How the world really is

Sticker smiles reserved in masks, one for each day. Fake laughs preconditioned in the throat for when it needs to be drawn out. Compelled optimism you have to wear every day like a preset uniform. All set up for the world to turn its head to you. All to sheathe the vulnerability lodged behind cold eyes. A filtered selfie to please everyone. Since when did the world care about the dispirited? Since when did Earth extend a hand from the sea floor when the ocean inside you fills your lungs? It remains a by-stander – only a watcher as water rushes in to succumb you. It will continue to be indifferent until the last thing your eyes discern are its children only watching you submerge.

Don’t you cry yourself to sleep every night? Howling for names of people who don’t know you, calling for heavens you have second thoughts of throwing your faith into, and screaming silently in between pillows and gritted teeth so no one will hear you because the despair you’re bringing is an alien to the home you’ve known, or is it really a home to begin with because you still feel homesick even when you’re there? But has anywhere ever been home to you? You search for it, yearn for it, and wish for it, under the moon that only stares with the man in it who doesn’t have any answers to share.

In the end, you have to crawl from the depths within you while held prey by the snaking vines winding around you and suffocating you while dragging you back to the abyssal pit of darkness – your old friend – who wants you. You try to reach out for the flickering light you have descried but without a shadow of a friendly world that awaits.

So, here I am to tell you right now, dear. Pick out the knife they’ve thrusted in your gut and use it to slash into scraps the vicious vines smothering you. Don’t lose yourself in thinking that stars are out of your reach because the truth is, you own them in your intrinsic universe. From an infinitesimal jolting dark matter, explode into colors and expand your class into an endless void. Be limitless. Be vast.

Forget that old friend who lulls you songs of the dead. Rise out from the pitch-black underwater and sprint beyond the horizon with your toes barely touching the waves. Do not scour everywhere for light but dredge it in yourself because dear, you’ve got to save you for nobody else knows it better than you do. You’re a master of it. You’re the lone owner of your body, mind and heart. No one can share it with you, same as no one will also ever know the hell you’ve been through. This world, it cares less about the alluvion you’ve struggled to swim your way out of. It wouldn’t even notice the wounds that comes with your blood-drenched body. It cares less about your morbid adventure inside the dragon’s nest with the guardians of vicious vines. It would only care when you’re happy and the happiness that radiates, whether it’s genuine or not. It only loves to gaze at you when rainbows follow you. It’s only eager to look through your prismatic garden refracting a spectrum of colors but not the dim-litted box where you spend your dark times lying alone at the center of it. This world, together with the other celestial bodies in the universe, only love you when your good, but don’t offer anything you need when you can’t stand even on one foot. For the world is intended to only look up when the sky is painted in fine blue but look down with umbrella-covered heads when it turns gray and doomed.