Before We Lit It Up

2| After

I don't waste a moment, springing into motion, pushing the covers back and swinging my legs off the bed. My heart thunders in my chest, my heart rate going into cardiac arrest territory as I scramble around the room, stripping it of anything valuable, throwing them onto the bed before I'm pulling the mostly filled suitcase out of the closet.

Blindly, I stuff it with the few possessions I gathered before throwing off my clothes and wearing my outfit prepared the day before, which isn't much different than my pajamas anyway. It's not as if I've ever shopped for clothes, and what use would I have for anything to wear outside? If I was going to have an allowance for clothes, I decided to spend it on things I only needed, the rest, right now, is helping me pay for a plane ticket.

Closing the suitcase, I zip it shut, wrestling with the old thing. The black, tough cloth is worn and scratched, one of the wheels slightly out of place. Pulling it to the floor and upright, I take one last look at my room, for a moment my heart tugs at the thought of leaving it. Before it became my prison, it had been my sanctuary. But it never chased away the loneliness.

It's funny how when you have hours on end to think, you realize that loneliness could, in fact, become a companion.

Shaking my head, I look around the room, trying to see if I forgot anything. Turning around, I take it all in, the painted walls, the bed with its dark covers, duvets, and throw pillows, the desk once-crowded with paints and papers. I check under the loose tile on the floorboard, where I have hidden my printed college essays. It's empty too.

Taking a deep breath, I stop examining the room and close the mirror, the wheels sliding over metal, smooth and silent before it closes and all I see is myself in the mirror. I take a step back, looking at myself.

I'm wearing sweatpants, the elastic hanging low on my hips, not as fashion, but because they won't hold any higher than that. My shirt, black and simple also hangs off my frame, swallowing me and making me seem swamped in it. It's almost hilarious that I used to hate my body type, the once wide hips and corded thighs.

I look higher to my face, a familiar face, but not because it's mine. I look like my mother mostly. Same high cheekbones that are more prominent and hollow beneath them then they should be, same dark brown, wavy hair, same lips, a cupid's bow with the lower one fuller. I also have her nose, straight and snub at the end. The only thing I have from my father are my eyes, moss green framed with thick lashes. My round owl-glasses make them seem brighter and give me the air of a curious person. My eyes used to be bright, the green in them alluring, but now, there are dark shadows – almost like bruises – beneath them. That, I can blame on the night terrors.

Most used to find my outer appearance attractive, but now I'm a few pounds away from resembling a skeleton, and my skin has an unhealthy pallor, pale enough that if vampires were real, they would seem healthier than me. My lips are pale and thinner than they should be, eyes sunken in my face, making me seem in a perpetual state of exhaustion, and my cheekbones make my face seem even more gaunt, stretched out and hollow. My hair – once thick and hanging off my shoulders in healthy tresses – now hangs around my face limply.

In short, I look like someone a few steps away from a grave.

And

It's

Pathetic.

Maybe some would've told me to try harder, to find a sense of normalcy despite the walls that always closed around me in my head. That all I should have done was hold out. The truth is, I did hold out. Somedays, it would feel like I was always holding up the universe. Three people died because of me, and I held out.