By Lorena Tellez

The Beast That Shouted I at the Heart of the World

At 8 years old, I learned that the world moved without asking me.

The ceiling fan spun in slow, perfect circles above my bed, cutting the air into even pieces. The refrigerator down the hall hummed, low and constant. Headlights slid across my bedroom wall and disappeared, slid across and disappeared, like something breathing. Everything moved with quiet certainty, as if it had been told what to do and had agreed to do it.

Even then, I suspected there were rules. Not rules like don’t run in the house or finish your homework, but older rules, quieter rules, rules everyone else seemed to follow without being told.

At school, I collapsed into myself, trying to take up less space; my God preferred quiet offerings. I folded into my chair, tucked my elbows in, kept my knees together — but I never knew where to put my hands. At my sides, they looked like they belonged to someone else. In my pockets, they felt like I was playing a character in a movie. Folded together, they made it look like I was begging.

So I watched other people constantly, studying the choreography: how they leaned against desks, how long they held eye contact, how they laughed, how wide they smiled. Everyone else seemed to understand something they silently agreed upon. I was wordless, breathless, trying to translate scripture no one had ever taught me. I began to understand that being human was a kind of ritual, and I had arrived without knowing the prayers.

I did not think being human would feel like this. I did not think it would feel like standing in a temple, terrified of doing something wrong.

It wasn’t that being a person hurt. It was that I didn’t know how to be one.

I wanted to be absorbed into them, into their rhythm, their certainty. I wanted to move the way they moved, as if guided by something invisible and kind. But I was afraid, too — afraid that if I opened myself completely, if I showed everything inside me, I would still be turned away. That I could lay myself on the altar and still be told I was the wrong kind of offering. That I could split myself open and say, Look, this is everything, this is all of me, and it still would not be right.

So I observed. I mimicked. I worshipped.

I tried on expressions the way other girls tried on clothes. I would pull my eyebrows together and then relax them. I would smile with my mouth closed, then with my teeth showing, then with my head tilted slightly to the side. I practiced laughing silently, then with sound, then covering my mouth with my hand. I watched my reflection carefully, waiting for the moment when something would look natural, when the face in the mirror would stop looking like someone pretending. If I could assemble the right expressions, the right reactions, the right timing, maybe it would become real. Maybe I would become real.

Sometimes I would hold one expression too long, and it would begin to look wrong, stretched and trembling at the edges. I would drop it quickly, my face falling blank like a stage after the lights go out.

I did this every night, just as fervently as other people prayed.

***

At middle school cheer practice, we rolled out eight blue mats across the cafeteria floor, taping them together so they would not slide apart. Stomp, stomp, clap. The sound echoed flatly against the walls. Stomp, stomp, clap. Our bodies moved in sync, feet striking the mat together, hands cutting through the air together. The sound filled the room in steady bursts, over and over, until it stopped sounding like noise and became something else.

One of the new girls, Autumn, kept losing the beat. Stomp, pause, stomp. Stomp, clap, pause. Around us, the others began to look at each other; small, quick looks, the kind that travel fast and settle heavily. The air in the cafeteria changed, and the room began to shrink, the edges pulling inward. A faint ringing started in my ears, so quiet at first I thought it was coming from the lights.

At that moment, Autumn stopped being just a girl messing up a chant. She became flesh and bone, just like me — a body in a room full of people who knew exactly where to put their hands.

Later, in the locker room, the team formed a circle, talking in low, excited voices.

“Oh my God, Autumn is so embarrassing,” one of them said, and the others laughed sharp, metallic laughter that seemed to bounce off the lockers and come back louder. The circle tightened slightly, shoulders brushing, heads leaning inward. I stood just outside the center of them and felt the familiar pressure in the room, the feeling that something was being decided.

The ringing in my ears grew louder. It filled my head until it was hard to hear anything else.

They laughed, and I laughed with them, my voice sliding into place half a second too late but close enough. In the mirror across the room, I caught a glimpse of myself under the fluorescent lights — shiny, polished, reflective. My face arranged correctly, my body angled just right, my hands moving when they were supposed to. The tension in the room dissolved. The frequency stilled. My God was pleased.

That night, I stood in the bathroom and tried to make that same face again, the one from the mirror, the one that had worked.

I practiced until my cheeks hurt.

Years passed of me sanding down every sharp edge, every wrong reaction, every expression that lasted too long or not long enough. I learned how to nod while someone was talking, how to laugh before the silence became uncomfortable, and how to say the right thing in the right tone. I built a version of myself that could move through rooms without disturbing anything, something smooth and quiet and acceptable.

***

One afternoon during online school, the screen went black as my classmates logged off one by one. Their faces disappeared into small gray rectangles until it was just my own reflection staring back at me. The house was silent. It was 3 p.m., and I decided to make my bed.

I pulled the sheets tight, folding the corners carefully, smoothing the fabric with the flat of my hand. The sheet had to be perfectly straight, perfectly flat, no wrinkles. I pulled harder, trying to get it smooth enough, tight enough, right enough.

The fabric tore.

The sound was small, but it split the world open. The sheet gave way in my hands, the tension releasing all at once, and suddenly I could feel everything — the weight of my arms, the feeling of my legs touching, the pressure of my chest rising and falling, the fact that I was a body, a living thing, a creature trapped inside skin. My hands stopped working properly, moving too fast or too slow, like they no longer belonged to me. I tried to smooth the sheet, to fix what I had torn, to make it flat again, but the fabric would not come back together.

The ringing came back, but this time it was deafening, a constant scream inside my head. My skin prickled, goosebumps rising like a warning. I felt like prey — like a small animal that suddenly realized it was being hunted, even if it could not see the predator.

Something inside me opened quietly, without spectacle, just a slow turning inside out. Everything I had been holding in place began to spill loose, and I did not know how to gather it again. I pressed my hands against my body as if I could keep something from falling out. I was no longer performing. I was no longer in control. It was grief without an object, fear without a name.

Later, my mom found me in the closet, curled in on myself, rocking back and forth like a much younger child. For years, I had survived by disconnecting from my body, from my fear, from the constant awareness of being alive. But my body had been keeping score the whole time, and it finally collected.

I was fifteen when the world ended, and no one noticed. The next morning, the sun still rose. Birds still screamed in the trees. Traffic still moved in long, impatient lines. People still laughed in hallways, raised their hands in class, and knew exactly what to do with their hands. The world continued with the same quiet certainty, as if nothing had happened.

***

I still don’t always know where to put my hands, but they are here. Resting on desks, wrapped around coffee cups, and pressed into the pockets of my jacket. They are awkward and restless, and sometimes they shake, but they are mine.

I did not think being human would feel like this — this loud and bright and fragile all at once. There is a chaos to being alive, a constant awareness that there is no exit strategy, that the world will keep spinning and the ceiling fans will keep whirring and the birds will keep screaming, whether I understand any of it or not. But I know something now that I didn’t know then: being human is not a performance you perfect. It is something you agree to participate in, over and over again, without ever fully understanding it. There is no moment where you arrive and suddenly know exactly how to exist. There is only the constant, quiet decision to remain.

I am still learning the words. I am still learning where to stand. I am still learning what to do with my hands.

I am still here. ■