" I wonder if I'm being real.
Do I speak my truth or do I filter how I feel?"
....

I love the times when I get this sudden inspiration to do something creative. It comes like a flash of lightning but like in a calm manner that makes me feel ecstatic in that split second.

I'm grateful for the sudden flash of inspiration that strikes me on a dull Saturday morning as I lay on my bed. I'm even more numb than usual and just utterly unmotivated to do anything.

I'm not depressed. I refuse to be among the mass of teenagers that believe being depressed is the normal. These days, scrolling through social media, I discover that practically everyone is depressed. Not even just teenagers. Even kids under ten years old. It's now kind of a...trend.

And I'm not denying it for the sake of denying. I know I'm not depressed. And I'm not going to lie to myself or others that I am. The therapists I used to see when I was younger say that being numb is a symptom of depression. Yeah...and fevers are a symptom of cancer so go tell everyone with a fever they're dying in three months.

I believe I'm just numb and that's it. I barely even cry. And that's only when I'm frustrated. I just can't feel things, or at least as much as an average person does, I believe. At first it scared me. But I eventually got used to it. Now, I'm sure feeling like a normal person would scare me.

I get off my bed and saunter to my reading table.

I write songs. People write song about their feelings. In fact people write to let these feelings out. But I don't.

I write about nature, my life, opinions on somethings, other people's lives or even the fact that I don't feel. I never write about feelings. Even if I write about something that went on in my life, what I felt about it wouldn't be included...because I didn't feel anything about it.

When negative things happen, I'm either confused or frustrated. Maybe people would consider them as feelings but I don't. There's nothing in my heart. It's all in my head. I guess my brain works more than my heart does.

I sigh and shake my head slightly to get rid of these thoughts that never seem to go away. They always come back one time or another.

I open a drawer at the right side of the table, take out my plain white coloured headphones and slip them on. I open my phone and play some calm, soothing music with no lyrics. I wonder if it makes sense that I write somgs better with sounds like that in the background.

I shut the drawer and open up the one below it, stick my hands in and grope around for my song book. The drawer is empty, I realise suddenly. I peer into it just to make sure and to my horror, it's actually not there.

"The fuck?" I whisper and push my chair backwards as I stand up. I begin to search the entire table. It's only my notebooks, a few textbooks and my journal that I find. I search in all the drawers on the table but still nothing.

I take deep breaths as I walk to my closet. I'm a neat person mostly so I don't expect to find anything lying around. And just as I expect, clothes are hung, folded and my shoes are placed so perfectly I roll my eyes at the place before I walk out.

I plop myself on my bed and scream into a pillow. I'm frustrated. My eyes sting with tears. I try to blink then away and think rationally. It has to be somewhere in here. I never take it out of the room. I take off my headphones and fling them across my bed.

And that's when my door flies open and Emily walks in casually with a small book with a grey cover in her hand. Sam follows right behind her.

"Hey Star, I kinda took this by accident last time I came here to study." She sticks her hand with the book out for me to take it.

I look up with my mouth slightly open and I'm blinking at her.

"Well...aren't you going to take it?"

I spring up immediately and grab a fistful of her t-shirt before she even has the chance to react.

"Woah, Star!" Sam yells and grabs my arm from behind. "Star calm down, let go..."

Emily's eyes are a bit widened from shock but she doesn't struggle. They really don't take me seriously, these friends of mine.

Fortunately-for her-Sam successfully pries my fingers off from her t-shirt and holds my two wrists behind me securely.

"Jesus Star, it's just a notebook."

"How can you even say that?" I scream and try to yank my hands from Sam's grip. He's surprisingly strong for such a scrawny body. "My song book is my life." I say the last part slowly through gritted teeth so they'll understand me clearly.

"Well I'm sorry, it was an accident!" She says and drops the book on my bed.

"Okay, you can let me go now!" I say to Sam and he hesitates for a bit before releasing me. Immediately I'm free, I jump for the book and once it's in my hands, I clutch it to my chest and breath properly for the first time in a while.

"Star, processed trees can't be your life, you know that right?"

I glare at him and he raises his hands in surrender.

After I get myself back and walk to my table to sit I say, "this book kind of is...I kinda wonder what my life would be without it."

"Your life would be amazing without it," Emily says.

I shake my head. "No, you don't get it. This is the only way I can try to...be like a normal person. Without this book you'd literally just be talking to a hollow shell. Like a...a skeleton covered in skin."

"Come on Star, you're not that skinny," Sam tells me.

"That's not what I mean you idiot. And I've written so many songs in here, it's just...too important to me okay? They try to give me a taste of what having feelings like a normal person is like."

"Star you really have to stop this," Emily begins in that annoyed tone she has whenever I say this. She's probably gotten tired of hearing me say it but I believe I have to say it constantly to remind them. I don't think they buy it though. "you have to stop lying to us at least."

I hate when she acts like she knows everyone and she thinks everyone is the same or should act the same. I know she just wants to help but calling me a liar for something she's not even sure about herself isn't really helping. I take a deep breath and try to reason with her.

"Okay, fine, sometimes I feel a pang of fear, or annoyance or happiness and maybe the other ones but I'm telling you, from what I know, I do not feel the way others do. I'm not being crazy, I'm trying to be honest! When something that is supposed to excite me happens, I just feel...oh this is nice and that's it! " I take another deep breath and continue. "Okay...I do feel. I feel a little, yeah. But it's just not enough for me to acknowledge that they're there. If there was a scale of average feeling and five was the normal amount, I'd say I feel in 0.5."

"Maybe you're just surpressing your feelings," Sam says with a shrug. They really don't believe me. They never have. No one ever has. Sometimes I don't even believe myself. I feels stupid even telling people. But it's not my fault. I'm just trying to understand how I am.

Maybe I don't know myself. And they don't know me as well.

"Star, maybe you just-" Emily begins.

"No stop, maybe you just need to stop! You guys say you're my best friends, you say you want to help me but you're not trying to understand me. I know I sound stupid, I sound crazy but you think I feel I'm normal? All my life I have always felt that if I have these feelings, something bad would happen to me," I admit with a shaky voice. "So I tried to shut them out and I have been doing that for years. And when I find out that it's okay to have them...it's too late. I try to get them back from the place I buried them but it's hard okay? And now trying is even scary."

"Star-" Sam begins.

"And you don't want to understand me. You act like you know me. You don't! You don't fucking know me okay?!"

I'm screaming now and my breathing is quick and shallow. I fear that tears are already streaming down my face. I'm supposed to feeling something intense now. I'm crying. My chest is supposed to be hurting but there's just a tiny pang of pain in there. Instead my brain is taking all the impact. I feel dizzy.

"Star I think you need some space," Emily murmurs solemnly and walks over to give me a tiny hug. Sam gives me a squeeze on the shoulder and in a few seconds the room is quiet save for the sound of my heavy breathing.

I'm still sitting on the white swivel chair after a few minutes and I don't know what to do now. I hate yelling and screaming because when it's all over I just seem like an idiot. I can't take back anything I said.

What if they never talk to me again? What if I just lost my best friends? I feel this small twinge of sadness. I really can't tell what I'd really is though. Is it guilt? Shame? Frustration? Oh this stupid web of emotions.

As I open up my song book and jot down the first lines of the song that popped into my head minutes ago, I can't help but realise that these days I'm actually feeling things a little more than I ever did. It's like the feelings are seeping out gradually amd maybe...very soon I'll be able to feel normally again. I'll be able to feel the way I used to when I was three or four years old.

I wipe my wet cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt and begin to write and before I know it I'm done with the song.

Verse one
I feel like I have so much to say
But no one to say them to
I feel a rainbow of emotions
Locked in but I like it unopened

Verse two
The fear of solitude is less than your fear
Of being left alone again
You cry in your bedroom, it's all your fault
The need to be loved, you try to unlearn

Pre chorus
Its fun to live in a fantasy
But it's hard to get out of reality

Chorus
When you know a lot but you really know nothing
When you love a lot but you haven't really felt it
When you are alive but you aren't really living
When you say goodbye but you know it's really just the beginning
You're living
But life is a dream and
You say that you're fine
But there's something that's missing

♬♬♬
Wonder - Shawn Mendes