Chapter Text
Enid eventually stopped crying, the anguished sobs turning into guttural choking and coughing. The change wasn’t through relief or calmness coming upon her, no, it was simply that her body had no more energy to devote to the crying mechanism and now it was trying to force oxygen back into her lungs.
She was tired. So tired. Tired of everything. Physically and mentally tired, but still sleep eluded her. She could never get to sleep normally, only falling unconscious early in the morning through utter exhaustion. Even then she would wake early, often before dawn, bitter that the oblivion of sleep had been cruelly snatched away from her.
There was no real reason for the crying, and no relief afterwards. It only made her thoughts turn blacker each time. Wearing the colourful clothes and jewellery and dying her hair was a smokescreen to hide the real her, someone rotting from the inside out.
Putting on a show for everyone but her.
Meeting people in the quad, eating lunch with the other students, going to classes. They were all included in the show. If it wasn’t bad enough having her brain messed up so much the show she put on used up so much energy all she could do at the end of the day was collapse on her bed and bury herself away from the world. At least she had her own room so she had a safe place to hide.
I've been comin' home alone
Dyin' fast and livin' low
At least that's how it feels when I can't sleep
Enid tried to remember she felt anything but sorrow. Sorrow wasn’t really the right word though. What she felt wasn’t sadness, despair, or loneliness. She just felt nothing at all. An empty pit of blackness where her joy and laughter had been thrown into. She couldn’t even remember when that hole had been dug, she didn’t remember digging it herself.
How was I supposed to know
I'd feel nothin' in my bones
If you looked closer into Enid’s eyes you would see they lacked any sparkle, something she used to be proud of but had long since faded away. The show always carried on, Enid a detached observer to the show she acted in every second she left her dorm. Her eyes were devoid of life, any observer would see it if they spent enough time with her. But no one did. That was one of the problems. She wasn’t close enough to anyone to entrust her darkest secret to. Girls were so shallow, boys only wanted one thing from her, teachers didn’t care.
She had no one to turn to.
I don't think that I can do this anymore
Lyin' awake another night here on the bathroom floor
This isn't what I wanted, or is it everythin’
I just wanna make sense of it all
Can't swim when I'm sinkin'
Enid had tried to think about the future but she found that when the future inevitably became the present all she found was more of the same isolation and sadness. So she learned not to look forward, but also not to think back to happier times. Forcing herself to only live in the current was safer. She could just about cope with trudging though each day, existing but not really surviving.
How can I stand when I don't trust my own two feet?
She had read the books and websites trying to come to terms with how she felt. There was lots of advice, get outdoors, keep healthy, meet up with people etc. She had tried some of these but with limited success and now she was so deep in that pit, there wasn’t enough energy or even brain function left to try them again.
Enid had been ill for a week recently and no one really noticed. Her head of year had noticed when the tick wasn’t against her name in their attendance records, but that was only after the fact. No one missed her physical presence.
If I fade away, will they miss me?
They call my name, but it's too late
Enid buried her head under the fluffy pink pillow on her lonely single bed, then screamed until her throat was raw, She prayed without hope that sleep would arrive quickly, just once, so she could be free from the torment for a few more hours.
She remained awake until 3am, her prayers unanswered. Again. She woke angrily at 6am, dragged her exhausted body out of bed, then prepared the show for another day.