For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be different. To be special. That is why a part of me hoped to receive a letter by an owl on my eleventh birthday. That is why, even though I knew the chances of it happening ranged from being rare to impossible, I waited on my 16 birthday to be inducted into the secret realm of magic just like Sabrina had been. That is why, a part of me – albeit a very small part - draws abstract patterns and designs on surfaces hoping against hope that they would signify something. I had been wishing for so long that I didn’t realize it when it actually happened. Oh, not in the sweet ways of children but in the cruel ways of teenagers. My family moved to another place just like they had been doing every 2 years since before I was born. I started calling another house my home, another school my own and another street my address. I knew adjusting was going to be difficult(as it had been for the past 8 times), but this difficult, I had no idea. Even though some would say I had experience by then and should have slipped in society without any difficulty, I didn’t find it so. In Mrihana, I was finally different. I wore the wrong clothes, spoke with the wrong accent and had different, read wrong, ambitions. A few months slipped by in which I formed aloof friendships. I spent these with a superior belief, the one which only the ignorant and naïve can have. I told myself, repeatedly, that I didn’t care what others thought, that this was just a stopover from which I would soon move on. I clinged to old friendships like a sailor clings to the debris of a capsized ship in order to stay afloat and stay alive. I wrote lengthy letters and a thousand e-mails to my friends. This couldn’t continue for long, of course. The e-mails dwindled and the mailman forgot the address of my house. I couldn’t pretend any more. My life as I saw it, was empty – of friends, of fun and of laughter. I was surrounded yet lonely. i felt smothered by people I didn’t like and couldn’t understand. Perhaps I should have made more of an effort to change and accept. But it is too late now. The sun, as they say, has set.
All I had ever wanted was to be different. Being happy makes you stand out, doesn’t it?