I hate being so hopelessly evil. I stare into my wine glass, wishing for a moment I was a vampire and the Bordeaux in my glass was blood. I would drink it so indulgently, letting it dribble down my chin, my neck; using it like lipstick to paint my lips red.

 I feel like a little girl in a black dress that’s too grown-up, but I’m not a little girl. I am a woman now-whatever that social construct means. The wine I’m holding is a charade. I can wear my fancy dress, and drink wine, discussing the contrast of contemporary Irish and American literature, but I am still a child in a convoluted, twisted way. 

I wish I could be a little girl, a real little girl. I wish I could hold a stuffed bunny rabbit and wear pigtails with little bows tied to the end. I wish I could suck on little lollipops, and watch sleeping beauty. I could do all those things now. But not in the way a little girl could; not in all her beautiful innocent glory, with everything else ahead of her, without those actions being seen as anything but the purity of childhood. 

I feel so washed up, dried out. I feel like all my potential ran out the minute I turned sixteen. I’m not smart enough, not pretty enough; I’m wasted, pointless.  I can practically feel the pulse of death ringing through my chest. I want to weep until I drown in my tears. I want to curl into my own body, and never emerge. I want to carve out my organs with my manicured hand and offer them up to someone begging to be loved. 

I want someone to love me in all my wickedness, to embrace the demonic entity that is begging to claw out of my chest. I want people to think I’m brilliant, that I’m so incredibly precocious and not just a normal teenager. I wish I didn’t think these thoughts, that I could rise above these desires in how I want to be perceived, but I am weak, and I want; so much. Most of all I want to leave this dinner party.