my real name's alyssa carolyn. majority calls me lyss, lc, elcee. people call me whatever they want. i'm not who you think i am, and despite what some may think, i am not fake or plastic. i am human, i have feelings. i am not hollow. in my attempts to me optimistic i try to believe everyone has some good, i'm proven wrong a fair amount of the time. i live in a world built by societal standards where expectations are unrealistic and idealistic. our world feeds purely off exterior. because that's the first thing we all really look at right? see how we compare to the girl next to us. skinnier, prettier? well let's get something straight, you win. i'm not as simple or as collected as i'm supposed to be, or at least seem to be. i wear my emotions on my sleeve. i'm battling bad posture, no composure, and genetic make-up. i am hung up on patterns, and routine. i am also impulsive and irrational. unfortunately for me, the two don't mix well. i'm changing, learning, growing. i am stumbling, falling, and failing. but, i am living. i'm not who i was a year ago, or a month ago. i'm not who i want to be, i'm not who you want me to be. i'd like to believe i'm not on a display case. "they're more afraid of you, then you of them." but, i am more afraid. afraid of things people don't understand. that people don't take the time to understand. some, that i still don't fully understand. it's taken myself time to heal, time to mend what has been done to me, and what i have done to myself. there was a point in where there was no solid boundary between what was helping and hurting. i saw them as one in the same. a time where it was hard to disect right from wrong. and because of that, it took many years to unmask my monsters, for me to even begin to recognize them as so. for years i couldn't look at myself in the mirror, i wanted to be less defined, barely visable. i wanted to be more inside, less outside. i was confusing need with greed. greed was a flaw, a blemish in character. needing to eat, needing to be touched, needing to be loved was a burden to everyone around me. therefore it must be equated with greed. so i began to back away, isolate, become cold, become smaller. to make the outside match the inside. until that in itself became an even more consuming need. by taking away i was hoping to gain. by starving i was hoping to fill a void, strength through weakness. and again that was just another thing i confused. i confused my stomach with my conscience. fullness felt unsatisfying, it felt weak to me. while hunger felt like strength. i was terrified of my needs, while i welcomed in hunger. funny how hunger is defined as a need. but, if you deprive that need for long enough, you feel this sence of inhuman, twisted - success. i was striving for that feeling, that become a challange, for a starving body at some point begins to fight the mind, it became a war, a split. body verses mind. a war that i could never win. from then on, i was always unsettled. always split, always ready to crawl out of my skin. i was always looking for ways to hide, to stay numb, minimize. i was looking for a way to stay alive, which some may argue because the way i was living was killing me. because my way of staying alive was dying, because dying felt most like living. i became a safe house for every addiction possible. i craved the feeling of control, while being so completely out of control. i started to self medicate. prescribed, self-prescibed, illegal. anything, i'd take anything that would bury the shame, i began taking things that should never be put in a body, still telling myself i was incontrol. later, i'd learn everything i'd know known up to that point was backwards. i was not in control, i was completely out of control. i was no longer a whole person, just crumbs. and i still am, just crumbs, still only little fractures, little pieces of what i'd someday like to be. but i am molding, i am creating, i am living. and i am starting over.