[A/N: All chapters from here and throughout the rest of the story is dedicated to my good friend @No_Thnks_Pete P.S. Space enough to Grow by Of Mice & Men felt like a good fit to the chapter]
Barcodes.
That's all we really were.
That's all we'll ever be.
We pay taxes, spend money on groceries, spend money on clothes and necessities and pay bills daily.
We spend money on textbooks, our children, our elders, our government, our community and most especially. Ourselves.
We pay for medical bills, counselling sessions, school excursions, family vacations and most importantly; we pay for our lives.
We're not really relevant to the system, to set it straight. We wake up, eat, sleep, spend money, fuck and repeat.
The government probably couldn't give two shits whether or not we lived or died.
There's only one thing they even remotely cared about. Money.
To them, we are living, breathing ATM's.
The system's slave to labour and hardship; progressively on minimum wage jobs...
We're like trees, in a way. We feel so free as an individual. Swaying in the wind like it's nobody's business, the naturalistic beauty it withstands and captivates can be irrevocably breathtaking.
The more beautiful ones are thick and proud as they show off their impeccable, evened out leaves across it's slender branches as they sit on the top of hills and smugly stand in a celebrity's garden - While the more imperfect, ordinary ones are old and decrepit. It's leaves unstable and falling as it slowly dies in a hot summer's day or a cold winter's night.
They sit at the mere bottom of the hill or in a narrow gulley where no one dares to tread. They are the unwanted ones.
In fact. We were exactly like trees. With the exception of we breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and the trees inhale carbon dioxide and produce healthy, clean oxygen for us to breath.
And just like trees, we excessively get cut down and recycled like paper. Exactly like paper. They have us lined up, prepared with their choice of weaponry and saw us down - ripping out the most valuable parts of the tree, and dropping out the excess. The unwanted parts.
That's how life works. You get ripped apart until you are totalled completely and there's nothing left, but a hollow representation. A delicate copy of who you used to be.
And that's when you know.
You're a tree. Just like everyone else. You're not a shrub, or a flower. You are a just a tree. A thing that everyone has seen. No one has seen an original copy. You are just like the the others.
A trendy, ordinary, non-original piece of life. Only staying stationary for the sake of your reputation.
You self-centred prat.