Loneliness isn't beautiful.

It's ragged breaths and numb bleeding and aching hollowness, all compounding into a hard ball of steel that scrapes and presses against your chest.

It's feeling miles away and yet inches too close, the warmth of another touching, yet never reaching you, the you that is entangled in ropes of steel.

It's hoping that someone will pull apart the brambles and thorns that encase your heart, yet feeling lost when they don't, and wondering if it's your fault.

And somehow, it feels like everything's your fault.

Voices become louder, harsher, more dismissive- and you wonder if you said something wrong.

Faces twist into scorn, disgust, contempt- and you wonder if you were the cause for it.

You want to curl into yourself, want to retreat into the peace of silence.

But you remember the steel-enforced claws of loneliness, and you reach out once more in desperation, praying that someone takes your hand and pulls you out into the sunlight.

No one ever does.

You keep trying anyway.

You keep your real thoughts, your real feelings, the real you, wrapped in a web of steel and fear, putting on a mask and pretending that your smile and your everything isn't fake.

You put on a steel facade, ignoring your heart breaking, and pander to the things you know they want.

I don't want to walk, let's stay.

No, can we just go first? I'm uncomfortable.

Sure.

Come on, it's no harm, don't be so rule-abiding.

Sorry, but I just don't want to get into trouble. Can we not do that?

Fine.

Can you stop it? It's really annoying.

Sorry, okay? It's just something I enjoy, and I wanted to share what I feel with you. I won't do it again.

Sorry.

You bite back the words you know will explode out if you didn't hold them back, fists clenched and bottom lip bleeding as you bite down.

You know how it works, know that nobody ever wants to see the true you. They want honey words and sugar promises, want things to work out in their favour, want things that you don't.

You know that to fit in, you need to follow this unsaid rule of society, know that you have to do it no matter how much you hate it, no matter how much each word you spit out cuts your mouth and leaves you with the coppery taste of blood.

You know that it's hypocrisy to claim so, but you can't help but feel that you lose a shard of yourself everytime you force these words, these things you're not, out of your throat. And maybe it's a type of reproach, a revenge that you cut and hurt yourself everytime you do so.

This loneliness turns you into steel, into someone who behaves and looks the way society expects you to. Your eyes are glazed with steel, reflecting what they want to see. Your lips are glued together with steel, allowing only the things you deem they will feel acceptable to filter out. Your insides are steel, and you don't feel hurt as badly as before, but you know that it's still there. You're just numb.

You wonder if anyone's noticed your slow transformation to steel, but know deep down that it's just a feeble hope. No one's ever noticed, why would you hope that they do?

Somehow, you wonder if deep down, somewhere under all the layers of steel, your real self is still there. Broken, bleeding, bruised- but alive. You wonder if you can be so strong, wonder if without the steel, you could still manage to keep your head up without your exhausted limbs caving in on themselves.

You walk through the days of life robotically, dragging your feet through sludge and ignoring when malicious reeds threaten to slice through the steel you've coated yourself in. You don't feel like you're there, not in spirit. You feel your physical self moving, but everything passes you by like a movie. A movie that you're a part of, but at the same time, not.

Loneliness is the steel that's changed you, and somehow you know that you will never be the same even if you purge every last bit of it from you.

(Some part of you wonders if the loneliness could have touched you, if you had not allowed it to.)