Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning.
I'm drowning in a sea of uncertainty
Of ambiguity
Of insecurities
Of not knowing who I am and who I want to be
But there's a way out.
It's not free but, of course, nothing is.
If you sell your soul and let them dissect and examine every single particle of it; every grain of sand in a desert, every star in the sky...
A lifeboat of personality tests and horoscopes and media will come to your rescue.
And they will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about yourself.
Each flaw.
Each virtue.
Each trait.
But now it feels like I'm being picked apart by tweezers and being flattened into two dimensions.
I'm a pie chart, not a person.
I'm a caricature, not a character.
I'm being ripped into percentages and shapes and being sorted into a thousand different boxes.
One of the boxes would be labelled smart:
Good girl. Clever girl.
Tell me the answer- not like you have any other purpose.
She's not pretty or funny or even that kind...
But not a bad mind.
That's all you're good at; being a know-it-all, that's all you'll ever be.
Remarked her father scornfully.
Another, clueless.
Ugh, what is she wearing?
What is she doing?
She's so weird.
She's trying.
And failing.
God forbid anyone take her seriously.
She doesn't matter.
She will never matter.
She will never matter.
She will never matter.
Another, honest.
That's what they think, that I'm honest. But they don't know the half of it. These labels and boxes only scratch the surface although that's all I am now, surface. I have been reduced to pixels on a screen, ink on paper. And when someone puts a match to that paper, there's nothing I can do. I'm burning up. But now my screams, previously submerged under water have become silent altogether. I'm just another number. And numbers can't scream.
~an original~