Thoughts of a Doll

The air was clean. Almost irritatingly clean. The cool morning breeze filling her lungs, making her feel so damn good when she just wanted to cower in a corner and let it all out. The sun, smiling at her so mockingly while the weather had to be so nice and pretty. Just to contrast how terrible she felt. She hated how at ease she was. She hated that she felt full of energy, she hated that her morning coffee on the balcony of her three-room apartment with railings covered in glimmering morning dew tasted just as good as always. Like the entire world was telling her to move on, like the entire world was telling her to get up and stop crying over her silly little problems when they really were so irrelevant in the bigger picture. 

Oh, the bigger picture. How much she hated it. How everything she did and said was expected to lead to a better future for herself. 'Sweetie, I know you don't want to do this, but you'll be thankful later.' Later. It was another one of those words she couldn't stand. Because later, everything was going to be better. Right? Of course, it had to be. Otherwise, what purpose would her struggles have had? So she had to focus on later. Later, later, later, later. For the bigger picture. God, it was slowly getting to her. No, not slowly. It kept getting faster, actually. 

After all, she had been suppressing it all for way too long. Since, of course, acting on emotions would affect her future, the later, the bigger picture. So she would suppress it all. And the people would like her. She was a perfect little doll. Pretty, smart, obedient, oh, so damn perfect. Anyone would pay to be her, wouldn't they. Of course they would, because Anyone is a unbelievably stupid person. Anyone is a forty year old drooling man who spends his day looking at young beautiful girls. Anyone is a girl who's been treated poorly and just wishes to be as good as that perfect little doll. Anyone could even be a different doll who fools herself thinking this other doll would have it better than herself. 

So those people would praise her. They would cheer her on, push her forward on her fragile glass path that looked so sturdy from a distance. A strong bridge, leading straight into a successful life, no breeze or storm could ever knock it down, that's what her glass path looked like to most. Little did they know, one misstep, one wrong move, smiling at the wrong person at the wrong time even just once, the drama would be unbearable. She would be booed off stage, never to be seen again. Probably. But she never did slip up. 

She kept clinging to those rules set upon her by some people in power, at this point maybe worshiping them. As much as she hated it, she needed the praise. She was sacrificing herself for that goal that wasn't even hers, and she needed the recognition. Now, later was what she was craving. For God's sake, if the later wouldn't be now, or at the very least soon, she was convinced she would go insane. Which, at this point might have already happened.

In some twisted way, she had started to enjoy being a perfect but oh-so fragile doll. Being the centre of attention, having everyone, or rather, anyone's eyes on her made her feel... alive. She used to feel like that was her purpose, to be this role model of an ideal she didn't even support, for other people's entertainment's sakes. But life kept finding a way to remind her that that imposing bridge really wasn't more than a thin glass sheet separating glory from despair. Separating a perfect doll from a used and thrown away toy. So instead of looking at her feet, she listened to the cheers that she knew were even more fragile than her own path. One word was often all it took to take down someone like herself. The wrong word to the wrong person, and her oh-so loyal community would turn on her in a heartbeat. And they did. 

So there she sat, the plastic chair digging into her back, her view no more than the office building across the street, coffee burning down her throat, cheeks flushed red from the cool morning breeze, a stark contrast to the penthouse of the very same building she now inhabited the second floor of. And worked in. Like any other worker in the whole wide world. Treated the same, look at the same way. Because in her world, people had the choice between being a doll, and being Anyone.