It is funny because they do not know. None of the people you socialize with gets it. Your parents don’t get it. Your brother does not get it. They cannot because they don’t know. You are a silent stone, an unmoving rock. You will not spill those precious secrets. You will not let the spiders crawl out of your mouth and betray you. You will not let anybody see the ink that is on your tongue and that fills your inside. You refuse to show people the words running through your veins.

I glued my mouth shut when the ghosts first started hiding behind my rib cage. I didn’t want other people to know what they were saying. They whispered at me relentlessly how ugly and fat I was. They screamed behind my bones and bounced through my stomach telling me to stop. Saying that if I wasn’t ninety five pounds than I was s***. I was worthless. I tried my hardest to lose twenty pounds. I drove myself insane. But I always broke. Then the beasts moved in under my bed. At night their hands would crawl up and they would drag their fingers across my skin. They would feel every inch of ugly fat on me and press their slimy appendages into my rib cage. They screamed louder than the ghosts and told me where I should be. They told me that I should be able to see my ribs by now. When I had been especially bad and had tried ignoring the guilt that came with eating the beasts would press their gruesome faces up against mine. Their hot breath would burn my skin. Occasionally ,if they felt especially vicious, they would press their dirty lips up against mine and try to suck the life out of me. They wanted to eat me. They slipped their snake forked tongues into my mouth full of cobwebs and let it crawl down my throat infecting my insides with their poison. I never slept when they were around. The beasts would always lie next to me and let their hot breath burn my back as well. They dug their fingernail/claws into the sides of my waist. They curled their arms around me and suffocated me. When the morning would come they would unfurl themselves from my broken body and slither back underneath the bed to wait until the next night.

During the day fish would swim in my head. They would make me feel like I was bouncing around in a bowl. They screamed too. I had never known that fish wanted to leave the safety of water. But these ones did and they were relentless. They bashed themselves up against my skull fighting to get out. They wanted to fly. I didn’t blame them because I wanted the exact same thing. I wanted to grow wings and beat them until I was higher than the clouds and far away from the beasts and ghosts that occupied every inch of my life. I couldn’t satisfy the fishes needs. The ghosts never left. There were all these voices in my head. They all wanted me to stop eating so I could rest with them for awhile. Their offer was so tempting. I hadn’t slept in forever. I wanted to sink to the bottom of my mind and have the fishes surround me and make me warm. I wanted the ghosts to settle behind my ribs and curl up and resonate warmth through my bones. I wanted to nestle myself in between them and taste their sunshine. They wanted me to as well. Without me obliging they couldn’t sleep either. They wouldn’t finally be warm until I was skinny enough.

I saw things in the shadows. Some of those things would step out in the sunlight. They wanted to get me as bad as the beasts did. They wanted to consume my soul and make me die. They didn’t like the fat on me either. They followed my every move. In a way they were worse than those ugly beasts that kissed me. At least those were confined to the chains in my room. The shadows appeared everywhere. They showed up at any time and could follow me anywhere. They watched silently because their mouths were stitched up with twine. They couldn’t speak to me. They just haunted my every move.

I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t let them know who slept in my bed at night and who talked to me during the days. I couldn’t tell everybody that I had been walking around with shadows who wanted to kill me or with fish that wanted to fly. I couldn’t say that there were ghosts sleeping behind my bones and beasts that cut me and poisoned me with their flicking snake tongues. I was crazy. I knew it but I didn’t want others to know. I laughed when it called for it and kept all of these things secret. I didn’t want people knowing about the monsters everywhere. If I said a word I was sure the beasts, fish, shadows, ghosts would all kill me. They were all thirsty for my warmth, my blood, my heart. If I spoke word of them, if I compromised our secret they would kill me. The beasts would make the cuts deeper and would break all of my bones. They would make sure that their tongues were soaked with so much poison that when the slithered them down my throat after stealing more innocence from my lips that it would burn my insides. The ghosts would scream and scream and scream at me about the ugliness it saw in the mirror. They would never silence themselves and they would sit in my stomach like stones and laugh as they watched me die from the inside out. The fish would drown me and bounce even harder against the confines of my skull. They would fill my mind up with water and make me throw up blood. They would kill all of the brain cells still left and crack my skull. The shadows would unstitch their mouths and would let their greasy voices stick in my throat. They would talk until I choked on every single one of their words. They would let the maggots squirm out of their eye sockets and let the roaches spew from their mouths.

These are the monsters inside me. The things that hold me captive and tape my mouth shut. These are the things I have turned into. I can’t speak out about them or I would bust apart at the seams that have sewn my body together carelessly. I can’t tell anyone about the blades that I keep swallowing or the tears that I cry in the dark. I can’t tell anyone how often I’m counting calories and how I’m still fat. I can’t tell anyone about all the voices and all the burdens. I’m normal. I’m a normal child. I make okay grades. I laugh at funny things. My eyes aren’t dead. I am not walking around between the world of life and death. I am not a disease to my family. I am not an infection of the mind. I am a normal girl. I am a normal girl.

Someone should tell that to the monsters inside of me.