” Hey, your shoes are so cool, but aren’t they heavy? “, the strange girl asked. In her head, the true response would be yes, every part of my body feels like a huge burden I am forbidden to let go of or put down.” But instead she went with ” no, they look really heavy but they are actually quite light”. Whilst trying to maintain the convincing smile she had put on, she remembered how much strength it actually took to make it through the day. But she did not not want her secret to be exposed, so she started to ramble about where she bought the shoes and how she wasn’t sure about the colour. The strange girl naively entertained the desperate need to look like the least tired person on campus. She didn’t know that the strange girl was also one of them.
In an attempt to advertise the airiness of the shoes, she kept adjusting her posture, swallowing the sting of betrayal from her own self from earlier that morning. She had convinced herself that they would make her forget about the load. Had looked at herself in the mirror and repeated the words ” these are comfortable, they will make your day much easier”.
But the spell was broken as soon as people started to stare at her shoes first before they even took a look at her face. She wanted to know how people knew. How the strange girl asked all the right questions and yet knew nothing about what was goin on in her life.
Eventually she stopped rambling about the material of the shoes and ended the conversation with the most honest words she had actually uttered that day, “you get used to them, but thank you for noticing” she said, finally realising that she wasn’t the only one walking around with burdened shoes.