To Be Different.

It’s something you have always felt — and it’s something others have always made a point of telling you.

You’re 6 years old, you’re in church seated on a pew next to your foster mom, trying desperately to sit still. It’s physically painful to be there, and you have to go to the bathroom. There’s an option for most 6 year olds to hang out downstairs during the sermon, with snacks, blankets, and mats for napping, Disney films and other kids who might have been your friend in another life. But you’re on the pew because you’ve been deemed “too difficult to handle” by the volunteers who organize the kid’s space.

Last time you were down there, Kimmy convinced you to cut your own bangs, promising to be your friend if you did. At first you said “no” but by the third or fourth time you couldn’t imagine why she’d insist so fervently unless she really wanted to be your friend, so you obliged, thinking this would probably not be the best friendship, but at least you’d have a friend.

After your foster mother picked you up, you seemed to get into more trouble for it than Kimmy did. After all, it’s your fault for being so guillible. If Kimmy told you to jump off a cliff, would you?

You’re 13 and you finally have friends your own age. You’re not entirely sure if you like them, and you’re not sure if they like you. They laugh at almost everything you say, and they comment on your body a lot. Almost every time someone laughs at something you say or do, you feel a flush of rage overcome you, seeping rapidly out from your gut like a toxic bloom. Your heart pounds, your limbs tremble, and your mind races, disconnecting from rational thought.

“Don’t be weird” you whisper, biting down hard on your tongue as you force yourself to laugh along with them. “You’re such a weirdo!” they rib, “but in a good way” one offers. You have no idea what they mean, you just know that being honest about how their words make you feel has earned you the title “weird in a bad way” before, so you laugh, nod, and bury the feelings deep down in that dark pit where the algae blooms.

Years go by. You’re not sure what has happened.

You’re 26 and you don’t remember most of the last decade, but you know you hate yourself and you know you want to die. You know you’ve lost most of your friends and you know you’ve been raped several times. You’re certain it’s your fault.

You can’t keep a partner for more than 3 months, a job more than 6, or a home for longer than 1 year. You are sick frequently. You spend the majority of your free time outside of work in bed.

You decide you should travel the world! You set out to break up with this season’s boyfriend, sell and donate all of your belongings, and take a job in a cafe at a “holistic retreat center” as far away as you can get from your current location without having a passport (which you don’t have funds —or time— to wait around for).

Instead of breaking up with your boyfriend using one of the more common, humane methods, you decide to simply pretend to not be home when he comes over as planned one day. Eventually, he tries the doorknob to your room and manages to step a few feet into your space before you start screaming at him that he cannot ever enter your space without an invitation! After he hightails it out of there you make sure to yell at your future former housemate for letting the ex into the house in the first place. Fuck both of them.

You’re 27. You live in a tent in the woods. You learn flying trapeze. Next year, your new boyfriend will shoot himself in the head. You’ll have already broken up.

You think you’ve met Jesus incarnate. You exchange small bills and coins with celebrities while pretending to enjoy not recieving monetary pay for serving them. You get free meals and free yoga. You are introduced to the practice of mindfulness, and you find it has a positive impact on your moods, when you remember to do it.

You start telling trees and flowers that you love them, and saying “thank you” out loud to no one in particular, each time you notice a good thing happening to you. You begin to think “this is it! I’ve found the answers, I’ve done it! I’m going to be healed!”.

You’re thirty—something?— you’ve just had surgery, and you’re back in Portland. You live in your friend’s basement, and work in a cafe again.

You wake up every day sobbing.

You are having panic attacks in the bathroom at work several times a day. One day you cut most of your hair off while you’re on shift. You know it’s happening again, but you still don’t know what it is.

You just know that it’s different.