A story of self-image in the 21st century

Someday we’ll understand, they tell us, someday we’ll know.

Our parents tell us many things about how our lives are going to end up. But we never really listened. At ten years old, the most important thing on our minds was who could jump the farthest from the swingset. They told us that as we grew up, we'd stop liking who we are. They said we would be lost and they said that one day we would find ourselves.

We never listened, at ten years old, we were best friends and nothing could change that. And then we grew up.

We are even more alike than we care to admit. We have the same driven, obstinate points of view. Each equally determined to be heard. Lulled by a false sense of friendship. Far beyond the respected boundaries, we’ve harbored borderline irrational hatred for another. But we’ve been friends for so long, we simply don’t know any other way.

She’s slight. In form, in manner, in speech. Slight. She’s short but she likes to look down on others. Her voice clips and is extremely pitchy. She is also rather unpleasant. I’m not as perfect as I would have hoped to be either. But this isn’t about me. It isn’t even really about her. It’s more about the things that have happened to us the past few years.

Shakespeare once said that all the world is a stage and the people, its players. He was right. But as technology advances and times change…the world is now the latest reality television show, the people, its barbies. Each one going through ridiculous self-imposed challenges and somehow ending up a lesser person than the one they were when they began. No one is happy with what they get. Everyday is a perpetual cycle of general unhappiness. We get up in the morning and we find new ways to hate ourselves. And we find new ways to hate each other.

I’m tired of this.

If we can’t get along then, if we can’t stop fighting, why can’t we leave each other alone? If we don’t like the people we’ve become, why can’t we change?

The answer to these questions must be found by each of us- one way or the other. Eventually, everything will make sense. But for now, while we are still searching for that answer, we are lost. We are trapped in a dollhouse of our own volition. In this perfect world, there is no one who is perfect and there is no one that truly fits in the way we dreamed they could. When we were younger, we were playing pretend, but now, we are playing for real and nothing seems to be what it’s supposed to be.

Someday, we’ll understand, they tell us, someday we’ll know.