Anger was what I felt when I let my phone slowly drop to the floor. I felt it when a stream of tears tickled my lips, hot and slippery, carefully making their way towards my neck. I felt it especially when I screamed into nothing, just to hear the sound of my own voice, just to make sure it was still there. I knew on some distant level that this was going to happen, I knew it, and I convinced myself that my bond with them was too strong to be broken. I had made one too many mistakes, but how was I to know that my depression wasn’t to be discussed? How could I have known that they were the only people allowed to feel anything other than undeviating happiness? I was foolish then. I was an old dog being dragged to the pound. A childhood toy that’s been kicked under a bed, trying to savor one last glimpse of daylight. Maybe there was something I could have said, something I could have done to change their minds. I could have begged for a second chance, but was it worth appearing desperate for their meaningless friendship? I recalled a particularly dismal moment many months ago, when I confided in them and hoped for some sort of reassurance, something to guide me out of my perpetual mental slump.
“What do you want us to say?”
I had no answer for this, as I hadn’t mapped out the interaction in my head. A washed-up crone being shoved back into the spotlight.
“This isn’t fair to us.”
And perhaps they were right. It probably wasn’t fair for me to force my emotions onto them all at once. Perhaps they were right that in that moment I was a bad person, a selfish person, but then again, shouldn’t these be two people that I’m supposed to trust without any sense of a doubt? Two people that will stand by my side, regardless of whether or not I’m happy or sad or full of fear or contempt? I hated them then, I hated them with every quivering inch of me, and it didn’t even matter. Everyone always leaves me behind, anyhow. Everybody leaves me. Everybody leaves me, it kept ringing in my head. Everybody leaves me. Anger was what I felt when I picked my phone up off of the ground and stared at the newly formed cracks on its screen.
Catherine Brothers is a sophomore in the Visual and Critical Studies Department at the School of Visual Arts. She has been writing from a young age and hopes to combine her love of art and literature post-graduation.