Читать книгу Thin Places - Lesley Choyce - Страница 8

Garth’s news scared me at first

because I knew

I would never fit in

and might never

be happy.

So I started trying to fit in

to be normal

have normal conversations

say things like

Hi, how are you?

and always got predictable answers

so instead I’d ask a kid at school

What is your favourite planet?

or

Where were you before you were born?

But

the harder I tried to fit in

the worse it got.

People looked at me

with scrunched-up faces.

The voices in my head got louder

angrier.

Garth said

You can’t deny who you are.

I said

But I don’t know who I am.

And I had an image of myself

unzipping the body I was in

and travelling someplace else.

A war began inside me

between the me who wanted to be normal

and the me who wanted to leave

and go somewhere else.

One day I screamed it out

in the middle of that tangled forest

Please!

I shouted.

Someone save me!

But no one did.

There was only one voice.

The voice was me

saying I was doomed

to live in a world

where I did not belong.