I was always the one who believed in honesty.

I can remember how I used to dote on promises and what people said versus what they did. I would get in these stupid arguments about lies, consisting of me telling them how they shouldn’t have lied to me. “You wouldn’t lie to me if you loved me!” And it was all so cliché. Such a broken record stuck on repeat, skipping and sticking to little white untruths and posting them onto a wall where I could look at them and point and quote all the times they’d been said.

I understand why I was like that. I thought that while maybe there wasn’t much I could depend on, hopefully I could count on the people I cared for to tell me everything. I never seemed to understand that sometimes the ones who lie to us are the ones who love us the most. Coming here helped me see that in a matter of months, but each month has seemed like a lifetime and time passes so slow.

If I had the chance to go back a year, just before I started to plan on leaving my mother, I don’t know if I would do the same things I did this time around. I’m glad I met the people I’ve met here, but I miss my old life so much. I miss Yuu-san and the boys in the neighborhood, even though I know I shouldn’t. I miss my mother, and being able to call her my mother, and I miss the occasional moments we’d share when everything was okay and I loved her and she loved me. I miss that more than almost anything.

I miss being dense the most. My world consisted of running and dreaming and remembering to breathe. The library was my second home and my hide away and I’d look forward to the biweekly letters I’d get sometimes from my sister. She doesn’t write anymore but it doesn’t matter. If she did, what would I say? What would I be able to tell her that she’d actually believe? She’s so practical, I doubt there would be much at all. And I don’t want her to see me like this.

I’m worse than I’ve been in years now. I feel so old, and each day seems like a series of trials. Rolling rocks up endlessly tall hills. Making it halfway only to slip and fall back to the bottom. The church in my neighborhood preached that life was a series of tests and that, at the end, we’d wake up in heaven and be praised for all the good we’d done.

Well I want to wake up. I don’t care if anyone is there when I do. I don’t care if anyone wants to pat me on the back and tell me what a good soul I have. I don’t care. I’m so tired of living and going on and trying to smile. I can’t smile much anymore, but worse is that I don’t want to try anymore.

Honesty. I can’t be so hard on liars now because I am one. I’m the most dishonest person I know because I lie for every second I’m alive. I lie when I smile, when I tell him I’m alright, when I try to laugh when I’m alone in our bedroom. Only when I'm alone because, if it sounds hollow to my own ears, it will echo in his. I don’t know why I’ve never been able to fool him. Maybe he doesn’t want to be fooled. Maybe he’s the only one who wants to know how I’m feeling today, and not what I want him to think I am. Maybe he doesn’t trust me to tell the truth anymore, since all I ever do is lie.

I’ve decided to change again. I’m going to be how I used to be. I’m going to focus on reading. I’m going to find a library. I’m going to hide. And I’m going to remember how to breathe again. Because I thought about it last night, watching him play solitaire and watching his hands move. I don’t like what I’m doing to him now. He’s staying home, babysitting me because I’m unstable and I can’t be left alone, and no matter what he says I know there are things he’d rather be doing and people he’d rather be seeing. Because we’re all liars at one point or another. We all lie to help those we love, but at least right now I’m being honest with myself.

I’m starting small. I can’t stop wanting to bleed. I can’t run back to my fiancée like nothing happened at all. I can’t go home again and hug my mother like I did when I was small. But I can remember, and I can work on it, and one day I’ll be better and worth something again. So I’ll take it slowly, and I’ll inhale.

I’ll breathe.