You do know that you're selfish....
Chelsea
“You do know that you’re selfish, right?” he asks, sitting at the kitchen table. He deliberately cracks open a crab leg and turns his slow grin toward me. He thinks that he’s just teasing… Do you think this is all a game? Do you know how much this is hurting me? I yell at my father in my head, something that I wouldn’t dare do in real life.
I’m not selfish. I’m not. I’m hardly selfish, though I guess I can see why he would think that I am. The way I lock my being inside myself whenever I’m exposed to sharp sounds like gum popping, a little brother’s overly high voice, a mother’s whiney tirade, and, oh, I don’t know, the sound of an empty crab leg cracking, can make it seem like I don’t care about what is going on around me. All the people related to me think that I’ve always suffered from an attention deficit and that I am always quiet because I have decided to not talk until I can control everyone around me. Heh. I need more attention, even though I was the youngest in my family for ten years. Selfish,
selfish Chelsea. Couldn’t you possibly share the spotlight, just for one moment? Because it is incredibly selfish to try and stop people from hurting you. Right?
Whenever I hear those sharp sounds, my brain goes on lockdown. It’s like a brain freeze but it is more painful and has more of a prickly rather than tingly sensation. There is no way that I can stop it. There’s no way that I can stop it, but if the guy behind me would just shut his trap for five minutes.… it also makes me slightly irritable. That’s not selfish, is it? For someone not to stop smacking even after I told them that it hurts me…that’s selfish. That’s the least selfless thing I’ve ever heard of. That I remember, anyway. Also, have you ever found it funny that people always have something to say when you do something wrong,
