The Dangerous Art of Blending In

by Angelo Surmelis

I notice too much. Every little thing in a room about a person, place, anything, feels like it’s giving off a signal, like everything is trying to communicate with me.

I think I want new experiences. New memories, not the ones others have given me. Using a pencil and paper to mark, draw, write something different is another opportunity to give myself something new. Something good.

Mostly, I’m scrambling to do different things to please different people. I wonder what would happen if I only spent time doing what interested me.

It felt like all the broken pieces inside me gathered together and stayed put for that moment.

“Why aren’t you fighting for your life?”

“I know how to do this. I do this all the time. Actually, this is what I do. I make everything okay. I make it all normal when it’s not at all.”

The person who was supposed to love me the hardest—the most unconditionally—has always wanted me gone. No matter how hard I tried to be perfect. Now, this boy—who knows all my imperfections and has seen all my hurt laid bare—wants me to stay.

So much of my identity has been based on other people’s views of my physicality that I’ve never really wanted to look.

Maybe no one is really ugly, and maybe no one has the right to call someone that or tell them that they are. Maybe the only real ugliness is what lives inside some people.