"She"

She can’t keep their voices out of her head.

Every night, the same thing happens. She lies flat on her back, face to the ceiling, eyes glazed over. She stares straight ahead into the darkness that surrounds her, the gloom that envelopes her. Every night, in her own room, she is drowned by a sickly pool of dread, a pool of quicksand that slowly drags her deeper and deeper into an unending void of suffering, a pool in which she writhes and squirms in, trying so desperately to free herself from, and yet pathetically fails. The dread that their voices will return suffocates her. She is trapped in a bubble. She cannot move. She cannot breathe. She cannot escape. The voices hold her captive.

It’s been this way ever since she was a child. She always knew that there was something different about her. The moment she set foot in any toy shop, she would sprint as fast as her little legs could take her all the way to the Barbie dolls section. There was just something about the glamour of their clothes and the glitter of their accessories and the warmth of their smiles that she was enthralled by. She could spend all day in front of the rows and rows of plastic boxes, peering wide-eyed into each individual one. She felt a connection to them. All her life, she believed that she was also being confined to a small box, as though she was the one who was strapped down, as though she was being forced to be someone she wasn’t. To her, it felt like it were the Barbie dolls who were free instead of her. It seemed like they were the ones who were looking out at her, observing her trapped in the suffocating bubble she was in, rather than her looking in at them in their boxes. In a way, she envied the dolls. She envied their freedom to have long luscious hair, to carry sparkling pink handbags, to wear elegant high-heeled shoes. She hoped that one day, she would be free from her bubble and free to be who she really was. And it was through looking into those tiny boxes that she gained a sense of peace, a taste of paradise.

But then the voices would come. As people brushed past her, she was made aware of her surroundings. Sometimes, their voices were not that explicit. People did not need to say anything aloud, but she could already hear what they were thinking. Echoes of their thoughts arrived in the form of inquiring gazes and furrowed brows and disapproving looks. They came up with their own theories, hypotheses, conjectures, in order to explain her behaviour. They thought they were being subtle. She knew all along what they were thinking.

She’s different.

Is she just acting out?

Surely she’s just doing it for attention.

But they did not understand. How could they, after all? They had never been in her position. They had never felt how she felt. What she couldn’t understand was why they tried to play the role of the expert, why they put on the persona of the older, wiser, all-knowing adult who had all the answers. When in reality they did not understand anything.

All they did was add to the impermeability of the bubble she was living in.

It was normally around then that she would be ushered to another section in the toy store. The one where there were no sparkling accessories nor any pink dresses. The one where there were robots and cars and guns instead.

And that was that. Nothing she could do about it.

When she got older, she realised life did not get better. She hoped to seek comfort in her fellow classmates, the people who were her own age, who would hopefully be more compassionate and offer more support. Little did she know, it only got worse.

She was treated more and more like an outcast. She was different and people knew she was different. Different was not considered good. If she tried to be herself, the girls sneered, the boys jeered, their frowns were deeper, their stares lingered and burned holes through her heart. At the beginning, there were only the occasional whispers here and there, but all too soon they grew into taunts and insults and mockery that seemed to haunt her wherever she roamed. She would hear them ringing in the hallways as she slinked past, echoing in the school hall during assembly, pulsating in the classrooms where she was surrounded and unable to escape.

In a way, she agreed with them.

After all, she was different.

She was an outsider.

Maybe then, she was a freak.

And she just wishes that they’d stop thinking of her as a freak. She knows she is not one and she knows that nothing can change who she is. This is something that they would never understand. She has come to this realisation. Yet she still can’t help but be hurt by their words.

Eventually, their voices became shackles that immobilised her. She decided it would be best for them and for herself and for everyone if she were to just slowly fade far, far away into her own bubble where she would be kept hidden from the world.

She learnt to suppress her feelings, to confine them to a microscopic, miniscule cage and throw the key to the lock away, to submerge them so they would hopefully never resurface.

But every night, as she lies down in her bed, as she is engulfed by darkness, the horrifying realisation that she will never be able to escape the reality of who she really is slams into her like a brick wall. At the same time, their voices swirl around in her head, forever sticking and staying, like a suffocating layer of thick tar.

The darkness is too much for her.

She sits up in her bed and reaches for the light switch, for a source of comfort. As the lights come on, she is struck with the image of someone who has a square jaw with stubble clinging to it, someone who has a lump jutting outwards in the middle of their throat, someone who has thick, dense hair that seems to stick out like bristles in every direction on their legs. This person is sitting in the same position as she. This person is in the same room as she. They have the same pillows, the same bed sheets, the same furniture.

That is not her reflection. No, it isn’t. Surely, it can’t be.

But as tears roll uncontrollably down her cheeks like a chain of broken pearls, the same can be seen for the man sitting in front of her. As she doubles over, not in physical pain, but the emotional kind, the kind that feels like there are a thousand daggers being thrust into your chest over and over again; the kind that consumes you as it spreads to every fibre of your being, he does the same. As she falls onto the floor in a heap of exhaustion and weeps like a baby, so does he.

She stares at the person sitting across from her, he glares straight back.

This is whom they see, but this is not who she really is.

And all that’s running through her head are their voices.

That she’s different.

That she’s an outsider.

That she’s a freak.

Why are they like this?

Why can’t they see me for who I really am?

Why don’t they understand me?

Perhaps one day, they will.

But for now, she can’t keep the voices out of her head.