The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

She struggled quietly.

While the invisible dark clouds loomed over others pouring down victim tokens and emotional shards that cut through the wind, the smart girl moved slyly to her own beat. She had stories to tell. But she told them to herself in the mirror at 5 in the morning. She looked back at her clone who was long fast asleep. A diamond bred from intense heat and pressure, and a bit of 12 year. She stood there for 5 minutes to make sure she could see the look in her eyes. She knew the trek was dark with no end, but she had to keep climbing.

Sadly she didn’t make the cut on the world’s most interesting because her life was not tugged by the trends of silicon and powder. She looked at her slightly crooked jaw and her willowy hair. Sadly she didn’t make the cut because she couldn’t bring herself to being reduced to a party on a six-inch screen. It was back to work. The slow simmer of inner growth floating in a haze of superficial failure. Cosmetic trickery.  She side stepped the small pits and fell into the large ones, but she for some odd reason kept going.

She was constantly tossed aside because she wasn’t worth being placed on a poster. Not the poster of a perfume enterprise nor surprisingly that of the feminine forward. Disposed swiftly for the overflowing cup of shiny lies and subtle brainwashing. She didn’t fit the mould. She didn’t support the narrative. And so they casted her to the dark corner in the cold basement to turn to mould beneath the noses of the cameras looking everywhere else.

She didn’t see him as the enemy even though two of his kind had stolen something from inside her and reprogrammed her to kiss the feet before she addressed them. She had every right to sharpen a spear and lay the two bodies upon the hilltops to be stoned to death for an eternity and beyond.

But she decided otherwise. She kept going. It’s almost as if there were something wrong with her. As if she were strong or something. It’s almost as if she looked at herself everyday to remind herself that there existed no benefit in chaining oneself to pity.

 You’d think that girl would be praised. You’d think that girl would be the general to lead the army of the real women. The ones who struggle in the shadows and suffer under the sun without the aid of cameras or fame. Without a platform by which to say, “but what about the real cause? While ten cry 50 are saving their tears for joy at the finish line. What about them?”

But she won’t ever be praised. Her beauty shines far after you see her. Her strength is sometimes off-putting. And her ability to compartmentalize, to crush her problems, to put them into a box and hide them in the back of her own head avoiding spillover is almost unorthodox. To stand over her clone’s head while the toxic sympathy rained down like fire. She weirdly had a different plan.

It’s not normal. There are people in the world who claim to be deserving of a lot of things. I always laugh. Most of them are just riding a wave to the top on a board that they aren’t navigating nor know anything about.  

 I met the perfect girl once. A real woman. A woman who deserves heaven, but has been choked by hell drowning in the flames of irony. Yet she has never made a sound. That’s whom I fight for. The one who is too strong for her own good. The woman who really needs our help. The invisible women.  

She fixed her hair. She exhaled. She knew she was behind in the race with a cinderblock weighing her down, but she was smart. She was sometimes too smart. She knew that if she spent too much time looking back the future was going to fall behind and she’d be left looking at what wasn’t because it couldn’t have ever been. I had at last a reason to truly believe god didn’t exist. Women didn’t need our help. This one did.  

I met the perfect woman, and I wasn’t sure if I could help her. And the fact that she didn’t notice was possibly the saddest part of all.