charlyounight

[charlyounight]

Intro:

walk the fields that make you feel beautiful, look inward to the thoughts that make you full with love, and with affection caress your hair, your heart and sometimes, look in the mirror and realize you are a work of art.

“Your birth stabilized my life a lot”, my dad said at dinner one night.

“Its like you were born and I had suddenly won a lottery. I got a better job, a better income, a better house. You brought all these new, more legitimate reasons for us to be happy. You made us very content”

Used to, I wanted to correct him. I used to make my parents happy. I was their first daughter, their first child. I was the apple of their eye, the sun in their days and the stars in their night skies. They knew I would do something great, so they named me a name that meant unique. I was this very quiet and sweet kid. I didn’t cry when strangers took me in their arms.

“Oh my god, she does not know how to cry!”, they’d say with their faces stretched broad into a smile, while looking at my slightly anxious face. My parents took that as a compliment. I was naughty, yes. But my limits were defined. I never hurt anybody.

Except maybe when I was months old and my mom was stitching a frock for me. I distracted her and the needle pierced right through her index finger.

Or maybe when I was a year and a few months. I opened the drawer of our dressing table, saw a blade and held it tightly in right fist. I am sure it hurt me. It stung a bit, I think. And then, I remember seeing myself in the mirror, my face gradually scrunching in a big, loud cry. My mum came rushing out the bathroom. She was worried.

Or maybe it was a few months later, when I was sat on a plastic chair beside the sharp edge of our kitchen wall. And when I stood up, the chair slipped backwards. I fell, my forehead sliding on the sharp wall. Blood oozed out of my left eyebrow, and my parents rushed me to the hospital. I got eight stitches.

Or was it when I started not winning competitions? Or when I started getting bad grades? Using my phone too much? Could it be that time I lied to my mom about studying sincerely? Or when I calculated the answers to my abacus homework with a calculator and my mom found out? Or maybe when I gave my first social science exam and didn’t fill in the map because I was too stupid to understand the instructions? Or could it be when I was in 10th grade and didn’t know much of how the legislature worked? (my mom called me dumb for that). Was it when my mom saw my father’s despicable traits showing up in me? When i started talking back, not keeping my room clean, not putting my dirty cup in the basin, not studying, not respecting anyone, manipulating my own parents?

When was it, that my parents realized that their golden child was gone? When did they finally realize I don’t have it in me anymore? That I can’t win competitions and get good grades and dance and study and have a fulfilling life? When was it, that they knew I wasn’t the daughter they made? That I wasn’t after all, unique?

I used to be an over-achiever kid. I won elocution competitions, dance competitions, handwriting competitions. I was smart, I used to get straight A’s. I was teacher’s favorite. “She looks like she’s always lost in her own fairytale.”, “She’s a gifted kid.”, “She is such a cute kid.”, “Having her in my class is a blessing.”, “She’s just amazing over-all!”. These words were repeated in every parent-teacher meeting my parents ever went to.

And then something happened. I wasn’t that kid anymore. I was suddenly different. I stopped dancing, I stopped studying, I used my phone too much, I started lying, cussing people out for fun, making sex fantasies, living in my head too much.

What used to be a bright, sunny day stretched over a vast field of yellow sunflowers, pink and white roses, apple-red and ivory tulips, orange and peach gradient hibiscuses, a large lake with quivering ripples, and rocks by the water bank covered with soft green moss and small fishes that shone like gold and silver, rubies and sapphires beneath the bright green and blue hue of the water- soon enough turned into a dark overcast day, a cloudy sky, and the sun barely visible.

The flowers now rot in the soil that once shimmered like silk under the sun, and the unmoving, dead fishes float upon the still water- the water looks colorful for now, but soon it will take on the color of the sky.

There was a girl that tended to this field, not long ago. The girl lived in the hut near the lake.

Now, she barely comes out. You see, she woke up one day, and saw herself in the new mirror she put across her bed the previous night, but something wasn’t right. She wasn’t as pretty as the flowers she took care of, her hair wasn’t as soft as the moss on the rocks she so often sat on, and her eyes didn’t glimmer the way the water in the lake did.

Was it fair? For her to take care of nature the way she did and not get it back in return? I mean, it’s not like she ever looked after her world to expect something in return in the first place. But doesn’t everyone say what goes around comes around? Why hasn’t it come around for her yet? How long will it take? How many more flowers to tend to? How many more fishes to feed? How long?

She got up that day nevertheless, feeling bitter. But she did well that day. And the next. And so it went on for some while, until her bitterness reached a peak. When it did, she stayed in the hut, feeling guilty for not taking care of herself, her flowers, her fishes, her moss, her world. But one look at herself in the mirror, and the anger would return. Why? Why am I not pretty to myself, when everything around me is as pretty as I want to be? she wondered, not realizing that the mirror she bought was erroneous, misleading, faulty even.

There was nothing wrong with her. The mirror merely couldn’t capture her beauty. Her flowing hair, her dark eyes, her glowing skin, her sultry body, her deep brown moles against her fair skin- everything so close to a piece of art.

Every imperfection, so close to perfection.

Almost as if it’s been placed there not by mistake, but by precise, meticulous hands.

If only she could leave the hut she so often didn’t anymore, and buy a new mirror. Maybe, just maybe, the beauty of her presence in itself, is more than enough to lighten the sky. And just walking through the wooden door of her hut and into the field would be enough to bring life to the fishes she forgot to feed so long ago, to the flowers she envied for their beauty and the moss that missed her touch.

Maybe, just maybe, she doesn’t even need a mirror. Because she is enough. Enough, as she is. She lacks nothing. She fulfills what she thinks she lacks. She gives life to the things she finds beauty in, and that is beautiful in itself. It’s gorgeous even. Breathtaking.