On November 23rd, I was on the longest train ride I had ever taken. I was heading from 231st street all the way downtown to Houston street. I took this train ride once or twice a week to visit my dad at his office, and the ride takes about roughly forty minutes, but this time it felt like I would never get off of this ride.

I had gone to school that day and was going to leave early to help my dad at his job. Outside of my family and my close friends, I am some what of an introvert. I like the sound of silence and felt uncomfortable when people got too loud. During lunch I would often sit alone and write in my small, red notebook until my hand felt fatigued. I had gotten calluses from the excessive amount of handwriting I had done everyday. The more I ignored their presence, the less painful they became. Many of my classmates would watch me from the corner of the room and laugh at how involved I was. They thought I was weird and different, but I liked that. I like showing people that I am not like everyone else, and I am not afraid to portray that emotion. People often hide sides of themselves that they feel are different from everyone else, but I liked to embrace it and show people that it is okay to accept yourself even if other people don’t.

Today while I was sitting at a lunch table writing about something that was on my mind, Britney had interrupted my thoughts when she sat across from me midway through the lunch period. She had never really talked to me. She was just some girl in my class that always laughed or groaned when I shared out my thoughts. She always took sides that weren’t mine, and made lists in her head of reasons she did not like me when she had not in fact ever spoken to me. She snapped her fingers in my face and I immediately looked up from my notebook to watch her. “What are you writing? Can I read it?” she asked me.

I was in shock and kept quiet. I finally spoke, “Uh, I don’t really share my writing with people. It’s really too personal, and I don’t think you-” Halfway through my sentence she took my notebook from out of my hands, and started reading a passage I had written a week ago. The passage was about how crazy the universe can be, and how one person or one element in the universe is so small, but can create such an impact in our lives. How our lives and problems compared to the universe and everyone else in it, is microscopic. Feeling intimidated, I let her read the passage that I did not intend for anyone elses eyes to skim across. “You’re completely wrong you know,” she said looking up from the page. “My problems might not be big in your world, but they are huge in mine.”

“I guess you could say that,” I replied. “I just find it amazing how small we are compared to this universe. We seem big to each other but we are act-”

She interrupted me again, “You’re literally making no sense right now.”

I slowly took my notebook out of her hands and looked down at the poem I had worked so hard on. I had no words that could come out of me without her rejecting them, so I stayed quiet. She rolled her eyes at me as she stood up to walk over to her friends. I wanted to say something, I honestly did, but I had no words. All my words would make her feel small, and she was already bigger than me.

After my biology class, I left school to catch the next bus that would take me to the train stop. The subway was nearly empty, as I took a seat. It was quiet, except for the sound of the wheels rolling across the tracks. I remember sitting on that train ride and thinking about Britney. I was thinking about how I should have said something and asking myself why I hadn’t. I thought about how this one girl, who has no real impact on my life, hurt me because she had not agreed with something I had written. How this one irrelevant person, was flooding my mind with negativity, and making me feel miserable and imperfect.

I looked through the sliding doors of the subway car to check what street the train was coming across. The doors began to open and I noticed we were stopped at 113th street. I watched people go in and out of the car and looked down as the door began to close. Suddenly, there was a sound of the subway doors opening again. A teenage boy sighed and came into the car. He was extremely tall and took a seat right across from me. My heart stopped as I looked at him and blood rushed to my head. This beautiful, tall teenage boy, happened to be my ex-boyfriend, Charlie. We looked at each other in shock. We couldn’t take our eyes off each other, until he finally looked away.

Charlie was my whole world at one point. I had met him at one of my sister’s parties, and we had fallen in love that night. I loved him and I always tried so hard to convince myself he felt the same way; but I knew he hadn’t. I remember going to his house and lying in his bed, telling him stories that had happened to me that day. I would tell him thoughts I had been too frightened to tell other people, and he would tell me how he feels, like how no one understands him the way I did. As I lay in his bed by his side, I’d count the flaws on his ceiling and pretended they were stars, because I had a corrupt idea that it was bad luck for something inferior to be hovering over my head. Like it would fall and enter into my pores, and travel throughout my body. I remember the day he broke up with me. He knocked on my door and led me into the staircase of my building. He told me he had too much on his plate and he could not balance everything all at once. I knew this was a lie, but I felt too much to even think of words I wanted to tell him. I remember telling people that he had broken up with me in the rain, because it actually felt like a tsunami hit me, and made me land on my knees and pray to a God that I persuaded myself did not exist. I remember taking the same train everyday for three months, and holding my breath whenever I passed by his stop. I always wanted him to enter that train, but once it actually happened, I wished that I was invisible.

I watched Charlie’s face as the cart moved throughout the route. I was watching the days and nights pass by on his face, as the light disappeared and suddenly reappeared through the windows that aligned the cart. As we came across the next stop, the doors began to open and Charlie had stood up and left. As the doors began to shut I watched him walk towards the stairs that would lead him to the street. He looked back to lock eyes with me, and for a brief moment in time I thought he had actually had loved me; that he that maybe he still did.

For the rest of the train ride, I kept thinking of things I should have said to him. I kept telling myself that I was weak and stupid for not saying anything. I told myself that I was too inept for someone like him, because I couldn’t even look him in the eyes. I had been in love with him, and still loved him for ten months of my life, and I couldn’t even say one word to him when he was in front of me; he was vulnerable in that moment in time. I started making a list in my head of things I should have said, and wanted to say. I wanted to tell him how much he hurt me, but that I still think about him everyday. I wanted to tell him how every time I mention something about what he used to do, I have to end my sentences with ‘but I’m over him’, because I wanted people to think that I was; and I wanted to think that I was too. I wanted to tell him how whenever I heard a Coldplay song I thought of how much he ‘hated their music’, and how I agreed even though they were basically the only band on my IPod. I wanted to tell him I missed every part of his mind and his body, like the three moles that traced his spine. How I missed his grey, blue eyes, and how every time I see the sky before a hurricane I think of them. I wanted to tell him how I was sorry I left so many bobby pins at his house, and how I still continue to lose them and I’m down to about two of them. How I think it’s humourous the way I put them in my hair before my day begins, but still manage to lose them without my awareness. I wanted to tell him how he is like a bobby pin because I lost him too, which was something I had no clue was going to occur considering how tightly he was glued to my scalp. I wanted to tell him how angry I was about the fact that the flaws that sat atop his ceiling, did end up falling through my pores no matter how hard I tried convincing myself they were nothing but stars.

I remember how I started laughing at myself and erased the list I had made. There was no point of having a list of things I should have said or I am going to say, if I know I will be overcome with a wave of nerves and silence every time something makes me feel uncomfortable. I concluded that the reason I hated forcing words out of my mouth, was because I know that my voice can rarely ever be heard. Compared to the universe and everyone else in it, my voice is small. And I hate the fact that people in our society only want to hear their own voice and not those around them. But maybe there are some people in our corrupt lives that are like me. People that do want to hear the voices and words of others. And if I never speak up, how will I ever find those people? How will I ever be heard?