Of Dreams And Madness

A Eulogy To That Girl

To that girl
Who wears braids and wide eyes,
Wide with innocence,
And even wider as she lies.
Whose smile is always there,
Always ready,
Always seen,
Always so bright, it seems unreal.
Who laughs soundly
And snorts while doing so,
But also cries as loudly.
She pouts to get what she wants,
And she wails like a siren when she couldn't.
But she jumps, skip, jogs along the the sidewalk when she does while hummin'...
To a song only she knows
—But she doesn't sing aloud, no.
She wasn't so proud of her voice,
She knew she'd sound like a dying cat,
Everytime she tries to belt out a note higher than five... or is there even a note like that
—she doesn't know, but she was sure...

That girl was sure, that I am sure of.
The world is wide in front of her,
A blank canvas
She was trying to fill
With light, pastel colors,
Like an amateur artists,
She thinks she knew too well.
And that's a proof of her sureness!
She's sure of what to paint:
She'd paint flowers with five petals,
She'd sketch houses with chimneys
She'd add two colliding, symmetrical mountains behind it,
And on top of them, she'd draw a sun with eight rays just like the flag of her country that she was taught in school.

In school,
She was smart.
And arrogant, but she was smart.
She got good grades, do some extra academic activities.
Boy, she got praised a lot!
But you know what?
She keeps a secret:
The one praise she wants, she never got.
And she gets jealous
Of those... hmm kids,
Who gets treats when they got more than half the exams right,
While she?
A perfect score,
And just a pat on the head... like a pet,
Nothing more.
She envies those who doesn't have to try hard to be noticed, or complimented, or simply accepted.

She's assured, confident —too much sometimes
But at moments after dark, late, late at night
She'd lay awake in bed like a depressed adult would,
Thinking, 'am I doing everything right?'
Because slowly, uncertainties were trying to creep in her mind.
Feelings she wasn't taught to feel started to rise
like the waves hitting the rocks on cliffs, hard and with such force
That it shoved her to confusion.
And to a girl who is always certain,
Being confused is as wicked as stealing a kiss with a boy behind the curtains —she wasn't permitted to.

But confusion also opened doors she wasn't even aware existed.

And that's when she started to craved something her young mind didn't know...
Or perhaps, she knew but she couldn't pinpoint what that thing was,
Or if it's even a thing.
I mean, how can you explain existential crisis to a girl of thirteen?
Who still believes clothes were made by elves,
And a prince, riding a white horse—it has to be a white horse— would save the day
And take her away
To a castle far, far away.

Guess, her illusions didn't take her that far.

To that girl,
And her childish daydreams,
Which got her hurt.
She'd mistaken infatuation for love.
And she fell for the first boy who showed interest.
The said boy was tall, thin, not really fully developed but he was cute.
For her.
He was cute for her,
For he can drew more petals than she can,
Can lay out more accurate depictions of mountains behind tall, two story houses with no chimneys
And his sun doesn't have eight rays, no,
His sun hides behind the clouds,
As shy as he was to touch her hand under the table at class,
And she thought that was cute too.
Poor girl...
If she only knew.
That soon, he'd dumped her for someone more popular —but less brainy— than her.
A girl who was more sure, more confident than she could ever be.
A girl she thought she was:
Beautiful, stands out of everyone else.
Until she realized
She was as plain
As the four-eyed nerd in two stuffy braids she used to teased.
She wasn't special,
No,
She was just vain.
And to her defense, she was raised that way.
And it hurts, 
The truth hurts like a hard slap on the face waking her up from her illusions.
She was no diamond in the rough,
She was just like everybody else.
Molded into the same concept of what a girl like her should be and be not.