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 Nov 2014 Hayden JL
Meghna Gulati
How to start caring
For every person, for every being, for every pea under the mattress struggling to breathe.
2. How to be nice even though you don’t want to be
Or
How to appreciate people’s existence
Or
How to be a people pleaser
Or
How to incorrectly judge character.
3. How to plaster a fake smile on your face and say everything’s okay. 
4. How to forget months entirely.
You will sit down at your desk in a vain attempt to get some work done, but it will accomplish nothing except making you feel hollow, worthless, and dead. Your mind will try to fight it for the first few weeks, until it becomes a routine.
5. How to lose yourself.
and constantly ricochet between desperately wanting to find yourself, and never wanting to meet your own eyes again, because you know they’ll be filled with disgust.
6. How to not be modest when people compliment you.
They say modesty becomes a way of life. That when you receive so many compliments, you don’t want to seem like a *****, and so you brush them away with modesty. But when you receive only rude, snarky comments from the people you love the most, any compliment will seem like an alien word, and while your words brush it away in a fake attempt at modesty, your brain will become recluse once more and fill your mind with self-hatred.
7. How to say no to getting pictures clicked.
There will come a time, when every memory, every moment that needs to be savored will fill you with dread, because that means yet another second you must stare at your own face while you try to hide the feeling of disdain.
8. How to disappoint people.
9. How to shrug off days when you attempt suicide, as bad days.
10. How to feel and not feel at the same time.
11. How to turn your body against you.
You will feel lost within your own body as you puke once, twice. Your body will stop reacting. Your head will stop responding. It won’t work like it’s supposed to. It will pound as it tells you, that this is not who you’re supposed to be. You will be scared that the fibers of your body have started hating you, as a person. That you hate the fibers.
As the world will disown you, your body will, too.
12. How to go from social to socially awkward.
13. How to increase heat tolerance in summers.
As you litter your body with prominent scars every night, sitting inside that washroom, eventually you will run out of places that cannot be seen, and in daytime, as you put up your facade, you wouldn’t want to relive your nights, and so observe as you shift from tank tops to quarter sleeves to turtle necks while people wonder what the **** is wrong with you.
14. How to stop caring.
There will come a point when whatever they say will cease to exist, and your body will provide enough fuel for your depression. They will finally start noticing. You will finally stop caring.
She leaves a lump of emotion in your throat,
A string of topaz around your neck,
And a sense of wonder in her wake.
She is a collection of faults,
Sweet imperfections,
A series of dents in a smooth surface.
She smokes her cigarettes as an apology
For breathing
And loves the feeling of holding hands,
But with a wine bottle.
Her blood has been replaced with whiskey
And bad decisions
And she'll touch you like poetry,
Sweetly, making you feel like
You're not alone.
She is drenched in honey and holy water
And you want to lick it off her,
Craving the taste with every fiber of your being.
She is violently beautiful,
That honey drenched dreamer.
 Sep 2014 Hayden JL
Court
Untitled
 Sep 2014 Hayden JL
Court
I used to look at abandoned houses and thought nothing of them until I became one myself.
 Sep 2014 Hayden JL
Court
I don't know if it was you or if I just got nervous or both, but when you called me "beautiful" the butterflies in my stomach felt like fire burning.
I don't know if it was you or I just got scared or both, but when I saw you with her I could't help but get angry, the butterflies in my stomach evolved to hornets.
I don't know if it was you, or my past haunting me or both, but when you sang "Chasing Cars" to me, it reminded me of the one who broke me entirely and the butterflies in my stomach turned to emptiness as I fell on my bedroom floor crying that night.
I don't know if it's you, or me, or both, but I have no idea what we are but everything seems right even when its wrong.

— The End —