Emaw Langden

Now

Now, I can’t be around people without completely going somewhere else. I can’t relate and just feel natural and enjoy the flow of being together. I can only think, terrified, about keeping them at ease and trying to appear acceptable and appropriate to them: laughing and scrunching my face up, nearly closing my eyes in a contortion to create the look of a smile, no matter if something is funny or not. When this is going on, every moment is a little humiliation. “I am SO fucked up.” But they will never know what I am thinking. My internal experience is grotesque. Almost every time after I have made another effort to be with people and give it a good effort on the bright side, I feel beaten completely down, drained. I have to just completely escape and medicate to soothe myself from a whole traumatic experience, that I have apparently done to myself, but I have no idea how to not do. I have to eat a tub of ice cream or spend over $10 on a heavy bag from McDonald’s. I have to completely. Drown. It out.