Does anyone else ever sit in a room full of people they love and feel like an absolute ghost? Like you are just a ghost in a chair? My whole family is here right now for the reunion and the house is so loud. It is so loud and happy and there is so much food on the table it makes my stomach hurt. My cousins are all laughing about some summer camp story and I am just sitting here with my hands in my lap. I feel like I am watching a movie about someone else’s life. Am I the only one who feels like they are transparent? I have my phone tucked under the table cloth right near my knees. I know my dad would kill me if he saw it. In our house you sit up straight and you keep your eyes on the person talking and you do not slack off. That is just how it is. It is about discipline and being present. But I am looking at this girl’s feed from my school and she is at the beach with her friends and everything looks so bright. The colors are so bright. Her skin is perfect and she is smiling like nothing in the whole world could ever be wrong. I keep scrolling and scrolling and it is like I am drowning in how perfect everyone else is. It is weird because I know it is not real. I know they probably had a bad day too but it does not feel like that when I am looking at it. It feels like everyone else got a manual on how to be a person and my copy got lost in the mail. Is that weird? Does everyone feel this? I look at these girls in my grade and they have these lives that look like sunlight. And then I look up at my uncle who is yelling about the grill and I just feel heavy. Everything in my life feels heavy and gray. It feels heavy all the time. Every day. Every single day. My dad was in the service for twenty years and sometimes I think he brought the whole base home with him. Everything is a mission. Everything is about being tough and not showing that you are tired or sad or whatever. You just keep moving. But when I look at these pictures on my phone... nobody looks tough. They just look happy. They look like they do not have to worry about the world ending or about things being "squared away" all the time. I try to talk to my cousins about stuff but they just talk about movies and sports and I literalley don't know the words to say. I just don't have the words. My aunt asked me how school was going and I just said "fine" and stared at my plate. I felt so much shame. I felt it in my throat. I wanted to tell her that I feel like I am failing at being a teenager but I could not do it. I just chewed my ham and nodded. I am a good kid. I do my homework and I keep my room clean and I don't get in trouble. But inside I feel like I am screaming. Am I the only one who performs being okay? Does everyone just perform being okay every day? Every single day? The world feels so big. It feels so huge and scary and I am just this small thing at a dinner table. When I scroll through these people’s lives I feel like I am looking through a window at a party I was not invited to. It is not even that I want to be them. I just want to know how they feel so light. Everything with me is about rules and being quiet and being ready for something bad to happen. My dad always says "be prepared" but he never told me how to be prepared for feeling totalley alone in a room full of family. He never said anything about that. I hate myself for looking at the phone. I realley do. It feels like a drug or something. I am hiding it under the table like a criminal because I need to see something that isn't this. I need to see those filtered sunrises and those groups of friends hugging because it is the only thing that feels like it is not part of the "mission." But it also makes me feel worse. It makes me feel like I am broken. I think I might be broken. Is that a thing? Can a person just be born broken? I look at the old photos of my grandpa in his uniform on the mantle and then I look back at the screen. The gap between those two worlds is so wide I think I am falling into it. I do not belong with the kids at school who do not understand why I jump when a door slams too loud. But I do not belong here either with the happy stories and the laughing. I am just this middle thing. A ghost in the middle. I am just scrolling and scrolling while people pass the mashed potatoes. Does anyone else ever wish they could just turn their brain off? Like just hit a switch and be like everyone else? I want to laugh at the stupid jokes my cousins are making. I want to not care about the phone and the perfect people. But I keep looking at it because those fake lives feel more real than this dinner. That is the part that hurts to type. It is pathetic. I am pathetic. I am sitting here at 2am writing this on my phone because I can not sleep and I just keep thinking about how much I am hiding. I hope I am not the only one. I realley hope someone else out there is sitting at a table right now feeling like a liar. I feel like such a liar. I smile and say thank you and I help clear the dishes and inside I am just a black hole. Is there anyone else? Please tell me I am not the only one who feels this way. Every day, every single day. It just never stops.