Lonely Monologue

"I mean, some people create change in their lives and some people let change create them," she said. "It's like, a job, a partner, a career path, a place that you're unhappy with -  well, more, like oppressed by - but, you're also too scared to leave it. It's catching your period in a public bathroom without any tampons. It's being stuck."

Her friend listened carefully, patiently as ever and urged her to continue venting with sympathetic eyes.

"I'm lost... I'm so fucking lost in this haze of activities occupying my body 'til suffocation. I'm lost because the directions in front of me are - directionless. They lead to places only conceivable in the extent to which they amplify my anxiety. I don't see progress before me and maybe that's because no matter where I am, who I'm with, or what I do, I'm never gunna think I'm adequate. I'll always be unsatisfied. I'll always be a worthless piece of shit behind the defective composure of a sweet young lady. People will always see through my shitty mask 'cause I'm overly emotional, melodramatic, self-absorbed, and broken."

Her friend came in closer to her from across the sheets and gently pulled her head toward his breast. He held her there in that corner of the room reserved for self-destructive breakdowns and uncontrollable sobbing, where she often thought about how the width of a body pillow leaned against the wall could feel like the shoulder of a friend.

"Maybe 'stuck' isn't the right word. It's more like captivity. I can tell because the anxiety just builds up right in the center of my chest. It tightens and creates pressure, painful tension. It's unresolved energy. It's the words that I'll never actually get to say to anybody. Like these."