“Hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie, nodding my head and smiling. Walking through the halls with my friends as if nothing’s ever wrong.

I’m totally fine. I like to tell the people around me that. I guess it’s just easier to tell them that “I’m okay,” instead of trying to explain to them what’s really going on. It’s not that I enjoy hiding myself from others, I’m just not the type of person to go out and openly spread what’s going on with myself.

I do it because I feel like if I talk about what’s truly burning inside my head, what’s eating away at me during the night, I’ll hurt someone else. I don’t want that to happen. 

A couple of months ago, I told my friend, someone that I trust completely, about what’s going on. Surprisingly, he took it pretty well. I would’ve expected him to ask me questions, like “Why are you doing that?” “Have you talked to someone about it?” But he didn’t particularly ask that. 

He was always there for me. He still is, just not as much. He’s there for me whenever I need a shoulder to cry on, whenever I need someone to comfort me and he just lets me be myself around him. 

But he didn’t really try to stop me. He just knew that it was there and always checked up on me. Sometimes telling me, “You should tell your parents. Or even your sisters at least.” I would just smile at him and shake it off, “It’s okay. It’s getting better.” I lied again.

It hurt me to lie to him like that, but what other choice did I really have? It’s not like I can just tell him the truth. It really isn’t that easy. Or at least that’s what I think. If I were to tell him what was really happening, I’m sure he wouldn’t believe me anyways. I doubt that he even believes me now. I don’t want to hurt him, he doesn’t need to feel that. And that’s part of the reason as to why I can’t tell him. So I stopped. I stopped telling him, just pushing it off. Whenever he would ask about it, I would just tell him that I was alright that I haven’t done it in a while. I lied. Again. It hurt. It stung like a thousand bees just came up to me and attacked me, repeatedly. 

But the worst thing was that, it didn’t hurt me as much as what was going on through my head. Making me constantly put myself down, making me just want to fall in a hole, like Alice from Alice in Wonderland, and just lose all track of time, going through wonderland, getting away from all of my worries. But I never could. So that’s why I did that to myself. It made me feel like I was still living. It allowed me realize that I could still feel things. That I could still feel pain. Hate. And even sometimes love, in some twisted way. It wasn’t the type of love that someone would have for themself, but the love that you feel when you know that you are waking up the next day. 

But the thing was, that I wasn’t happy that I was waking up the next day. I just wanted to stay asleep and not do anything. I just wanted to be by myself all the time, where I can be hidden from everyone, and not have to worry about what others would say or do. But I knew that I couldn’t do that. 

I practically forgot how fun it was to live. How fun it was to just go through life living like there was no tomorrow. Everybody around me will probably think that I’m just lying about this, but I’m not. I don’t know why I felt like this. I really don’t.

I remember when it all ended. When I stopped feeling normal, like I had to be liked by everyone and that I didn’t need to always be constantly changing myself. It was towards the last couple of weeks of the end of the school year.

 I just had no motivation to do anything anymore. I felt like whatever I would do, wouldn’t change the outcome of living this stupid life. So I just need a way to cope with it. And that’s when I began to ride this awful roller coaster. The roller coaster that doesn’t seem to stop. 

I would like to say that it has stopped, but I feel like it hasn't. It’s just getting started again. Going through all the loops and down the hills. It feels like it’ll never stop. And just when I think that things are going to be fine, there’s always something that just triggers it. Something that makes me run to my room and slam the door behind me, as if I’m addicted to it. 

I remember the day that everything changed. I didn’t think that doing this would make my life so different. But it did. I can’t live a normal life anymore, or at least what I thought used to be a so called “normal life.”

I remember being called into the extra room in my house by my mom. This is it, I thought. They finally know about it. And I wasn’t wrong. I walked into the room, already knowing what was going to happen. I prepared myself to be yelled at, to be asked what was wrong with me and what was making me do this. But it never came. I was immediately engulfed in a hug. 

My mom was crying, asking me why I could never come to her. “Why couldn’t you come to your own mother?” I didn’t know how to respond I just held on to her, like a kindergartner on the first day of school would. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I just repeated this for maybe 10 minutes or so until my mom silenced me. 

“Can I see it?” she said. I tried to refuse, until I just gave in. I showed her the painstaking view, it looked like a roller coaster track. Some fresh, some old, some scars that were already fading. But it didn’t matter. She told me that I would need to talk to a therapist about it. I refused. I couldn’t even talk to my own mother and father about it, so what would make them think that I would open myself up to a total stranger?

The next day of school was hectic. It turns out that all of my friends knew. I don’t know how they knew. My sisters knew, but they hadn’t said anything. I remember my sister yelling at my friend, the one that I trusted dearly, asking him why he never told her anything. I didn’t know what to do. I just felt like I was still ruining everyone’s lives and I didn’t know what to do. So, I dried all of my tears, and smiled and said, “It’s all going to be okay. I’m okay, right? I’m not dead. I’m still here.” 

And that was a good thing. I am still here.

I wish I could say that I’m done with riding this roller coaster, but I’m don’t truly know if I am. It might just be going slow, waiting to pick up speed again. But right now I like how everything is. I like being able to just live freely. Being able to just relax and not think about it anymore.