January vapes with illegally flavored vape pens. She is on the outskirts, looking in. She is the serial killer in the corn field, luring you to your death in a makeshift hole in the ground. January might in fact be that hole in the ground, and not the killer herself - but you wouldn't know; you're already six feet underground.

January is the person at the party who both talks too much and also says nothing of substance, she licks a chip and then puts it back in the bowl. She has no redeeming qualities. January doesn't leave a tip for the bartender and cuts people off in traffic who were going to speed limit. She enjoys the dark, and being alone, and when you ask her if that's horrible, she says, "that is reality."

But January goes deeper. She gets in your head. At the lunch table, she might stare too long at what you're eating, and then look at your body too closely. She gossips. She is a nihilist. She hates everyone. She hates her life. Most of all - she hates you.

January is there with you when you make decisions, like what to say in front of important people at work. She is anxiety, and madness, and shuts you down, turns you off, is dead inside, and makes you wish you were dead, too.

January sits on the stoop outside, enjoying her illegal vape pen, when I come over to sit next to her. I'm drawn to her - I have to be. January is necessary to live through. She is the first of twelve months. She is the first roadblock. She is the first challenge.

Today, January talks. She talks like this: YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT YOU ARE A WASTE OF SPACE YOU ARE NOTHING EVERYONE HATES YOU YOU SHOULD DIE RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE, BECAUSE YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE SHIT EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING.

I'm not a screamer, so I internalize that voice. I make it my own.

Unfortunately for me, January leads as the first month, which means that mantra is stuck in my head all year.

Also unfortunately for me, I am an anxious person who believes every word January says. I am just short of asking for a puff of her vape pen.

I make it better by distancing myself. Boundaries, as they say. Sometimes her voice is low, never quite silenced, but low like a soft whistle.

She is a killer, kind of like the goddess of death - and I am here, every year, ready with my shovel, to be buried six feet underground.

Forrest Gump said: Life is like a box of chocolates. But I'd argue it's a walnut: crack it open, and little useless shards fall out. Or maybe that's just what someone who has 'aftermath' says. I say that because at one point, the walnut was whole, and not broken, a bad analogy. There was a distinct before, and after.

Today I walked around my old college campus, the one I spectacularly dropped out of after one semester. I have a lot of somber thoughts about this experience. I went to the campus cafe and had a muffin and coffee and wrote down some thoughts on a napkin in blue ink. I prefer blue ink - on some documents, your signature is not official unless it's in blue ink; that's how you discern it was not forged, that's it's real. I am not forging these thoughts, this peculiar feeling of separateness.

I watch the college girls around me. One is staring at me. I like that, that I'm someone worth staring at. I don't question it. I do question the clothing choices - all parkas and mittens, zany hats and corduroy pants. And then I realize I'm judging them because I couldn't be them.

I dropped out, choosing mental illness over conventional quirkiness.

The girls fifteen years ago, when I went to this all-women's college, were horrible. They were mean, bulimic, and petty. I overheard one girl, when told I was to join a party later that evening, yelling - how could you invite Alison to this party? She's weird. I'll never forget her. She was my roommate.

Today, walking around the campus, I felt like I hadn't had the upper hand, the advantage. It wasn't just mental illness. No one understood the particular feeling of being disliked for who I felt I really was. For I had thought I was interesting back then, both for having a mental illness and not, but I most certainly wasn't. I was just eighteen. And young, and naive - so naive it makes me wonder that I lasted even one semester.

The 'aftermath' is what happens when you give up something that could have been great, and then spend a day fifteen years down the road admiring the girls you could have been; the infinite possibilities of them dressed up in winter clothes, but I just see straight through them to ghosts.

In fact, I wrote down "ghost" on my napkin, but that probably meant me.

This piece must be so boring to read. I feel boring just re-experiencing these emotions.

I wish I could wrap this up neatly. But these feeling just sit there, lame and intolerable to sit with.

I could connect this back to my walnut analogy, but who cares? When you crack open something not meant for you, it falls apart, sure. It sits in a million little pieces.

A million little sorry thoughts that add up to only one girl staring at you, and probably not for the reasons you think.