Lights. Camera. Fraction.

That's the thing about friends.

They're there, and they're not.

You're connected to them either via obligation or desire, both stemming from fulfilling social and emotional requirements in order to be deemed "normal". They set aside the traits in you that they disagree with, you do likewise with them, and you all go out to have the best time that's possible. To collect memories. In hopes that one day they all outweigh the bad memories and their value over time has accrued to a point of priceless bonds.

But what do you do if you're never truly invested? What do you do when you want so badly to be, but you just lack the wires to connect to the current? What do you do when you've been faking the motions for so long that no one even notices?

How do you tell your friends that you have no idea what a real friend is?

Where do you go when everyone you've ever known - from the fundamental foundations of your own parents to the furthest reaches of your emotional capacity, your loves - have all betrayed, lied and abandoned you at some point, and you don't trust a single person?

I'm not here.

I'm never here.

I'm just someone reading a script I've rehearsed a thousand times before I walked onstage. Reading lines to props in the background.

The stage is my home, and the play is exhausting.

But she was my greenroom.