Breathe in,

My world, at this point, was a wash and rinse repeat. I crumpled up another piece of paper, another drawing or assignment - at this point, it didn’t matter - that someone (ME) didn’t deem worthy into the bin.

The reel of my days starts again. People with faces I can’t remember would watch me as I try to block them out with a book before school, they never did like me. My childish safe space in a corner of the classroom that became filled with a crumpled paper I’d put in the bin every day, the only place I could be alone - but then again, never really alone, as everyone else watched me. I’d often go there crying, tears winding rivers on my face as the silhouette watched on, a book held in its grip.

Things people told me often didn’t make sense, and I pointed this out a lot. When people would question me and my ‘differentness’ - despite their claims of different being normal, but I wasn’t normal - I’d go see a woman who I can’t remember precisely, but there was always the silhouette and its blank face following me, looking strangely like stained, crumpled paper. Always, my questions wouldn’t be answered, to my infuriation, but I was told to shut my mouth, we’re human, and my questioning was wrong.

So I bottled them away, and the silhouette took my negativity and changed them to the expectations everyone had, growing, its mouth changing from a frown to a straight line.

I’d often find myself at the library, where the silhouette didn’t often follow. I assumed it went somewhere, perhaps dispersed by the lights. At this point, I’d think that the silhouette was just my shadow, gone rogue like Peter Pan’s, and I dismissed the fact that I had a normal shadow anyway. The books helped me escape, and this was when my escapism first started, though this is a different story.

The silhouette was influenced and corrupted by expectations given - no, forced - onto me by the society around me. I’d cry alone at school, in the corner, and when the adults said they understood but then belittled me and made me feel bad I’d cry more, the silhouette whispering but what it wanted to say washed and distorted by expectations.

Life at this point passed me by and swept me forward, through a new school as clocks ticked around me. I felt as if I was swept up and disintegrated into humanity’s race, and nobody wanted me to keep being different, but I was. My ‘shadow’ had had its heart ripped out, now only expectations that everyone wanted to see as I waited for something to change. I didn’t want to change, but I didn’t want to be different, I wanted to think the same as everyone else - but I couldn’t. Walls came up, leaving me and my ‘shadow’, now purposefully whispering words to me, a mask I wore to appease everyone. It smiled now, a crudely drawn face with two dots and a mouth.

And inside, I was trying to clean the mess I made as the ‘shadow’, my medium to the world communicated, but with every breath, it took the mess would grow.

As I grew up more, I noticed that I’d have friends for a period of time, but after they got tired of my talking and stories, they’d leave and turn on me. It happened every time, so the walls grew and the mask went up and I didn’t trust anymore.

All eyes were on me, and everyone was always telling me it was just in my head, and I eventually latched onto the one friend who hadn’t left me yet, the mask whispering in my ear my negative thoughts as it secretly cried alone, still apart of me yet separate.

As it reached out for me, I cast it away, failing to recognise it.

Trying to run away, I was surrounded by colours flashing and scaring me, I just wanted to be free from it all, and everything snapped inside me as I was lifted up from my hiding place and forced into the colours, and the mask looked on, partially freed by my snap as my happiness flashed away from me, taken away by time.

Everyone watched in neat lines as I stood apart, and the ‘shadow’ mask continued holding the book until I was finally allowed a third chance. I felt emotionless as I stood outside the building, and I turned to see it, still holding the book, the line finally closing and separating us as I continued to ignore it as a part of my life for as long as I could.

I didn’t realise it had dropped the book.

“Are you okay?”

I didn’t trust them at first. No one would treat me that way before, so why would someone now? But slowly, they took down my walls. And they didn’t hurt me afterwards. They helped me.

I felt tears running down my face, my sadness finally reaching me. As I sat alone in my solitary world covered in mess, a single paper rolled over to me.

I picked it up, and I saw the Fragments, and I knew I wasn’t different.

Words flowed and my connection finally grew, and I was no longer truly alone, even if I was the only person there. I had my Fragments in their other Universes, I could see them, I was connected.

So I placed the paper into the bin, destroying the negative thoughts with it, and got to work on cleaning my world.

Sometimes I would fall into oceans and see the other Fragments connected to me on a string, and I was never truly alone. And when I walked the streets alone, despite my blank face, my silhouette was watching, a smile on its face.

I blink and it’s in front of me, smiling, holding my book. So I take it, and despite my negative feelings and the weight the silhouette presses on me, it was never a mask or a shadow. It was my Medium, how I communicate to the outside world. But even that is wrong.

Medium is not me. I know they have other origins, despite being a Close Fragment and always linked to me. But now, Medium is with me, and we’ll get through it together.

Breathe out.