I worry about everything. Like, if I take the shortcut on the way home, will I avoid myself a wreck or will the shortcut cause me to have a wreck? It’s exhausting. It’s painful and causes me more tears and heartache than it should. I have always felt I look at the world differently. I constantly daydream about the invisible. Angels, heaven, ghosts, all of it. The darkness leaves my mind running in circles, and the light makes me worry like a freight train.

 I wipe away the makeup that creased my skin in all the wrong ways. I began to remember my first day of first grade as I begged my daddy not to leave me. My dirty-blonde hair curled around his leg, dampening the jeans that protected my face. “Daddy please don’t go. Please. Please don’t go,” I remember the words I cried out for in hopes of skipping just one day of school.

It’s the look on his face I remember more than anything. I look in the mirror, still staring at my eyes. My mind began to play a movie of the day where my biggest worry in life was trying something new.

I didn’t want to feel lost.

 Afternoon snacks have turned into work. While I cash my paycheck, my thoughts linger to the days to where I begged for the Barbie with brown hair and blue eyes. Dinnertime has turned into snacks and going out with friends. Curiosity has traveled far from just wondering what picture was going to be drawn on my lunch sack the next day.

I could feel boxes of old diaries and torn pictures of past friendships tug at my skin as if I was some kind of toy. It’s strange really. To think about how many people you’ve encountered in just 17 years. How many times you’ve laughed, how many tears you’ve cried, how many memories you wish you could relive and how many days you wished would never end.

In reality, life is a maze. It’s full of surprises. It’s full of feeling happy. It’s full of feeling scared. It’s full of feeling sad. It’s full of feeling lost. And just maybe the whole goal to life is for you to constantly search for someone and something that makes you feel like you’re important in this crazy world.

But that’s just the thing. The one thing I don’t understand about this whole thing we call life. Because honestly, I feel lost all the time.

It’s not necessarily feeling depressed. It’s the thought of not knowing what life would be like if I wasn’t ever scared to leave my daddy my first day. It’s not knowing what’s on the other side of the universe, not knowing if I am even going to be in existence the following day and not knowing who I would be if my twin hadn’t miscarriaged into a world unknown.

As I thought the mirror was starting to tremble, I realized it was only the innocence of my heartbeat filling with all the wonders this world made me feel. I stared at my cheek bones, knowing that one day they would become sunken-in and wrinkles would feel their place. I could feel the corners of my eyelids become heavy and full of unwanted purple veins defining me as only someone who would soon die.

Not only was it a feeling of being lost, but also the heart aching emotion of being afraid of being alone.

My butterflies transformed into a locus. Holding on to my skin, they began to hatch. They hatched into a 17-year-old girl with grey eyes and dyed hair; a girl who was just trying to find her place in this world.

A little girl who would soon turn into a woman, not wanting to ever feel lost.