She wanted to be sad. She wanted to clench her childhood pillow, that had faded blotches of yellow and blue ugly, imperfect, circles spread across it, and then shout as loud as she could so that the whole world could hear her anger and grief. She longed for the feeling of pages under her creased fingertips and the tears of a worn cover to fit in her cracked hands as the emotions in her body and the thoughts buzzing in her mind were replaced by the existence of imaginary characters and their world. There was a sense of familiarity in books that only came from reading in the mornings before the sun pierced through closed blinds and then reading until the dead of night when she had to squint her eyes to force them to stay open and to keep reading. 

Still, she wanted more. 

She wanted happiness and relief. She wanted to be allowed to feel bad and yet feel good. She wanted people to stop saying that she would be O.K. with the evidence to the contrary spelled across her face. 

And, in all of her opposing wants, the biggest thing she searched for were the walls of her house. Wooden and hideous. An ocean blue color that made her feel like she was swimming in a broken aquarium. She wanted to hear the creaking of her house’s floor steps that she had used to identify who was walking down the hall. If it was a small sound - dainty and almost nonexistent - then it was her older sister. Creeping down the hall to get to the patio where she could stare up at blurry stars and imagine a world with no expectations or pressure. Her other sister would never get up at night. She would stay secluded in her small twin sized bed that was only a foot above the floor and her mattress that felt like lumps of rocks stuck together. Her younger sister liked to stay alone and distract herself with dolls that did only what she wanted them to do. She controlled their life with an iron grip so that she could forget everything of her own. And this particular girl, she would listen to her sisters and keep reading. Keep imagining and believing and transmitting her thoughts into a world above and beyond where nothing touched her. Where even her emotions and thoughts were not her own. 

Then, she would be shoved back down to earth with the sound of heavy black boots thudding down the hall and a man shaking the house with his anger. A dream transitioning to a nightmare. Her family and her home were perfect, until the imposter snuck in. Clothed and sheltered in the love that everyone willingly gave him when he was perfect, only to turn to pain. Imposters like to pretend to be family and then break every heart they come across with a simple pound to vulnerable flesh. 

Yet, she wanted to go back to those moments. She wanted to forget her old desires to grow up and leave everything she knew. She wanted to pretend that she had never considered that escaping the abuse justified being torn away from her sisters and the home they shared.

Because now all she wanted was the nagging of her sisters to play her piano and pretend that she was better than she was, as they listened and calmed down from tragedy. She wanted to press the old, out of tune, keys that as they got higher in pitch almost seemed to squeak out instead of making beauty in the form of music. That sound would be something to wish for. But this sound of her own feet slapping against sullen white concrete floors of a hospital, that only reminded her of a white canvas that everyone had left alone because there was no way to paint life in a lifeless place. 

A worthless hospital that she lay in because of a faker in her perfect family and the bruises that they left on her face and soul. So she went back to blue wooden and ugly walls, creaking floor panels, and squeaky piano keys that still sung to her in a colorless and soundless world. She went back to trying to conjure that image of her house and her true family and the heaven that they created there. She pretended that faked image was enough.

She was sad.