Z.

Somewhere in this world, there’s a psychotic, hopeless romantic that longs for a different life other than the one that she’s living. Somebody once called her a ‘pathological liar’ for having the desire to feel the warmth of a solid, personal affirmation. She did not have the correct paintbrushes to create a masterpiece with the acrylic paint she had been given. She did not believe that having lovely, round eyes would cost her the innocence and neo-liberalism that no female can ever regain even if they cried s**t-load buckets of blood. She ventured into the world using her fine fingers to stroke her canvas. Sometimes decadently, and most times, remorsefully. Nights spent in front of a broken mirror, in a home with no lights. She crawled to bed every night for the desire to be what she could not be, weighed her soul underneath the candlelight. One day she imagines that she’s SZA and deals with the bullshit in her throat by belting it out in the rain. The next day, she’s running from the infatuation she experienced in the peak of her high school days. Lonely soul, hopeful girl is she. She sits at the bus stop waiting for a lift from an anonymous man. Hoping that, this time around, she can succumb for a decent meal. Breathless, from running away from herself, on the soles filled with holes and frantic from paranoia-filled cocaine nights; a reflection of her on-going struggle to regain her voice. A personal odyssey. It is never easy to walk in the presence of mortals with a lovely façade of strength and poise. She knows better than to cry under the stars, in the comfort of the ground, with the company of mice. Every day was a new day for a new falsity or prevarication. She thought of it as bulldozing her way into people’s minds and hearts. This was why she thought of herself as a psychopath. In the daytime, she would waste her existence in trying to forge her ‘true identity’. And at night, she would pour fountains of sodium from her eye sockets and wonder where her true purpose lies. She may have engulfed her soul with darkness and she may have been a sadist but was Zara really a psychopath or just another teenager who was misunderstood and terribly misinterpreted by herself and society?