With her tears, falls her sanity. Just like that. Just like nothing.

drop, drop.

She quickly wipes them away, ignoring the growing void in her chest. It’s just another day to get through, she whispers to herself rather harshly. Stop acting like a child.

She laughs - because she has just whisper-yelled at herself and because she really is a child and because getting through days is never “just”. But maybe the lies she tells herself will soon fool her into believing them [what is a lie, if not for comfort?].

She continues to laugh - because she is in a bathroom of some godforsaken theater and she is crying - even though she is out with friends and having a decent time [is she?] and because now she is laughing and crying and whisper-yelling all in front of the mirror and her friends are outside waiting for her.

The laugh is mockery mixed with disgust - because she has grown to be disgusted with herself of late. The girl who can’t get her life together. The girl who can’t do anything for herself. The girl who loses all the ropes tethering her to life.

You’re pathetic.

There is a mirror in front of her, one she has avoided contact with for a long while, but she glances up at now - to see what the depravity of sanity has done for her.

She doesn’t recognize the corpse in front of her.

And she cries again, wondering what happened to the girl so full of life? What happened to the hope-filled, annoyingly-optimistic, person she knew herself to be? Was it possible to lose yourself so quickly? Wow, this is a great place to have a breakdown. This is just swell, she continues the whisper-yelling.

She begins gathering herself back to a presentable state. [Literally, gathering - gathering up all the broken shards of her scattered across the bathroom]. She shoves all the pieces back inside her, not paying attention to the sharp pangs as she cuts other parts of her insides and slams pieces that don’t fit together in hopes of fixing herself. [if only it were that simple].

‘It is both wonderful and terrible to feel everything so deeply.’ Who said that? she wonders - because he must be a g****** idiot. There is no beauty in suffering. There is no beauty in pain. And she longs for some nepenthe to end the ache in her chest. She longs to smile again, to laugh outside of a bathroom, to quiet the screaming little girl in her head.

She looks in the mirror again, wiping the tears away for a final time that night. Pull yourself together. [*I can’t.*] She ignores the second voice, opening the bathroom door and taking a deep breath in an effort to save oxygen for the rest of the night. [being happy when you don’t know how requires an indefinite amount of breath-holding] She smiles.

“Sorry I took so long! Couldn’t find the toilet paper.”