Composure. That’s what it’s all about. Keeping it together. It’s a balancing act, maintaining composure. The hardest part is pretending to have it all together. Like checks and balances, we push each other to look normal. “Feeling” becomes a foreign word and apologies are for the weak. Don’t apologize for not keeping it together, just get it fixed.

I’m tired of keeping it together. I’m sick of the word composure. If it were up to me, I’d tell you everything that ever bothered me.

Like how painstakingly normal I am, to the point that I’m just a face in the crowd. As an athlete, I’m lost behind their names in the paper. As a student, I’ll never be as good as my parents measure my sister to be. As a musician, my brother’s mechanical brain and natural ability will forever trump my somber guitar in the eyes of others. As an editor, I will only be recognized by “the one after” journalism’s great mastermind. I’ll never tell you how incompetently normal I am.

I’ll never express the anger I felt when my friend died, and in a week, we forgot it ever happened. I begged to talk about it, but somehow we couldn’t find the time, and I’ll never tell you how guilty I feel because of it. Maybe we didn’t know what to do, but whatever we did, it wasn’t right. I’ll always feel that tug to start a conversation about him, but you’ll never know about the sorrow I feel in letting another day drag by without him.

I’ll never tell you the real reason we broke up. Like a tight rope, I tried my best to prepare for a situation I was too young to understand. I destroyed a friendship for you, but you’ll never know how little it meant to me. You’ll never know about the regret I feel for putting you through the motions, believing in my charade you called “love.” The last thing I really saw breaking us apart was distance, but it was my first excuse out when I found that other girl. My first relationship and you’ll never know how badly I screwed it up.

You’ll never hear me discussing my father’s drinking tantrums, and the day I believed alcoholism was an actual disease. You’ll never hear about the time my 5 year-old self screamed at my parents to shut up as one by one they revealed an endless stream of booze, as if whoever had the most amount of liquor hidden in their closet was declared the winner. Or every time I snuck into my sister’s room because she believed I was afraid of thunder, but in reality, I feared the worst under that roof. I’ll never tell you how angry I felt when she decided to move out at 15, and I was left to fend my brother from my parents’ problems. I don’t think any 6 year-old should be asked by his mother if his parents should divorce, but you’ll never hear about the time I looked into my mother’s swollen eyes and thought it was over.

You’ll never hear me talk about any of this. I have it all together. But every morning, the bags under my eyes remind me that it’s all just an act. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it all together, but I’m willing to find out. That’s what it’s all about, right? Composure.