I am a liar. The worst of my kind, the kind of liar who puts on a smile and tells you everything is just peachy whilst on the inside I'm fighting myself just to breathe. You'll ask me if I'm doing okay because I seem a little quiet, I'll be quick to throw back up the facade of happiness and spend the next twenty minutes chattering about utter bs, long enough to be sure you aren't still worrying. While you sleep soundly beside me I'll bite back the hot, salty tears that threaten to wash me out to sea in a wave of melancholy. I'll sleepily kiss you goodbye before work and pretend that I haven't just drifted off myself. The person you love is not the real me, she is a lie. A lie of the sweetest kind yet the worst. The smiles and the laughter, the jokes and the memories you hold so dear and cherish so deeply...lies, lies, lies.

I always wanted to be the girl who's smile lit up rooms, lit up lives.

The girl who awoke to sunshine even on days when the rain pours and lightning strikes.

A girl with the perfect body and flawless skin, devoid of scars and blemishes, unmarked by pain and history.

A girl unabashed in the way she loved, laughed and lived.

The kind of girl who still looks good in sweatpants with unwashed hair.

The girl who does not know the struggle of waking up to hate her very reflection.

A girl so loved she never has to question whether she has a place deemed important in the world.

A girl who never questions if every breath she takes should be her last.

That girl, is a fantasy. A dream. An unrealistic expectation.

That girl does not exist. And I'm okay with that, because even though I am all the things that girl isn't, I am still alive. One thing that girl will never be .

My past does not define me.

The simplest of sentences that became a mantra for my pre teen self, as she struggled with the knowledge that the things she grew up knowing were not what they should have been. That the way people had always treated her weren't the norm, weren't okay, and most certainly weren't her fault.

Everyday I look into the fogged up bathroom mirror and see the eyes of my younger self staring back, judging me for the choices, mistakes and risks that I've taken but also they congratulate and spur me on because for every morning that I wake up I am a survivor.

A survivor whose past does not define her.

All I can hear is the seconds ticking by.

Each one reminding me that I'm wasting away my days hiding from the outside world, slowly but surely becoming one with an uncomfortable couch and even more uncomfortable silence.

I remember the days when all I heard was about how bright my future would be and of all the things of greatness I would achieve, but alas I've once again let the darkness in my mind take over and render me incapable of anything that could or would make me a functioning member of the society that condemns me as just another teenager taking the easy way out.

Some days I've wondered if things would have been different

If you'd still be the one changing my days from sepia to technicolor

The one making my heart race and my knees weak

But we were young and stupid, so quick to call it love

When the lights went down and the music stopped so did our infatuation with romance