(Fiction) The Glitch In Her Reality – Chapter 1 – The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Chapter 1: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

There was a girl who always felt like she was watching the world instead of living in it. Like she was stuck behind some invisible glass wall that nobody else could see, and no matter how hard she tried to be part of everything, like school groups, or birthday parties, or family conversations, or even group chats, something in her just wouldn’t click.

She didn’t know if it was something broken in her or something broken in the world, but she was too aware, like painfully aware of things most people seemed happy to ignore.

Like how everyone kept pretending life had meaning and structure and a purpose when deep down they were all just scared and confused and trying not to think too hard about death or time or the fact that the universe didn’t owe them anything.

She had a name of course Norah, just Norah, and she didn’t believe in God. Not because she had something to prove but because the whole idea felt like a desperate human-made band-aid on a wound that couldn’t be fixed.

And she hated how everyone always made faith sound so beautiful and poetic when most of it felt like fear dressed up in nice clothes. It seemed like people were just hoping someone was in charge because the thought that nobody was in charge was too terrifying to admit.

So, they built temples and wrote scriptures and yelled at others to believe or else. And Norah just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t lie to herself like that no matter how lonely it made her feel.

But she was funny, like actually funny, not in a trying to be funny way, but in the way that happens when your brain is constantly on fire, and you’ve cried so much that laughter becomes the only thing left like a reflex. Like a last-ditch defense mechanism that says okay if this world is a joke then I’m going to laugh first before it laughs at me.

And so she did. She laughed at everything: school tests, breakups, politicians, motivational quotes, people who said everything happens for a reason, and sometimes even herself, especially herself.