How to Hide in Plain Sight

by Emma Noyes

Then I start worrying about worrying about worrying about worrying, and suddenly my mind feels so crowded, as if my thoughts aren’t filtering out in the way most thoughts do. As if something is blocking the exit. As if, rather than in and out of my mind in an orderly line, one thought replacing another, they linger. All of them. Half sound like me; they speak with the internal voice I’ve always recognized as my own. The other half do not. The other half—they have their own voice.

Memory of pain is often worse than the pain itself. It drives us. What we do or don’t do, embrace or fear, repeat or avoid at all costs—all of that is dictated by our memory of pain.

“I love you,” I whisper into this third silence. “And not in the way I usually mean it.” Manuel’s arms tighten. “I’ve never meant it any other way.”

Instead, to my great surprise, she did none of those things. She hugged me.

“I’ve loved you since that first moment on the playground, when you threw wood chips in those bullies’ faces.” His eyes shimmered. “I love you when you’re angry, I love you when you’re sad, and I love you when your head is filled with thoughts so terrifying you don’t think you can share them with me. In fact”—he squeezed my hand—“that’s when I love you most.”