w’s Reviews > The Way I Used to Be > Status Update

‘I look away, embarrassed. He has no way of knowing how sometimes it physically hurts to smile. How a smile can sometimes feel like the biggest lie I’ve ever told.’

Because I can be anyone to this guy. I can truly be this new person. Because he knows nothing different.

‘I start to panic as I notice more and more eyes beginning to look up at me, afraid they might see that underneath my new outfit and hair and makeup and body, maybe I’m really not that normal or okay.’

‘Because I desperately want to, want their approval- crave it. But i have to start standing up for myself. And it has to start with them, because it was with them that it began.’

‘Why do i feel like sometimes , i have no one in the entire world who knows me in even the slightest , most insignificant way?”

‘Except maybe i do mean it. A little, at least. Because i let them push me around just like i let everyone push me around. I let them make me into a person who doesnt know when to speak the hell up, a person who gives up control over her life, over her body, over everything. I do what they tell me to do,”

“ he shakes his head in that condescending way he always does when he thinks someone is an idiot.”

“, and i think maybe i can change too. Maybe j can become someone i can actually stand.”

“I really wonder how people get to be normal like this. How they just seem to know what to say and do , automatically.”