I am a female, nineteen years of age. In some circles, I may be referred to as a young adult or perhaps even a woman. I’ve had seven boyfriends; six broke my heart. I am still trying to find some of the red shards.

I have a high school diploma, signed and dated by my principal, handed to me in exchange for a shake of my right hand. I don’t know where it went.

I do not remember living anywhere but where I am sitting right now, in an off-white house where the lawnmowers are always buzzing.
I was born two and a half months early. The professionals whisked my mom off to a special hospital and cut her open. I was going to come out feet first, which would have resulted in my premature death. I didn’t cry when they took me out, drenched in whatever concoction of liquids that comes with residing in the uterus for six and a half months. They drained fluid out of my lungs like a vacuum. It could have ended very badly, but the doctors bought me more time.

It is autumn right now, my favorite season. I want a pumpkin latte with fluffy whipped cream and cinnamon flakes dressing the top every morning from Starbucks. I never get it.

Calories terrify me. They crawl into my mind and work their way into my bloodstream and suddenly the mirror is spinning with puffiness. I don’t know how I got this way, but neither do they.

My head likes to sing to me in a high-pitched falsetto, but I never asked it to. Real peoples’ voices try to chime in and break the wavelength but my mind is selfish. It keeps me to itself, locked up in a titanium box, a barrier between them and me that I can never seem to break.
I know nothing about the things my soul yearns for. I hope to learn them someday.

I am young to the 20-somethings and old to the first graders my mom used to work with. I am naïve and innocent; I am wise and experienced. I want to punch things sometimes, break a hole through the wall and climb in and nest in there, warm and alone. I could be an owl alongside pipes, but I would want my alias to have a pair of icy blue eyes instead of my own rich brown. I have not yet fulfilled these fantasies.

I get depressed very easily. My teeth peek out of omnipresent chapped lips all the time, automatically, like I’m in a cult. The smiley clan, if you will. I am paradoxical in my madness.

My anxiety burns on the exterior of my pale pinkness and I violently scratch it off. It bubbles into crimson welts, from the very same juice that’s inside of you.

I have problems crying in front of people, and yet it just flows like lava when I least want it to, and never starts when I need it to.
I despise my father, my mother, my brother. I also love them fiercely.

I miss old friends and new friends and the friends that I have right now. I miss people I haven’t met yet. I miss people whom I shall never meet.

I am alive, but I’m not quite living yet.

I can’t do it.

I will do it.