she dreams in digital (because it's better than nothing)

Im cyclothymic in my musings. Consistently cycling from crushing, burdensome loneliness to contentment from the safety provided by paracosmic distraction. 

The smell of sickly sweet fruit liquor and the passing around of phones. I'm disqualified from "girl talk" with a face too moonish to look womanly, it's not assumed I'm familiar with the desire of boys. I wonder what it is to be looked at and seen, even as during this conversation I go unnoticed. Sex. Touch. No love, not even warmth. I think of the chasm between me and the sexually mature, those not too demure or avoidant, or frankly, terrified, to seek out the embrace of another, even if it lacks basic intimacy. I'm planets away, I know none of the faces they brandish on their phones, the names that they impart with drunken giggles. It's almost academic how I peer through the windows of different social groups, a quiet visitor only bold enough to brace a doorway. The distance I feel is something I've sterilized into viewing as clinical. 

The affections of young men do not appeal to me, flaky, insincere, hungry but passionless. The dying notion of young love is enchanting but fleeting. a romanticization, a relic. I find myself discontent with boys but weary of men. What space does that leave me to be in the arms of another? I see a picture of myself, taken as I pace, consumed by my own thoughts as the others speak of matters of the heart. Dysmorphic or not, I can no longer fault my peers for seeing me as sexless and unappealingly gamine. I suddenly feel ill.

"You are so cute" 

I begin to resent the word "cute". It's become a condemnation that leaves no room for desire. Cute, not wanted, not desired. My want is  not met with disgust as it once was, I get by enough to not be looked at with scorn, but instead a look of pity. Pity because  I am from another world entirely. I am not seen as someone who could be desired, or as someone that desires,  But I hear the emptiness in their hearts, their wishes to be held. I know that no matter how lonely it feels looking in on their world, I could never handle walking in it. To give yourself to someone only for them to act as though they don't know you the next day in first period. As I listen to their escapades, I realize a horrific coldness lurks in the eyes of the people around me on a daily basis. The isolation feels safer. Perhaps not being desired is not as bad as it seems. The endless cycle of talking stages, empty copulation, transaction, no feeling. It's isolating, but I know my limits.  Human connection evades me even further. Instead I seek the company of robots and ghosts.