She was laying tangled in her bed sheets, head was pounding and chest twisting. A whirlwind of unwanted thoughts swirled uncomfortably in her mind, a mixture of words that didn’t really make much logical sense. Realistically, she knew they were stupid, stupid, stupid. They weren’t true; her brain was just being mean. She was probably just being dramatic. She was probably just overthinking. She’s probably really fine.

Part of her wanted to shove those thoughts away, so she grabbed the corner of her pillow and pressed it tightly over her ears, screwing up her eyes and breathing deeply like should probably help calm her head.

But another, maybe stranger part of her wanted to welcome the mean thoughts. Wanted to cherish them as family, wanted to help them grow and fester into something she wouldn’t be able to control anymore.

It was a strange feeling, but instead of forcing the tears away, she relaxed and felt them prickle in the corner of her eyes. Her stomach lurched and her body curled in on itself, but she kept the self-deprecating thoughts coming, welcoming the tears like an they were an old friend.

She couldn’t help but realise how this was becoming routine: forcing the feelings and thoughts down for a number of weeks, before settling into bed one random day finally setting them free.

She sobbed into her stuffed animal, feeling slightly pathetic. She longed to have someone care, someone to hold her, something real, alive, breathing to stop her from drowning in her thoughts.

Still, whenever someone tried, she shoved them and their compassion away. Sympathy wasn’t something she wanted. It made her feel weak and incapable. Like people where just waiting around for her to break, for her to mess something up.

But she didn’t their deserve kindness anyway. No one would honestly aim waste such care on her. How could anyone love her anyway? She looked weird. Spoke too much. Was too much. Unlovable. Gross. Weird. Disgusting. Ugly. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

So instead, she gripped the stuffed animal tighter, imagining it was something that could care without her overthinking telling her its love was fake. Sometimes all she wanted was to escape the world. Escape herself and the hurricane in her brain. But she couldn’t. This wasn’t how this worked.

She was stuck here on this Earth, with her mean brain who couldn’t be convinced that people with the best intentions where true. It wasn’t logical, and she knew that. She knew none of the thoughts where true, but for some reason her brain wasn’t convinced.

Instead of reframing or trying too hard to convince herself of the beautiful truth, that she could be loved and wanted and cared for, she just sobbed herself to sleep, muffling her cries into the animal that had witnessed so much pain over the years. The animal Who she’d spoken to about her worries and anxieties to in hushed tones, with her parents watching television just down the hall.

Her parents, who if she actually asked, would listen to her anxieties and sooth her and hold her like she always dreamed of. But she was stupid, stupid, stupid.