An Image

You don't want us to look, yet you are showing off more and more of your skin.
You don't want us to judge, yet your list of ex is growing bigger and bigger with each passing second. You don't want us to notice just your curves, yet you are making it harder and harder not to do so. Instead you want us to praise your more subtle features, like that one special eyelash you meticulously painted purple. You want us to appreciate you for your inner beauty, even though it is uglier still underneath. You want, you want, you want! You can go on wanting, but your sense of fashion highlights anything but. It is uncontrollable, like fear. It's primal. It's instinct. It's human. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry that I want to increase the survival chances for our species?

I remember the occasion when you confronted me about the issue. You were angry, hysterical. You were hissing and snarling. Like a starving beast having caught itself an unsuspecting deer. You grabbed me and were on the verge of biting my head off. You wouldn't let go of me until you've made clear of yourself that it was style, a sense of fashion, and that was it, nothing more. I tried. I wrecked my brain trying. Believe me, I'm still trying to this day, but I still haven't gotten any closer in understanding or seeing any correlations between looking fashionable and looking like an on-call prostitute. I wouldn’t have minded if you said that was the look you were going for. You could’ve called it anything other than fashion and I wouldn’t have minded, but you didn’t want to face the truth and realize how trashy of a person you are.

However the confrontation did bring me a new understanding of you as a person. Underneath that facade of yours, there is something lurking about. Perhaps it is some flaws you don’t want others to see. Perhaps you know how to do something that nobody else does. Perhaps you do have something that sets you apart from all the others, in a good way, but you keep it buried. You don’t want to stand out, you want to blend in, and somehow, you are doing it by standing out. You gossip, you taunt, you create dramas. You do all of that so you don’t fall victim to any of that. Or so you believe.

I’ve always wondered. Do you not get tired of worrying all those problems every second you are awake? Do you not realize eventually you’ll have to leave without enjoying a life that could be full of joy instead of fear you create? Do you not just want to throw it all away and for the first time, look and act as yourself? There is an entirely new world outside of the shell you are now hiding in. There exists people who will think highly of you because you are different, instead of knocking you down. Be yourself, your real self, but you should also be aware. Be aware of the kind who tell you that you are unique (or as the yearbook team had ever so uniquely spelled it, you-nique). They are those who will do everything they can to squash you like a bug for being different. I’m pretty certain you have a lot of experiences with those people as you’ve been an integral part of that group. Realize that you are not unique. You are just like everyone else, muddling through life, another piece to the puzzle that will never get solved.

For years you’ve fought for something so great, a fantasy, a dream. In that dream you see yourself rich and glamorous, where boys chase you like how the wealthy chases wealth. For years you've been fighting to achieve that dream. Society has mislead you into thinking you are close, but in reality, you are merely a reflection of absurd societal images. You are like an overly decorated vase, fragile and flawed, always in danger of shattering into million little pieces, impossible to put back into a recognizable form.

I feel sorry for you, but then again, I can’t say you don’t feel the same for me.