A grey cloud shrouding your view, everywhere you look. Any way you turn you can’t see anyone. You see them there but a fine mist lays over them like a blanket, only allowing a small silhouette. Weight on your head pushes you down and a force on your chest pushes you back, keeping you away from everyone. Reassurances come from every way, telling you that you aren’t a bother and that not everything you do is wrong but all you can do is apologize on repeat, like a broken record wanting to play something new. 

Your ribs are a jail cell and your veins are shackles, holding your heart inside your chest, keeping it silent, never letting it say how it really feels. It beats for acceptance and safety in the people it wants to love most but your head tells you it’s wrong and that’s a feeling you’ll never have. It longs for the day it can feel the skin of another and not the cold cage of bone, holding it in, telling you that it belongs there. Lonely but not really alone is how you walk through life, not allowing yourself to truly open up to someone in fear of ruining their day. A time bomb sits on your shoulders, ticking in your ear, waiting for the day you make the wrong move, or go too far. Every word is poison on your tongue, a sharp sting, that stops you every time you want to speak. Silence is the only antidote, if there are no words coming out, there is no reason to be wrong. 

Everywhere I go is a different obstacle. Different faces, different opinions, different people. The people I surround myself with the most are the ones I want to talk to the least. Not out of hate, but out of terror of the idea that a crowded room will become an empty void of my own creation. People that I love, all in one room, a dark, dry room, with cracked walls and no windows. They all stand in here casting a bright vibrancy into every corner and through my whole being. The presence of someone cherished can make a blank room burst with color. I would walk through life like it was a blank room, no color, no character, nothing but myself and my thoughts of what I did wrong. I have come to notice how the splashes of yellows and purples and the rainbows that dot the walls, a new color appearing with each new person that manages to sneak into the crevices lining the length of the room. The colors are almost too bright, scaring me into the small corner, not touched with the personalities that broke through the dull cream plaster that I've known my whole life. This room is what I know and all I deserve to know. How did people manage to make their way into a room with no way in and no way out?

People have a funny way of entering into places they aren’t supposed to be. Although not wanted there in the first place, saving grace is what he was to me. Tall in stature with skin tanned by the sun and lasting youth. An angel in basketball shorts who makes me feel more comfortable than I do with anyone else is the same boy who scares my very being. Unbeknownst to him, he is one of the very few people who helped me work on myself to this day, even if he doesn’t know. A Picture-perfect example of an old soul in a young body, his personality brings light into dark rooms. You’ll never meet someone who will put other people before themselves as much as him, a warm, white aura surrounds him wherever he goes, enveloping me in a comfort so serene, I feel nothing less than safe. 

In every way, I am his shadow. Trying to follow along and not get lost in my own subconscious, pushing me away from the comfort of the known. Every move I make is like walking on an old bridge above water when you can’t swim. It’s enough to keep me in my place, scared of a fast drop to a slow end that I never want to face. The sweet relief of carefree bliss waits on the other side, seemingly unattainable for someone like me. So close but in reality, the farthest path you would ever have to walk. 

As time goes on, I’ve built a persona that I think everyone would like. Never bothered by anything, wistful, and carefree like a small toddler, not yet dealing with what life throws at them. A set of open arms to give people the comfort I long for but don’t allow myself to have. I fight myself every day, telling myself to open up about how I feel and what I need; a fight against head and heart, a war waging itself under my skin and away from people’s concerned eyes. My heart, bruised and battered from another battle lost, still has yet to give up. A small sliver of hope still exists inside of me, believing that I can find peace in myself and with the people I love. Although minuscule, I hold onto that piece of me, knowing that if I don’t I’ll lose who I want to be and who I wish I could be.