is.