Blurry Faces

1. new mindset.

new everything. 

Maddy could feel the silver heart necklace her mother had given her when she was a baby slapping against her chest as she weaved her way through the streets of Philadelphia. Everytime the metal touched her skin, it burned like it had been sitting out in the sun all day. The metal heart seemed to reach inside her and join hands with her real heart. Together they burned a fire in her chest in protest. What she was about to do was going to hurt her mother the most. 

But she’ll get over it, one of the demons that lurked in the unexplored forest of her mind called out from behind a thick wall of trees. Life will go on, and everyone will forget you, it cooed. 

She felt oddly comforted by the sentiment. Sometimes she felt like a burden. Like an uncomfortable growth that the doctor said was benign and didn’t need to be removed, so you were just stuck with it. And sometimes little kids would point at it and gasp, “What is THAT?” She didn’t have an answer. She didn’t know what she was either. It felt like everyone else had been given a map at birth with exact coordinates to each checkpoint in life, while she just stumbled around, running into wall after wall after wall. Shouldn’t she have found a place to go by now? She feared she never would. 

Maddy glanced at every person who passed by her, and she wondered how each person was really feeling. Not one person was smiling. They all looked right through her, determined to get to their next destination as fast as possible. She wondered, why do people trap themselves within their lives when they could just be free?

Maddy felt a pang of pity for the rest of the world as she moved forward. They were stuck and they didn’t even seem to know it. But, she was going to set herself free today. She would never be like these people. 

2.i can do this

           i will do this

Maddy’s heart necklace bounced in tune with her heartbeat. Maddy was running now, racing towards freedom. She felt the walls closing in on her. If she didn’t do this now, she would never do it. Her mind had been crushing, crushing, crushing in on itself for months now. Everyday she woke up in pain, without a reason why. Not the pain of a hard track workout. Not the pain of a breakup. It was the pain of having exhausted every single option available to her and still waking up with The Horrible Awful Feeling inside of her. It didn’t really have a name, and she had never heard anyone else talk about it before.It wasn’t depression, and it wasn’t anxiety. It was worse. It felt like when she wasn’t paying attention, a monster had ripped her chest open and crawled inside. The monster had made her body its new home, muting all the happy feelings and turning the worst ones all the way up. They were booming from the constraints of her mind, but only she could hear them. It felt like throwing up, screaming, crying, kicking, running, drowing, choking all together. Constantly. All at once. 

She’d seen the doctor. He’d looked at her like she was just being a dramatic teenager and told her to make sure she was exercising, eating enough, taking the omega 3’s and vitamin D. So she ran 2 miles every morning, and followed up with a green smoothie. She journaled her thoughts. She listened to affirmations. She talked to her friends, but she just couldn’t get rid of the feeling. It had become stronger than she was. 

She slapped another pink post it note to her mirror. 

You can create the life you’ve always dreamed of. 

She felt phony even writing that down. She was doing everything she could, but she was only creating the life of her nightmares.

“What if I just left?” She muttered to herself. 

    3. you CHOOSE your fate

            willing to give it another chance

The heart necklace gleamed at Maddy in the mirror as she looked herself over. She forced a smile to try and see what everyone else saw. The person who looked back at her was a tired, exhausted little girl with messy hair, pale skin, and deep dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. But people always told her she was beautiful. Were they lying? How couldn’t they tell her smile was fake, practiced, and perfected? Maybe everyone secretly knew, but just weren’t saying anything.

I just don’t feel good anymore. 

But she wasn’t gonna stand here and feel sorry for herself. She had things to do today. Not things she wanted to do, but things nonetheless. 

Today she had a test in psychology. Three weeks of laundry piled up. A spaghetti dinner with her teammates. She would see her boyfriend briefly between Brit Lit and Biology. She might call her mom, and pretend everything was going great. Her life didn’t inherently sound bad. Maybe some people dreamed of this life. But it wasn’t her dream. These days, it felt like she didn’t have a dream at all.

 At the end of this senseless day, she would come home to her empty apartment. The demons would be sitting by her bedside, eagerly waiting to read their scary bedtime stories to her. She would fall asleep to their shadows acting out their tall tales against the walls, pillow wet with tears, dreading waking up the following morning.

But she would do it. She would wake up the next morning, because what other option was there? 

   4. don’t look back.

       look forward. 

The chain of Maddy’s heart necklace tugged against her neck as she thrashed this way and that. She was having nightmares again. It was like a horror movie saga. The film always picked up where it had left off. In tonight's installment, Maddy was having a sleepover with her friends, but they were all faceless. They sat, rigid, staring blankly at a fuzzy television screen. Maddy laughed at something, maybe the absurdity of it all. She felt like all the people in the room were the same, all black and white extensions of each other, and she was the only one in color. Her “friends” all slowly turned to stare at her. Their blurry faces sent a shiver down her spine. Everything looked normal, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that something was terribly, terribly, wrong. She tried to get up, but her feet were glued to the ground. She tried to scream, but her mouth was wired shut. The faceless people had no features to smile at her agony, but she could feel them doing it. 

The lights went out and suddenly Maddy was facedown, fighting to breathe against the tough fabric of the couch. 

“You can’t go home.” A girl whispered into her ear, while a man laughed in the background. “You are stuck here forever, and ever, and ever, and ever….” 

The words seemed to stretch out into the universe, just like her fate. On and on she would go, trapped like this. Forever, and ever, and ever, and ever… 

The lights flickered back on, and the blurry faced people were watching the television, as if nothing had occurred. No one was near her, and she was sitting straight up, untouched. Just like real life, it was all in her head. Her feelings were hers alone, and no one would ever truly be a witness to testify that they really existed. 

Maddy opened her eyes. Even though she was awake, she felt as if she were still in that room. She could hear her father’s voice. “Just one more semester. Be stronger. You can get through this.” 

But Maddy couldn’t help but wonder what would make her stronger: to leave behind the life that made her feel trapped or to “stick it out” on the life she was expected to live, like everyone told her to do? 

She knew no one would see it her way just as much as she knew there was only one way to defeat the monster.   

   5. setbacks are needed to get stronger. 

Maddy dangled the heart necklace over the edge of the parking garage roof. The city was splayed out in front of her, like the inside of a dollhouse. She felt detached, like she was a Barbie meant for a different dreamhouse. Maybe she was supposed to be the Malibu Barbie, and not the regular Barbie. 

Tears formed in her eyes as she slowly stepped backwards. She had removed her shoes, so that she could feel the heat of the concrete beneath her. The soles of her feet burned, but it felt good to know there was ground below her for once. She bent down, at the ready stance. If this were her last race, would she be winning or losing? Maddy considered the question as she imagined herself flying through the air. Once airborne, she would not be able to change her mind. 

Maddy heard the coach blow the whistle in her mind, but she didn't budge. 

Come on! The monster stomped its foot in her stomach. She winced in pain.

It’s the only way. The forest demon shouted in her mind. 

But she just couldn’t do it. She was neither strong enough to live with the monster, nor strong enough to leave it behind. It was now a part of her, and she would have to learn to make friends with it. 

It began to rain as Maddy pulled her sneakers back on. She could see all of her colors washing off onto the concrete, a rainbow melting away into the clouds. She pulled out her phone and jumped in terror at the reflection in the blackness of the screen. Staring right back at her was one of the faceless people from her nightmare. 

She gasped, realizing that she had become one of the creatures she had been running from. 

She wiped at her face, pulled at it, even slapped herself, but it was stuck that way. She had waited too long to save herself, and now she was fully and irrevocably gone. Maddy pulled herself together, and walked slowly down the stairs of the parking garage, defeated. She gazed at the sea of blurry faces before her, and said a goodbye prayer to the Maddy she used to know, before stepping forward and disappearing into the black and white crowd.