Trying to be [IN]divdual.

I learned how to draw inside the lines when I turned eight.
People don't like for you to think outside the box.
Color your hair pink.
Or draw chalk daisies on rocks.

I learned how to transform myself long before I needed the skill.
Being creative was cool but being different warrants
"eeew...." from your third grade classmates.

And though no one ever said this aloud I knew what was up.
So I adorned myself accordingly.
No more random questions, no more smiling at strangers.
Everything you wear must be friend approved, ya know
"...is this cute?"

Things I like don't matter anymore.
I'm officially apart of the crowd and we laugh at those who aren't.
The ones who dare to live out loud.

Put away your odd-ness,cover up your freakish-ness.
Hide those imperfections.
Like horses who race at Preakness,
we are now up for inspection.

The time has come for our yearly detection.
There is an impostor in our crew.
She's been thinking her own thoughts and trying to walk her own walk.
How dare she stand apart?
How dare she look for unique-ness and still long to be apart of the mob mentality.

There is no need for the likes of her kind here.
Too much independence, too much curiosity
and much too much too smart.

It felt like as soon as I was accepted I was ousted.
Years of hard work and conformity.
Down the drain.
All that time I was suppressing myself to impress others.
And it seems it's all for nothing.
I don't fit in anyway.

Perhaps that's my life's greatest tragedy.
Not fitting in and not knowing it.

Before I learned how to draw inside the lines I never even used to draw.
I used to dance.
Dance on life's back like a Chinese masseuse.
And then it got lonely up there.
And I wanted to come down.
To high to look into my friends eyes.
And I never knew how much I wanted to before I did.

So I conformed.
I crawled down, and sat in my seat, picked up my purple crayon and traced the elephant.
I used slow and determined strokes that went left and right.
They describe my phlight of following the trends and trying to be IN.
Up and down like the styles.
Good and bad like my relationships with friends.
Even like my skin tone.
And eventually complete, like I hoped to be.

Been drawing since I was eight and nothing yet.
Maybe this isn't the medium for me.
Maybe i'll take up flight .
Fly back into oblivion and dance on the clouds till heaven rains down.