Day-1

Day one. 

My name is Firefly, and I am fourteen years old. Because of my age, some people don't take me seriously, even if I have something really important to say. 

Often people look at me and think that I am over exaggerating. That I am a teenager and I do not know what a hard life is. People think I am inexperienced, and they think that I am dumb, just because I don't really have a unique talent. 

I always have to plant a smile on my face. For my own sake. I have learned over the years, that if you do not smile, people think you are unhappy. If people think you are unhappy, humans have a way of digging into business that is not theirs, and they may end up ruining something fragile and beautiful that you have created for yourself.

My mother is a drunk, and she is slowly wasting away and doesn't even realize it. She claims to love her family, but she thinks that her  family does not love her. She chooses to act different than what her age wants her to be. She is worse than a teenager, but we all still love her. She eats nothing, for fear of growing fat, even if she is too skinny for her own good. She lays on the couch and reads all day long. Drinking herself to death. She has no shape, no form, and blurry colors, like ink. She is not a solid person, because she made herself to be that way. 

Humans are made of stone, but even stone wears out in time, and becomes chipped and cracked. This is why my mother drinks. She does not want to be stone, because she is afraid of being scarred. Little does she know, that by being afraid to be a real person, by being afraid to show yourself to the world, she doesn't realize that she's hurting herself even worse than if she just faced everything in her path.

People will look at me and think that I don't know what a hard life is. But I do. I was born from an imperfect family, more messed up than what an average family has. My father is from a line of broken machines. And he himself is a broken machine. 

I watch him as he tries to do his best, and there is nothing I can do. He is like a machine, one with parts that are missing, old, or broken. I can hear his gears screeching out in pain, as he slowly drags his body away to a place that I cannot see. He tries so hard to be a good father, and he is one. He is the only father that I could ever wish for. 

Sometimes, we hurt each other, and it laces scars over our souls and our minds. We will cry without faces. I have forgotten what weightless shoulders feel like. We will yell at each other, and we will do everything in our power to hurt each other. He acts too young for his age, and I act too old for mine. We are constantly clashing, and even as we slowly try to kill ourselves, we end up in each other's arms once again. 

I love my father as much as I can bare. He hurts, but I know I hurt him too. He says I make him proud, and that scares me. I don't wish to be my family, and I'm terrified I will become them. It isn't that I think they are bad, I think they are better than most people, because they fight so hard to maintain what little they have. I am afraid to become them because I wish to become my own person, and I do not want to be cased in my families shadow. 

So many people absently think that I am my parents in another body. They compare me to their past achievements, and they take credit for what I have done, but if I mess up, it is on me and me alone. 

I try hard to see the world in as many colors as I can. My father sees in pure grey, he cannot and refuses to see the better things in life, and that hurts me as well. He says he is looking at the world clearly, but I disagree. 

Even though I may not have an easy life, and it hurts with every breath I take to watch my family slowly dissolve around me, I still look up to the stars and the sky for their colors, I refuse to look at things negatively just because I may not have an easy route to take. 

My father sees grey, but I see everything. I see the good in people and in things, and I can feel it when something bad is coming this way. I watch as the world slowly eats itself, but I have to smile. For every horrible thing that goes wrong, at least something has to turn out right. A smiling baby, healthy with a family. I don't look at it jealously. I know that I was not meant for that life, and if I was, I would not be where I am today. 

I do not know what I am meant to be, and in truth I do not worry about it much. There are those that are born with no purpose, and those people have to fight even harder to earn a place in the world. But I look up to this with a smile, for I know that this is the only way that I can forge my own path and truly become happy. I am not looking to become rich, and I am not looking to become beautiful, I am only looking to be me and to prove to myself that I am capable of doing things that others wish they could do. 

It feels like I am speaking to a thousand deaf ears, but as long as my song can be heard, can be known, and can be understood I feel like I may have accomplished something here. Nothing is easy for those of us that do not have easy lives. With every broken piece of glass, it sinks to our hearts and makes it hard to feel, to act, and to understand. 

The hardest part is to face the cold night air and pick up the shattered pieces of the day. Only to rebuild over night, to shatter again the next morning. Broken glass in the hand, bleeds out like a soul. People roll their eyes and think that we are making it dramatic. Think that we don't understand. But these are the people that cover their eyes and cover their ears to our deaf songs. 

I smile at this.

I may not be pretty, and I may not be the smartest, but I know I am strong and I refuse to give way. I will pick up the pieces of my shattered sky and slowly build it all up in an imperfect way. There are cracks, and there are pieces missing, and it just takes the right touch for everything to crumble down. But I know, that as long as I look up, to the stars, and to my own dreams that I will be okay. Look to the future, but always remember where you came from.

For you are beautiful.

With all your imperfections you yourself are perfect. Your scars and your scratches, your tears and you sadness, everything about you turns into a beautiful painting on a canvas. You are a canvas. You have the ability to paint yourself. Using the colors that you make yourself. You are not limited, but you endure the life that you are given. It may hurt and it may scar, but you are strong enough to make it. Once the shadows disappear, and the crack of light seeps inside, you will blossom like a beautiful flower from the ruins and ashes of what your world was supposed to be. From there, you will create your own world, and you will make it imperfect, and from that imperfection that you cast upon it, it will become the most beautiful, the most colorful, the most soulful and the most pure world that has ever existed, for you are strong enough to do this. 

So smile through your tears, and in the cold rain just know that there is still a sun behind the clouds, and your day will come to finally see it.