“Adam,” a muffled voice says, “do you not like your eggs?”

A deep inhale through my nose brings the scent of coffee into my brain, shaking my consciousness a bit. My dad is talking to me. I have to respond. If I don’t say anything, that will be suspicious and, as much as I don’t have the energy to deal with my parents now, I definitely don’t have the energy to deal with them on high alert.

“Yeah.” I flash what I know is a weak smile in the direction of my dad. “Yeah, sorry, I just don’t think I got enough sleep last night.”

They know it’s a lie, but as long as I’m present enough to be lying to them like a teenage son is supposed to do, their worry will be at a minimum. That’s the important thing. Just keep them from worrying.

It’s not that they don’t have reason to worry.

When things got to be too much I would need to let some of it out. By whatever means necessary. All that toxic feeling, the anxiety, the walls closing in; those could all be briefly solved with a sharp edge. Heavy, rib-crushing weight would descend over me and the only way to relieve it was by opening myself up.

But sometimes the problem wasn’t that things were too much. Sometimes they weren’t enough, and a blade could fix that too. Because I don’t wonder “to be or not to be” and I don’t even always wonder “how.” There have been times when the question is: “Am I?” Times when I can’t feel my own heart beating in my chest, when the color gets sapped from the world, when opening my eyes feels like running a marathon. I never know if I’m going to snap out of it, if I’m ever going to feel anything ever again. I always know I should feel afraid of being trapped in that gray world forever, but I never have enough energy to feel fear.

I don’t know what’s worse—feeling like the world is going to end or feeling like the world isn’t even worth ending. All I know is that cutting into my skin helped. Until it didn’t.

I don’t do it anymore. Okay, I don’t do it anymore much. The summer before my sophomore year, I was trying to carve out my loneliness from my torso and my shaking hand pressed too hard. One hospital trip and parent-induced rehab later, it feels like so much more of a risk. I always knew that it was something I shouldn’t be doing, of course I knew, but that didn’t matter. The guilt and shame that came after each time didn’t outweigh the relief from doing it in the first place. Until that summer.