“Splinter” by Anonymous Teen
Disorder: an expression I had denominated as abnormality, malfunction, wrongness. In accordance with the simplistic definitions my mind had assigned, educational environments introduced the cruciality of first impressions, how perceptions held the potential to build both admiration and skepticism, lingering throughout a singular composited evaluation from my classmates. Judgement appeared synonymous with conventional rhythms of thought: seeing, thinking, assuming, believing. The physical indications within adolescent interactions developed into gestures that contradicted the narratives I had painstakingly constructed for myself. A hesitating moment of discerned shrewdness, the unpleasant stasis that awakened as my mouth refused to formulate coherent replies to a discussion, and the congregations of children that meandered farther across the playground culminated in a supposition of my cowering incompetence. Disorder, then, emerged not exclusively from within but also from the warping of observation, rearing its presence of a constant, imagined criticism growing aggressive enough to supersede my own self-perception.
Within the confines of my head, the sparse sentiments offered comfort were derived from fictional facets of myself, idealized personas conditioned by desperation rather than truth. I understood rehearsed words and performative laughter as forms of protection against inevitable disapproval from my peers, formulated explanations and modulated my tone precisely as teachers called each name on the alphabetical attendance roll. Even the most mundane, simplistic tasks resulted in a simultaneous sickness and depersonalization. I equated ambiguity with distaste and dissatisfaction with hatred, habits that internalized each sliver of mistaken criticism. Countless reprimands from teachers on my defiance and disobedience, the punishments for quietude amongst a loquacious group, became statements that represented an enervating result of my personal expectations––the mandates I had set subconsciously to demand a meticulous external presentation. I responded to denunciation with muteness. I despairingly believed that withdrawal would harbor more forgiveness.
The twisted philosophy, borne from that ideal of flawlessness, condemned individuality: the only way to survive the twist of my stomach, aching as if a creature had infiltrated by intestines and planted the seeds of doubt, was to avoid voicing perspectives considered so intolerably unnecessary to my peers. I recognized that I would state something unacceptable again and subsequently tarnish their initial impressions of an isolated, devoted student.
And I conformed to the only dictation knew how to maintain: silence. I began to believe that the mottled bruises I had gained on my inexperienced wrists after playing volleyball had been a deserved throbbing, that they would serve as a reminder of my own incompetence, that each extraneous mistake should have manifested a physical mar or abrasion on my body. Dissociation sank, abyssopelagic, into the structure of my thoughts, the self-deprecations scintillating and screaming that it had been my duty to experience the countless liabilities I had bestowed on others.
I generated an illustration of myself and ensnared myself within its glutted framework, dividing disposition between a external, manufactured crust and the opposing halves inside: one optimistically ignorant, the other constrictive. Disorder crooked its gnarled fingertips farther within me, and then I could no longer breathe. Not because I was diseased. Not because I was dying. My body had suffered enough of carrying the speechlessness. Hands shaking, tears reeking of saltwater and noxious iron, the attack burgeoned in my esophagus. I crouched, collapsed.
Tears proliferate unbidden and inexplicable, even as I blink into my reflection on the surface of an adjacent car door. There is something within my expression that I am terrified of, the ailment
and burden that I have morphed into, my flushed cheeks purpled and malformed atop a background of automotive paint.
My eyes, swollen with implosion, scarlet and sodden, flicker. I cannot manage to shift myself, glimpsing and absorbing the pattering of passerby on the pavement, the blackened legacies of dirt beneath each step. I anticipate at least one of them to pause and stare, to commentate with a cloying reassurance, but still, no stranger utters a word. Their condolences would have materialized guilt, I think to myself. Maybe pity would have tasted more sickly. The sidewalks are worn with the touch of thousands of strangers, and I am lost within their throes, dirty and contaminated. My hands shake uncontrollably, shaking even as I fist them, the sight of skin blurred.
My experiences signified dichotomies. I desired to efface myself, wanting both to disappear from the crowd and blend into it, afraid of judgement yet craving recognition. Oppressive distress shrank the world and magnified it; social anxiety disorder calcified the fear, morphing interactions into battles, muting my voice, unmaking my confidence, and still, I am afraid. Afraid of pain, afraid of being misunderstood, afraid my trepidation will constantly be interpreted as sense indifference. The duality wreathes throughout me, mutilating, insistent; I remain ashamed for becoming ashamed, for managing to stabilize and then shattering in a single moment––I am afraid of myself, afraid for myself. Mental illness, rewriting the dynamics of my ruptured relationships, mutates not from neglect but rather from emotionality too mountainous and inconceivable to articulate.
But survival, despite its secludedness, epitomizes a human, undetectable hue of strength. Within the shadowiness of abated breath, the trembling, the incapacitation, and each unbearable thought endured that might breach my resolve, there slumbers a melancholic humming, the curated healing that cannot be presented as loud or definitive. It stitches together from moments in between, the fragments of ordinary quiet where pain softens, if only slightly, and it is enough for me not to splinter.