Self-conscious and self-judgmental

Everyone always thinks that people act a certain way to please the people around them

to code switch to what everyone else would want

to blend in

and that's what I do, too

except most of what I do

is to satisfy myself

not others.

I don't care what new trendy girl thing is going on

my cargo pants and regular t-shirts suit me fine.

I don't care about wearing my hair up like other kids my age do

I just brush it out in the mornings so it doesn't feel gross and matted.

Every

little

thing

that I wear

that I say

how I walk

what I do overall

is to satisfy my own self-judgement

my own self-consciousness.

I don't want to draw too much attention to myself,

but I don't want to be invisible

which is hard because most people around me don't really acknowledge my presence and end up forgetting that I'm there in the first place.

I don't want to be known as the snappy kid,

but what, you expect me to let all of your rich stuck-up insults go without consequence? Oh, you deserve to be yelled at for sure.

I don't want to be known as the teacher's pet or something stupid like that,

but I don't want to get mashed into the same file folder that all of the irritating kids are in

because apparently there's only two folders;

the nice, quiet kids

and the irritating brats that the teachers despise and say to everyone's faces.

I'm not saying that I don't want to be in the first folder,

I just don't want to be associated with my emotionally and physically destructive classmates.

And last

I don't want to be known as the super judgy kid

who not only judges everyone else

but herself

unscrewing and removing and ripping apart all of herself

all the way down into her core

where she takes hold of her heart and judges it

judges it until it shatters

all evidence of her real self flying away

out the window

hiding among reality

until she's an empty shell

a pea pod with no more peas inside

a house with no interior

and she has no idea who she is

who she was

what she wanted in the world

what she was even doing in the first place.

Why was she alive?

How had she gotten this far?

What was she doing with herself?

What was wrong with her?