d r i f t w o o d

Driftwood ☽ Chapter Two

❛❛We're smiling but we're close to tears.❜❜

-THE SCRIPT

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driftwood ☽ chapter two

          I have never once thought that—in a disgusting world such as this—I would ever see the beauty that resides in most things. It never occurred to me that I may find something so pure, I would be forced to realize that nothing is not a little bit good, or that some people are great people, or that I would see beyond what the eye could comprehend. Nor did I ever think I would become a somewhat gypsy, travelling with her unsettled heart. I never quite expected to be something great.

          I never quite expected to be anything at all.

          I suppose it's something that bothers many people: knowing that they will never really be acknowledged. That in a world full of people who are galaxies, they are simply a speck of dust. I used to be troubled by the thought. Who was I? A tiny little dark skinned girl in a world where so many people were famous and nearly everything that had to be discovered, had been discovered. Who was I to believe I could join those bright souls and become something wonderful? It was a dreadful feeling.

          It felt like warm green tea on a cold winter morning, the world covered in white snow and your heart beating so quietly you might think it were not moving at all. Or a cool autumn evening where you couldn't get the melancholy to set you free, and you sat there thinking so fiercely about life, that you forget about your coffee which would have already gone cold. It felt like stale bread, and salty cupcakes.

          But perhaps I found that traveling was my way of being important. I could meet so many people, so many strangers who, soon, would become friends. And sooner I'd become something to them. I was comfortably understanding that I didn't need a million people to know my name, even if it was all I'd ever dreamed of. I didn't need a million dollars, or five cars and my own island. I needed people.

          Even if they never quite stayed.

          When I was a little girl, I remember once adoring little beetles, with their dark-as-space shells that would shine under the sun's scrutiny. It was probably a way to prove a point. But in proving that long forgotten point I developed a liking to large, hard-shelled beetles, with their scratchy legs and beady eyes. They were different. They were not beautiful like butterflies, or bees. They were not even like caterpillars: that would soon become something great. But  they were important. Perhaps so was I. And that in itself taught me to see beauty in so many things that are...distraught.

          I like to say I grew up too quickly. When I was nine years old, I wanted to be thirteen. When I blew out thirteen candles, I dreamed of being eighteen. There was some part of the soul that felt like it was never meant to be born at the time it had been. I needed to be someone else, suppose an upright woman from a Victorian time? Or an enthusiastic member of the 60's society. I used to complain to my poor mother, and I remember what she would sit up straight in her favorite red chair, put down the large book she was reading and tell all my little friends and I: 

          "Pretty boys, pretty girls, there is so much you won't understand now but this is only the beginning. One day, you will look back and realize exactly why it needed to happen."

          Never had she been so correct. 

          The town was already so endearing somehow, like a lover who had been waiting for you for decades. Forever loyal. The wind was his hands, caressing your back in a warm hug, leaves falling to your cheeks the way soft kisses are gently planted to your skin. Trees bowing in the breeze, bending low to offer you pretty, pink flowers, even the bees and the birds were dancing for you. The whole escapade felt alive: like a little lady's wedding day, with white flowers drooping around her and happiness so pure she forgot to check if her dress was not trailing messily behind her. It felt like a lifetime in which I had stayed there, but I knew only two weeks had passed, and I had already made acquaintances with most of the families in my neighborhood. A little family of three across the street, down the road, a grand family of eight and an old couple who owned a tiny shop by the corner.