Locket (freewrite)

And I'm swimming through the ashes of another life...

She hid the locket deep inside her heart, where no one could ever find it, if they tried if they raked at her bones if they tore through her skin and clawed her eyes out. It was buried in a secret spot that no one else knew but her, not one. And I wish I could tell you where it was, but sadly, I do not know either. What kind of a story would this be if I proved myself a liar from the start?
But if I had to warrant a guess, if my life depended on where this locket might be, I would say she hid it not right in her heart, but immediately below, a place where one could not possibly distinguish between what was her spirit or her bone. Certainly not the terrified girl, lost to her demons. I'd say it was right below the heart, slightly above her liver. Because every now and then, she'd feel a most stabbing pain, like a gut punch, like all the air was going out of her and her body was soaking in pain. And she never could pinpoint the pain, she'd just point at her chest, vaguely, mutely, begging for forgiveness, begging for someone to take away the pain, but they would not.
None stepped forward, but several stepped back, as the girl pushed them away with her begging and her muffled cries of pure, undistilled agony. And she watched, as one by one, they made their way from her, they abandoned her to her shadows, so that at one point, she stopped asking.
She realized there was little point for her to beg, to ask someone to quieten the pain inside.

So the girl stopped talking altogether, or at least about anything that mattered. She stared numbly at the people outside of her and she wished. She watched them ride the rollercoaster of emotion and she dreamed of crying, she longed for the release that tears would give her, but she found bereaved that she could not cry. That the tears and all the release that came with them was denied to her. She took to playing with her locket, because it was the closest she had to a beating heart and because it was the only thing that seemed to understand her madness. That frustration was a colossal understatement.
She would retreat inside the darkness of her dead heart and travel through until she found her hidden little locket and she would stay there for hours, her eyes dead, observing the world, utterly joyless.
Until her friends began mistaking her for a doll. She would sit so silent and so perfectly still, that they sometimes forgot she was there. And everyone was awkward and everyone felt distinctively not nice, for they no longer knew what to do with her. Whether there was really any point in inviting her out with them, 'cause she didn't seem to enjoy that all that much.
She no longer seemed to enjoy much of anything.

And they worried about her well-being, but then they did not. It's in our nature to lay blame, to forget what is unpleasant to remember, so they slowly forgot her, this little mystery they didn't know how to solve. They forgot her desperate eyes begging them for something they couldn't give her. They'd still invite her to parties and later weddings, but they no longer worried.
She was so quiet when she was with them, like a perfect little doll. She would sit on the couch for hours staring into the ground, her heart breaking on the inside, the locket booming in her chest to be let out, and she would say nothing, watching the world go about its way around her.

And nobody heard her and if they did, nobody listens. Because only crazy people listen to dolls.

Today's prompt was 'well-being' and this is the story that came to mind. Big shoutout to @mariannewest for hosting this cool challenge and keeping us writing everyday.

In case you're wondering, the quote at the beginning is from the song 45 by a band called Shinedown, which is meaningful both to me and to this story in so many different ways.

Thank you for reading,