don't

the most raw, personal, selfish thing i have ever written.

you may think you know me but you'll never really know me. i can tell you two-thirds of the story and you may think you understand but that last third is the most important part, the part that lets you see a little inside myself.

you may think you know me but you really don't. you don't know why my purse is green or why i sleep in a cocoon of blankets or why i still have the same shoes from seventh grade. you don't know what seventh grade did to me.

you might think i wear eyeliner to bring my eyes out, but no, i use it to hide my eyes. i've noticed my eyes get darker when i wear it. and eyes are the window to the soul, right? well i don't want you to see my soul. you don't know what horrors lurk there.

you don't know why i hate winter. i hate winter, and i love it too. i love wearing long sleeves and covering myself from head to toe. i can't stand the sight of myself. i can't stand the sight of myself but i love summer because in summer i just don't give a f**k. i wear tank tops and shorts and i feel free, and this is what i want my life to be like, all the time, and that's why i want to move to australia or somewhere with summer weather year round. but you don't know that. you don't know me.

you don't know the reasons behind anything i do. you don't know that i save train tickets because i like remembering, you don't know the way i lose myself in the perfect way with the bass thumping in rhythm with the beat of my heart at concerts; you don't know that that's the only time i've ever been carelessly happy.

you don't know why i stare out the window at every chance i get. you don't know how much i love the sight. the sight of my fingers stretched across the keyboard typing my thoughts without interruptions, you don't know how i hate the telephone ring. you don't know how i love walking through an empty house, silent even though i don't have to be, like a ghost, with new eyes; what do other people see when they look at my room, whose room would this be if i wasn't here, whose room would this be if it were someone else's room, whose room would this be if i died?

you don't know. you may think you know, but you don't. you don't know that i set the password for everything to the name of the boy i knew who killed himself. you don't know that i think about him every day. you don't know how much of an impact his death had on me, or when my grandparents died within nine days of each other. they met on a blind date and he really couldn't live without her. i would call that true love.

you might think you know why the notebook in my bag is blank. you might think i have nothing good to write down, but that's not it. i know what i want to write and i know the way i want things to be said. but i always manage to f**k it up. i don't want to soil the pages with crossed-out lines or words that don't quite fit against each other. that's why i'm typing this. i can backspace and not leave any remainder or hint of something that used to be there that i ended up not liking. i can make you think i wrote this perfectly from the start.

you don't know why i started saying f**k. i started saying f**k when i learned it could be poetic. i used to think it was such a dirty, horrible word, until i heard a slam poet use it. out loud, it sounded like the most beautiful word in the world, that could describe anything with so much intensity and passion that it will choke you up. its sharp edges could cut you right where i want and the soft sounds can cradle themselves in your ears; and it is dirty, but it's the kind of dirty where you don't really mind sometimes. dirty like, "yes you can wear your muddy shoes in the house but take them off on the carpet because i can't just mop that up now can i?"

you don't know why i love reading. why i love stories. i lose myself in those stories, avoid the call of what my parents call living: trying to get good grades so i can go to good schools so i can have a good career so i can have a good life. no, i want to matter. i like how the characters matter. i like seeing bits and pieces of myself in the jagged edges of fictional people. their little glass imperfections are mirrors i like to see myself in. i can imagine myself mattering like that. this, it's like seeing the dim lights of a city through a foggy morning, but you're not quite there yet, are you?

you don't know how i only tell you two-thirds of my story but you tell me all three. you don't know that i am good at reading people, probably even better than i am at reading books. you don't know that i might know parts and pages of you better than you think. you don't know that i know you better than you know me. you don't know that you don't know me. you don't know why i'm writing this, and to be honest, neither do i. you don't know that even though you don't know me, i don't really know me, either.

Author's Note

anything, really