On a cold winter day a little girl was born. Her parents had hopes so big, "what will she be I wonder?" Will she be a Doctor, a writer, a woman to change the world?

As she grew her parents hopes got smaller and smaller. It seemed there was nothing this little girl could do right. When learning to ride a bike she would always fall, when it came to school she could not get it right. She watched her sisters the perfect kids, straight A students. The kind of kids that always made their parents proud. The little girl wanted to be like them, but the harder she tried the more she failed. As she grew she started to hate everyone around her she would always hear "Why can't you be like them?" a phrase she grew to despise. She would never be them she was her, no one seemed to understand that and no one could love her for that.

So one day she woke up and decided that was it, she would never again show her pain, she wouldn't cry, her problems were hers and no one else could share them. The more she died the more she was loved, until one day she woke up and could no longer remember who she was. She turned sixteen, married and started a family; her mother was so proud "maybe this time she will get it right". The rest of her family waiting to see if she would fail again, knowing that failing was the only thing she was good at. A few years later her perfect but fake existence ended. At only 18 the little girl's marriage was over, it was time to go back home.

Once again she looked on while everyone else around her was loved and she was pushed to the sideboards waiting, hoping that one day it would be her turn. That never came, at 21 she married again. Telling herself this time I will get it right, this time I will be the perfect wife, the kind that every man dreams of, but once again she was wrong. Her husband would ignore her, she would not complain. She would find a life of her own again. On the outside everyone saw the perfect couple a man that would give her anything she wished, and a wife that was happy and fun. On the inside they missed the truth. The little girl was once again dying. She would look and try to find who she was. What was she good at, what could she do, she didn't know. Every night more tears were shed as she cried herself to sleep.

So here she is at twenty-four, living in the shadows of a life that is tattered and torn. Where will she go she does not know? For now she will sit and wait and pray that she does not completely die. There are wonderful things about the little girl but no one to see them. So once again she takes out the shovel and buries them so deep that they cannot be seen. Maybe one day someone will dig them up like a time capsule just waiting to be opened to find all the wondrous things that are held within.

May 28, 2001