"Look good, feel good."

It was easier to live with pretenses.

To go about each day shedding rugged skin like yesterday's clothes and to reach into the closet (it's a little cluttered, the past has decided to stay for the night — er, more like multiple nights — and you haven't really gotten around to do some spring cleaning) trying to find a new set of skin to warm the cold from the winter in the room.

You should call it lucky you're still bleeding. That means you're still alive.

A smile could fool anyone and nobody really bothered to take a second glance through the condensation that formed on the surface of the glass from heaving, corrupted lungs.

It was easier to fake it 'til you make it, right?

Wrong.

"Doesn't that wear you down?"

Emptiness was a funny thing.

It was hollow and lonely and kind of like that feeling you got when you came home one afternoon, screaming — almost with relief to be away from the routine of school (really, you thought it was more of a euphemism for prison) — you were home only to be met with silence.

No matter how much you screamed, it was only the echo of your own voice that found itself back to you.

So you found coping mechanisms in the form of liquid courage and temporary people to try to feed the constant hunger of emptiness gnawing at the linings of your stomach. They fed your tongue poison and filled your veins with nothing that took up way too much space.

In reality, they did more washing up and hurting than anything else.

That's what happens when you replace your being with shadows to settle in the places you left.

"Absolutely."

Band-aids weren't meant for permanent solutions but you used them anyway like stickers to make you prettier, or at least, a little more put together.

You collected pictures, memories, and all the things you thought were worth saving from the flood of tears that chipped, wrecked, and banged at the walls you put up.

One night, you lost it all under the light of the stars.

You wonder if you should've built an ark.

Why didn't you ever try to save yourself?

"Then what're you left with?"

I guess, the thing is, you're still learning how to live in your own skin and be okay with it.

Without any pretenses.