Just another homo sapien

I was ten when Tyler durden stared into my unexceptional brown eyes and broke it to me
that I am not really the special snowflake my parents believed me to be
I got so sad, I didn't badger my mom for ice cream for five whole days
and tried to find ways
to believe that I did not fit Tyler's case
I had always wanted to be special
Someone different, someone who could hold their breath underwater ten seconds longer than anybody else in the fifth grade
Someone who could talk to girls in class without getting slapped or bitchfaced
Someone who could apply makeup as efficiently as his mother
even before his little sister learned one eye shadow brush from another

Then I grew up.

I realised, being special isn't really what it's made out to be
Or rather, what it has been defined to be by the top one percent of the top one percent of the hypocritic assholes, really
I realised that you are too young to decide your sexual orientation, unless you're hetero and fit the framework of their religious and social gratifications
I realised that if you're special, every time you need to pee outside of your house, you would have to choose
Not which stall to go to (because we all know the first and the last ones are always the filthiest)
But to either go home covered in black and blue bruises,
That would get imprinted on your mom's eyes while she tries to ease your pain
failing miserably at hiding her own
Or to be hurled at with words
Words that you would see etched on your forehead everytime you dare to look in the mirror again

I don't want to be special
Because it has become synonymous to being  Handicapped
Because everytime someone looks at me as if I'm something to fix, I break a little
And everytime someone says, "I'll change you, try me" their wink tastes like bile on my tongue, and I change a little

I don't want to be special, because I'm tired
I'm tired of being treated like an unwanted disease this society finds hard to bear
Cause boy, If I had a nickel for each time I have heard "you don't belong here"
I'm tired of being tiptoed around.
Stared at.
Whispered about.
I don't want to leave my house every morning
with my heartbeat racing,
contemplating the direction from which the stones would be thrown today.
I have never been hit from up there, by the way.

Because being special, now means constantly looking behind your shoulder
while walking to the subway
when it was your own shoes that caused the dry autumn leaves to crunch
It means feeling completely naked
Because even though you remembered donning your black tee and blue jeans that morning, your identity
Is still in the closet, clinging at the delusion of safety
It means that when everyone else "is", you " identify as"

And If I see one more picture with "all these faggots need, is a good beating to bring them down to their senses" in bold letters
A cell from my body would disintegrate with every thumb that ups
a shard of my soul would peel off with each of the double taps
Because every time I see a life sacrificed at their sacred altar in the name of purity,
the wax from the candles melts on my throat choking the air out of me

But I won't give up. I won't wear pants when they make me feel like I'm crawling into someone else's skin while my eyes will my sister's skirts to find their way to me.

There is a French proverb that says "we all have two lives, and the second begins when we realize that we only have one"
So I'll fight. I'll fight because this is it.
I'll fight because I deserve to fill my application forms without forcing my fingers to drag themselves into scratching the sex column with male or female
I'll fight because I deserve to have that first kiss under the mistletoe at the school Christmas ball
Out in the open
I'll fight, because I deserve to be able to plan that big proposal to see that smile on his face that would light up the darkest corners of my heart

I don't want to become a shadow
I Don't want to be the star whose light reaches you after it has been dead for years
I don't want to be the ambiguous outline of air, the sillage that you notice only after I have turned into dust

And I don't have to be
I Don't have to be the lone Hercules with 377 labours , because I trust you and as a human, your compassion is stronger than their lightening bolts
Their Boiling Screams and shouts will simmer down in the face of our flame because love, love is louder than the shrieks of insecurity
The Drought that has been forced on us by these mirages won't leave even a single crack on our skins, because freedom is sweeter than the bitter metallic taste of their shackles

Because if this was ancient Greece, I won't be the smooth white marble statues that they hold so dearly, But the Technicolor tapestries, bursting their eyes with red and yellow and green and orange stories
Not ones zeroes
Ones and zeroes as their computer screen blips
but the spectrum that you see in your lover's eyes with every pressure of hand, every brush of lips
I don't fit into their binary, and the loudest voice in the background that's supporting me
Is becoming of those who they consider normal to be

Because ill breathe.
I'll breathe and I'll live, when parents start teaching their kids, that the world is not restricted to pink and blue
And the children start reminding their parents that unicorns fart not in black and white but in rainbow hues
And that being deadpool is as cool as being batman
Okay, maybe cooler

So the next time you see me walking on the road counting my feet with a rhythm same as yours,
instead of calling me special, different or any other adjective that has been ingrained in your head
just say  hi.
And maybe ask how I'm doing without the acidic phonetics of pity in your voice.
Because right now, all I want, is for what I am to be normal and not an expressway to oblivion,
all I need is to be just another homo sapien.