Alone
Shay struggles to make friends
[[MORE]]
Shay should be able to make friends. Like everyone else could. People click at each other and seem to click effortlessly. It wasn’t hard; Shay was just stupid and needed to stop making excuses.
Their stomach tightened as they watched people smile and laugh with each other, knowing they’d have to work twice as hard to do the same. Who said relationships were supposed to be fun, after all?
They couldn’t complain about being lonely when they hadn’t tried hard enough. They’d attempted to talk about it, and they were told to go meet people. So that’s what they were going to do-meet people, and those people would like them enough to care about them and want to listen to them.
They understood relationships, they thought. They were being selfish if they didn’t hurt. They needed to smile and pretend to be interested in people, and maybe people would care about them.
They went in with this attitude at the bar, watching people talk around them easily. They saw another person, a short woman with copper skin, watching another conversation, without any of the insecurity Shay had. She probably had a lot of friends who liked her; she didn’t feel like a failure when people didn’t. Shay approached her, smiled, and offered to buy her a drink. They noted a cane leaning on the barstool.
She was open to them at first, asking questions about themselves and seemingly taking an interest in them. Instead of making them feel better, they just felt terrified. Most people didn’t want to learn about them, not when they were so stupid and pathetic. If she were disappointed, it would be all their fault. They did their best to be entertaining, but she looked bored at the end of it anyway and they wanted to choke her.
It scared them, how much they wanted to hurt people over small things, but they couldn’t stop thinking about it. Other people got to be cared about and loved, why were they the ones who had to work so hard for it? She had seemed bored and excused herself, saying she wanted to try to meet someone else. And she did, she met with a tall man who she seemed to enjoy the company of far more, who she listened to and smiled at. Shay hated him, and wanted to hurt him too. Why did he get to have her attention? They’d worked so hard for it, why was it so hard for anyone to like them?
They tried to take deep breaths, tried to resist the urges to hurt them over something so stupid. But it hadn’t worked in the past, had it?
They syringed both of them later. The two woke up in the basement. Shay would make them see what it was like to hurt.