a/n: so i wrote this up in about an hour because my soul sister jo (mystiques) was feeling really down and i wanted to make her feel better. yeah.
work in progress
.
.
.
There are times when nothing goes right. Everyone has those days when you just want to shrivel up and die already because there's no point in carrying on when you're broken. It's like the world has turned against you. Everyone's hiding behind fake sugary sweet smiles, only to reveal the devil hiding inside. There are these whispers that seem to always go on when your back is turned, and when you turn around with a suspicious look in your eyes, everything stops.
There are times when Kristen feels jealous of Alicia Rivera, Dylan Marvil, and all their awesomeness. They're the girls who walk around school with confidence and radiate "alpha;" they're also the most popular girls that everyone admires. But Kristen knows that it's all just a facade, a cover.
There are times when Kristen feels like her mother's pushing her too hard. It's all because of her stupid scholarship, and she has to work extremely hard to keep it, as her mother constantly reminds her, in a nagging voice.
There are times when a 90% isn't good enough, because it's just on the verge of a B. It has to be A, because A is for amazing, A is for awesome, A is for accomplishment, and so on. A is also for awful, at least according to Kristen, and that's exactly what she thinks she is. Every time her mother scolds her for getting anything less than one hundred percent, Kristen feels like screaming and tearing her hair out. Instead, she bites back the tears, runs to her room, and trashes the crumpled up paper with a big fat A- written in red marker in the top right-hand corner.
There are times when Kristen gets second place in a competition at school, take the spelling bee, for example — she got second place, losing to her best friend in the whole wide world, Layne Abeley — and her mother yells at her for not winning. Winning is everything in the Gregory family, and to them, she's just a big disappointment. Kristen tries to explain that she thinks that friendship is more important, but her mother sends her to her room, crying.
There are times when Kristen stays up all night cramming for a test. Her eyelids are significantly drooping and she doesn't know how many cups of coffee she's downed just to stay awake. Her grade comes back, and it's an 89.5% — still an A, but barely, even worse than a 90%.
Don't you know, Mrs. Gregory? When you push a girl too hard, they break.
There are times when Alicia and Dylan make fun of Kristen for worrying too much about tests and basically everything, but what do they know? They're the girls whose grades are around a C average and don't do anything but gossip and shop. They're the girls who take everything in life for granted, the spoiled brats, the bitches that get everything handed to them wrapped up in gold wrapping paper with a shiny silver bow on top.
They're the girls that will never know what it's like to work for every single thing in their life; they've never needed to, have they? Mommy and Daddy showered them with gifts every Christmas and on their birthdays, handing them credit cards that they swipe nonchalantly at the mall every single day.
Fuck all the prissy bitches who get everything they want, Kristen thinks. This world was just so messed up, at least for her. The rich people don't work at all and live happy, carefree lives. The poor people have to work for everything; most of the time, things don't work out as planned, and things end up even worse than before.
There are countless times when Kristen has been called an LBR (Loser Beyond Repair). They got the "beyond repair" part right, because she's broken beyond repair.
There are times when Kristen cries herself to sleep, knowing that she'll never be perfect enough, so why does she even bother trying?
She has this dream every night. She's running through the woods, chasing after this bright light. She doesn't know what the light is; she only knows that she has to get it before it escapes. Every time she touches it, it's yanked away and the chase resumes. Kristen makes the connection one day; she's pursuing perfection, but the harsh reality is that nobody can be perfect. So why is her mother so intent on making her only daughter perfect, if it's impossible?
There are times when Kristen just plain hates herself and her life. She's a mess of tears and she doesn't even know what she's doing in this world anymore. Everything revolves around school and grades and the ever-annoying reminders from her mother ("if you don't get into an Ivy League college, I'll disown you). She's the most messed up of them all, isn't she?
.
.
.
But there are also times when Kristen feels as if she's the luckiest girl in the world, with the best friend a girl could ever ask for. There are times when she laughs until she can barely breathe anymore. She and Layne have spent numerous nights staying up until three a.m. watching reruns of Pretty Little Liars, fangirling over Ezra and Toby and Caleb and every other hot boy on the show.
They munch on sour gummy worms and chocolate, not caring about the calories; it's the best nights of Kristen's fourteen years of life. She's having fun, without a care in the world. On those nights, all her worries were forgotten. Nothing mattered except for relaxing and goofing off with her BFF.
Kristen always wakes up at 11 o'clock the next day, feeling extremely dazed and sleepy. Everything comes crashing down like hail blocks, and she realizes that one good night doesn't make up for all the bad. Her problems never go away, she just forgets about them, which creates an even bigger problem.
Even so, Layne teaches her to relax and tries to help her through everything, but everyone knows that it's easier to break something than it is to put it back together. Everything always goes back to that one dream she keeps repeatedly having —sometimes she feels like she's free of the burden, but then she remembers that everything she's worried about is still there, haunting her.
Doesn't she know that the road to perfection is not paved, it's always under construction?
Kristen's in repair—she's not together, but she's getting there.