Issa Anderson Self-Para. Posted for personal reasons for saying good-bye to the character. TW: Depression, TW: Suicide Not apart of or canon for any RP.
Italicized text references Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Burn’.
I’m searching and scanning for answers in every line, for some kind of sign...
Issa was used to being happy. She had always been happy. Pain and tears and anger weren’t apart of her every day life. Sure, there had been that period of time where her parents were sure that her reckless behavior was some sort of weird suicidal ploy but…it had never been anything serious. It was normal for children who were adopted to act out, apparently. Sure, she hurt. She had had her feelings bruised. She had had to go to therapy. But Issa was never one to hesitate to just cry it out, shove it in a box, and be done with it. Move on. So what was stopping her this time?
She just wanted the pain to stop. She was tired of feeling unwanted, tired of trying to help people and having no one help her, tired of hurting, tired of wanting. It was killing her. Every day it was physically painful to get out of bed. It was painful to try to talk to other people, knowing that at the end of the day it just felt like no one actually wanted her there. That no matter what she did or said, no matter how hard she tried, she would get criticized. She would be in the wrong. Someone would be there to tear her down, to tell her no, to destroy her.
The worst part was that once upon a time, Issa Anderson didn’t let what people thought bother her. She didn’t know when the switch had flipped, when she had become insecure, hurt by opinions. She didn’t know when she had stopped being happy, spontaneous, reckless to the point of idiocy – and instead had become scared. The worst was that she wanted to be herself again. But Issa didn’t know how to get back there; she didn’t know how to stop what was happening. She wanted to stop it. No…She just wanted to stop feeling.
You and your words, obsessed with your legacy…
At the end of yet another day, Issa shut herself in her room, her back pressed against her door as she took deep breaths. Alone. Finally. Back in privacy. Even so much as going to class was taking too much out of her these days. Hiding behind corners when she saw people she couldn’t bare to face, not when she felt like this. Putting on her huge smile and pretending that flashing those dimples at everyone wasn’t physically painful, her muscles literally rejecting it. Issa looked at her actions, her overt flirtyness with, well, everyone, and bubbliness and humor and briefly hated herself. If she was a cynic, a sarcastic, a bitch….she wouldn’t have to put on such a front that she was okay. But as it was, she had to try so hard to make everyone think nothing happened. She couldn’t let anyone know. She couldn’t let anyone see how it hurt her. She would get over this. Soon. One day. Eventually. She would be over this. Even if she wouldn’t one day move past this feeling, people had made it pretty clear they didn’t care. No one cared. She was overreacting, she was a drama queen, she was getting in the way of people being happy…her feelings, for one moment, hadn’t registered as a possibility to anyone. She was so alone, so utterly alone. And for once, it had become a blessing. The girl who had always longed for company, who had found others for company, who had sought solace in words…. just wanted quiet.
Your sentences border on senseless and you are paranoid in every paragraph, how they perceive you….you, you, you...
Hands reached for her waistband, her shoes and jeans kicked off, pulling on her comfiest pair of torn sweatpants, a loose t-shirt stolen from some guy or another pulled over her head. Long, dark wavy hair piled on top of her head, hands shaking as they struggled to tie it all up. Even writing, her go to escape for everything - joy, fear, anger, sadness – wasn’t helping. Her hands were unsteady, her words not making any sense once she finally got them scrawled across the page. Without writing, she had nothing left. Nothing.
Issa didn’t know who she was without her writing. It had always defined her. When she had gotten old enough to understand what had happened to her actual parents, why her family wasn’t actually her family, it was what had gotten her through it. Not the therapists, not the sitting down and talking, no – it was writing, the scrawls across diary pages. It had become who she was. All Issa wanted was to be able to write something that would mean something to someone.
As she changed, slowly, her movements looking almost painful, anyone who was there would barely recognize the girl. She had always been pale, but her skin was almost translucent at this point. Her veins were a visible road map against her skin. Her curves had started to disappear, her body instead marked by her hips, her spine, the deep breaths she took exposing her breastbone beneath her jutting collarbones. The dimples that were her trademark, accompanying her bright smile, were barely visible these days. She wasn’t herself anymore; that much was obvious.
You have torn it all apart, I’m watching it burn….
The beauty of the fact that Issa had been isolating herself more and more was that no one would notice. Not until it was too late. They had been giving her privacy, her temper having grown shorter and shorter, bursts of anger and quick snaps of words. She could barely stand her own company, why would anyone else want to be around her? At some point, the words she had been told, the whispers she heard…had started to resonate as being true. She wasn’t worth anything. She certainly wasn’t worthy of loving. That had been obvious from the beginning. If she had been, her parents wouldn’t have left her. She wouldn’t have been put up for adoption, left hoping for love and a family and someone to care for her without ever knowing what she had lost.
Issa paced back and forth in her room, her feet quiet against the hardwood, like she was weightless. Like she wasn’t even there. That’s how it felt at least. No one would even know if she was there. Most people wouldn’t even care. All Issa had ever wanted was to write something that mattered to someone, write something that was important…but how could she? If she was so insignificant in the paths of everyone she had crossed, how would her words ever matter?
Something has to die to make you feel alive. That’s how it went, right? Issa had been pushing herself harder, and harder. If she couldn’t write, she had to do something. She had been running harder and faster, shooting further, pushing herself in yoga and hoping some of the bullshit about inner peace would be true. But no. It wasn’t. She left classes as miserable as she had been when she entered, she finished a run panting and with dry eyes simply because she was sweating too hard to cry.
The world has no right to my heart, the world has no place in our bed, they don’t get to know what I said, I’m burning the memories
Slowly moving into her bathroom, Issa hovered in front of the sink, splashing her pale face with water. Her hands were trembling, as they so often seemed to do these days. Slowly removing the make-up smudged on her face, Issa glanced up, her eyes flashing as they met her reflection. Her under-eye circles dark as bruises without concealer hiding them, her dark hair standing out even more starkly against her pale skin. She looked like a mess. She was a mess. There was no point in denying it.
Issa pulled out the bun she had just tied her hair up in, letting it fall around her shoulders. She bit her lower lip, spinning slightly in the mirror as she eyed herself. Even she could see that she had lost weight, she could see that she didn’t look healthy anymore. She knew why she didn’t go home for Thanksgiving – she didn’t want to see her parents. They may not have birthed her, but they would realize how drastically bad everything had gotten in a moment. She didn’t know what she was going to do about the Christmas holidays.
She had never been the girl to pick at her meals. She had never been the girl to cry alone in her bedroom. To stop talking to people and hide from the world. But that’s who Issa was now, that’s who she had become. As much as the physical differences terrified her, it was the personality being unrecognizable that really scared her. Who was she? How was she supposed to go on like this?
The world seemed to burn, burn…..
The thin white t-shirt was pulled over her head, discarded on the floor, stepping out of her sweatpants and underwear. Issa moved over to the bathtub, turning on the water, flinching slightly at the loud noise. Her eyes watched the water swirling as it filled, her thoughts rushing past a million other things. She stepped into the tub, flinching for a moment at the heat of the water as she lowered herself into it. After a moment, the water was a comfort, nearly burning her sore muscles as she attempted to relax.
Leaning back, Issa closed her eyes, letting out a long sigh. She was alone, yet again. She felt semi at peace for the first time in days. Strange how the simplest of things could work. Hot water soothing against her muscles, the faucet almost loud enough to block out some of her thoughts. For a moment, she almost felt like herself again. She reached up, turning off the water, and leaned back again, her eyes briefly settling shut.
But it all crashed back down on her. It kept crashing back down, no matter what she used to prop everything up. Issa’s eyes flashed open, panic setting in. She couldn’t live like this, she couldn’t continue. Her breath started coming faster, and without even the conscious thought, she did the one thing she could manage to do. She slid into the water, letting it wash over the entirety of her body, letting her completely sink beneath it.
I hope that you burn….
Letting herself just
Simply
Disappear.
I’m erasing myself from the narrative…
