Empty

You're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, all because your mother happened to start dating a man who was chubby with a beard and came equipped with four children of his own. Four children who turned your world upside down, who made you a stranger in your own house, who made the experience of growing up even harder than it already had been.

Not that teenage years are easy for anyone; the awkwardness in your own body - the way it bends and twists differently than before and doesn't sit right on your frame; the isolation - the feeling that no-one has ever felt the things that you do, has never thought the thoughts that you have (though of course they do and of course they have; you just don't realise that till much, much later); the hormone surges; the unknowingness of life, of yourself... it all combines so that no matter where you sit on the social scale, teenage years are hard. No matter the state of your family life, teenage years are hard. No matter how comfortable you are with yourself, teenage years are hard.

For one thing, it's unjust. Adults win continuously just because they are adults. The unfair things that teachers say to you have to be accepted because they are your teachers. The unfair things your parents say to you have to be accepted because they are your parents. You are not allowed to fight for yourself because you are a child and they are the adults and they know best (they do not know best). Rebellion doesn't run through your blood like it does for others. You bide your time and hope that it gets better.

You carry around an anger for many years that things were made harder than they needed to be. You learn not to reveal emotion - it was something that came naturally anyway but you honed that instinct and made it a part of you. You remember back in the distant past your father screaming at you to stop crying and when you claim to him that you can't just stop crying he loses all respect for you in that moment, (you both know it but don't acknowledge it) because of course you can. Even though you are seven.

You learned a lot that day.

You now don't reveal much of yourself to people. Your closest friends don't know half the thoughts that run through your head. You do your best to disguise your pain in front of them. You are there to make other people feel better, that's the role you've assigned yourself; the one who gets told the secrets, not the one who reveals them. You wonder if you've isolated yourself too much. There was a time when it seemed honesty was the only way forward but the words get stuck in your throat these days. They sit behind your tongue, they formulate at night and invade your dreams, but when it comes to letting them out during daylight hours they get caught and stay trapped within you. They weigh you down, make it harder to breathe, make it harder to fly. You remember a time when those things were second nature, a time when you had managed to burn off what wasn't working. But you have found yourself laden with baggage again. The one thing you hadn't wanted to happen.

You try and tell people how you feel, try and not become sulky. They hear you but they do nothing or they don't hear you and pretend there is no problem - I haven't noticed you being a bitch they say. They are lying. (Or just so adept at pretending it's become second nature to ignore problems). You want someone to sit there and beat the truth out of you. You know that's the only way the words will start spilling out; you've got too much control over the words to let them tumble from your lips of their own accord. You sit with your feet tucked under a cushion, your arms wrapped around your knees, on a sofa with the boy who was supposed to be simple and uncomplicated and make you feel better and he makes you feel worse. The antidote to the messy and serious situation you were just in is not having the desired effect. What now? You calmly explain in what manner he has hurt you with no malice attached (but perhaps heavy with sarcasm). You unfurl yourself from the sofa and sit in a chair on the other side of the room and slowly zip up your boots. You pick up your coat and push your arms through the sleeves one at a time. You tuck your hair into your hat in that way that makes it look like you've been preening in front of the mirror for hours to get it just so but seems to just happen naturally. I'll text you tomorrow he says I am sorry for being a twat. You mutter indecipherable words under your breath as you pull the front door shut. Standing up for yourself was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.

And then a day later you're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, and you realise the anger you've been carrying around for years has gone. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. Other events have occurred that have taught you what is important and what isn't and this particular anger just isn't. Losing this anger was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.