BRANDED – BY BETTY ZAINAB
Here’s to kids constantly living in the abysmal pain of being seen as the square pegs in life’s round hole. Here’s to kids who were told the definition of ‘smart’ is straight A’s, kids who were told that beauty is constantly primping in front of a mirror and the price tags on the Tux or cute dress they have to wear. Here’s to kids who were taught that they are misfits because they do not care about anyone’s judgemental stare, were never popular at school and did not belong to the group that had to act the cliché part. Here is to all the kids out there that were degraded because of a mistake, a mistake made by society and its set rules of how things should be, the mistake of parents who refused to see the uncommon thing that is in their special child and a mistake made by friends who refused to see the unity in diversity, instead chose to bully anyone short of their definition of perfection.
We are the kids that were lied to, moulded into what society thought was a perfect fit. We are so emotionally thirsty that we fall in love easily; we believe every kind word or gesture, too needy to find out if there is an ulterior motive. We are not so hard to pick out from a sea of faces; we are usually the moody, sleep-deprived, angry, sarcastic and teary-eyed faces in the crowd. In a superficial society that prides itself on morals and standards, which are often times a spinoff of one prejudice or another, we strive to be flawless, we go to lengths to force those study notes into our heads, even if it means drowning in coffee or floating on drugs. We add or lose weight just to be the picture-perfect image of what you think we should be, we have been forced to see the normalcy in the judgemental stares and derogatory words, believing it is only going to make us better, better for whom, I wonder.
Suddenly, if we are not the ideal fit, we become freaks, weirdoes, clumsy and worthless. We live in constant fear of failure, we are so afraid of not measuring up that we end up worse than we started out to be and when we show the scars from the pain inflicted on us, when we appear rebellious, disrespectful, suicidal and with little or no self- esteem, we are either dismissed or labelled products of a misguided age. Misguided by whom, I wonder.
So here is to kids who are expected to be perfect, but want nothing more than to be real; here’s to us.
Written by Betty Zainab
ABOUT ME
Being an over thinker, I am the collapse of my thoughts,
Don’t possess much.. b-9ut yearns to learn, a lot,
A simple soul with plain desires,
With the patience of keep going, no wish to retire,
Sometimes complicated, sometimes sorted,
I am 90% introvert turned ambivert,
A writer for the reason of being a connoisseur and not just for the sake of fandom.
CONTACT ME
Instagram: @bettyzainab
WhatsApp: +2348112553591
Gmail: [email protected]
Contact: +2347011943142
