Truly, I truly am.

I can not stress this enough that I really am one individual in one very big world. The world moves too fast for me sometimes, and at times the sand in the glass falls too slowly. As I sit in a cardboard box with my legs crossed in the middle of a crowded city street, I can hear the footsteps of people walking past in a hurry, looking at their cellphones, dragging their briefcases and children around, the wails of crying infants being pushed in strollers in the smog drowned air. My eyes see the forced grins of mothers, the maniac laughs of teenagers and the innocence of little babies wrapped up in blankets being rocked back and forth with the melodies of long forgotten lullabies.

I wish I could.

Who am I? Just an individual, observing everyone's lives. There are times when I wish I could be the birds in the sky, because they're truly free to do as they please. They eat whatever they want, go wherever they want, leave their business out for others to tend to without a care in the world, don't care about their appearance and even when they are singled out or by themselves, they will always be able to merge with another set of birds or find a new flock.

How difficult is it when you've been put upon display at a museum and people stop and stare at you? The Mona Lisa, she must have only half-way smiled because she knew that it was impossible to be grinning as bright as the sun every day at tourists. When all the other paintings in the same category are much, much brighter, and the only thing that it can do is continue to wear a mask that no one knows of. Even when the Mona Lisa is finally smiling and it's not for show, it doesn't last forever. Soon, she will be back to putting on a show because everyone expects that half worked smile of hers.

People often forget how long it took to create the Mona Lisa: 4 years, 1460 days before she could be displayed. But people don't see that. People are not there to see how much paint was sacrificed to create such a piece of art. How many sleepless nights were wasted, paint thrown at the canvas, blood and tears protruding from broken fingers mixed with the smell of hard work and dented paint brushes. The meticulous details are what people seem to miss from the Mona Lisa and other paintings - the journey is not what people see, but often the end product. DaVinci may not even look at the Mona Lisa and immediately think, "Ah, this is my greatest piece of art." Instead, he may look at her and think, "I spent four grueling years of hard work on this piece, so many sleepless nights. I remember the frustration, the anger at not getting things right. In fact, I can still see the corner of her face that I'm not particularly happy with. I don't like the tone of the area as much as I thought I did either." No one will know exactly how DaVinci feels about the piece except for Mona Lisa herself who was worked on, and the original artist. But it doesn't stop the fact that people regard it as his greatest piece and, for some, a masterpiece.

People may even go up to this piece and marvel at it, but after they leave, they leave. It's hard to say when things are permanent. There are other art pieces that people will always look at, and they will never know DaVinci's true feelings on it, and how the Mona Lisa feels herself because she's so complicated and has been so analyzed that she has become a mystery. She is a fragment, a painting lost in meaning.

College is very much the same way. Being put on a pedestal so high and being asked to do your very best in a classroom full of individuals who have higher qualifications than you do yourself. You're at risk of losing scholarship offers and valuable time if you don't put forth your absolute best. You fail, and then what? Your family might be disappointed, but I'm sure you'll be much more difficult to yourself. Why did you answer that wrong, everyone else got it right, you tell yourself after sinking back into the shadows and swearing that you'll do better next time.

Snow and Happiness are equally the same thing. Happiness falls out of nowhere, and when it touches hands, people can feel from it: the coldness, wetness, the sight of an individual snowflake. But it soon melts into a puddle of water, just like all of the other snowflakes in the sky. The water is cold, it loses its individuality. It can't help itself because that is what is supposed to happen. It has no control over things like that.

That is why the human heart is so fickle and so odd. Like the snow, my feelings are so conflicted. No matter how many times I try to reach that happiness, it melts as fast as it comes. I explain my feelings, I get more water. More. More. More.

And because of that, I don't try to tell people my true feelings anymore, because I'm afraid people are crass because I've repeated so many of my issues over and over again. It's hard to relay your feelings that you have already relayed several thousand times because you know people will get tired of them, and you can tell that it wears them out, so you can only keep it to yourself and pray that it will die by itself. The puddles of snow can fill a bucket now, be dumped into a lake, and be salty enough to raise salt water fish in them, I'm sure.

Sitting at the table with a pack of cards, flipping them over and over again with a crowd of people, holding a poker face because that is all an individual has to do to get by in this world. But how much longer can that person hold a poker face before they're found out?

Slowly, it kills you because there is literally nothing you can do because those familiar faces that played poker with you at the table, the spectators of that painting, have all become unfamiliar faces who walk past you with their crying infants and shopping bags, rushing off to buy Christmas presents for their loved ones or trying to make their job interviews in the next town over. The world moves too fast, and nobody seems to understand why you're so slow in such a fast paced world.

Why can't you be happy? Because nothing can be certain in this world. Instead of relying on others and being faced with disappointment, maybe it's time you stopped being so reliant on others and forcing others to try and understand you. Even if it's hard, you must endure it because relying on others and trying to get them to try and walk in your footsteps is hard. So sit back down in that cardboard box. Sit. Back. Down.

It can't help what it feels. And it can't help that that button just wants to be fitted right on that shirt, to be sewn with more care so that it won't fall off. But the button will fall off again and have to be re-sewn on again. The shirt will find a new button, or the owner of the shirt will toss the shirt out - who sews buttons back on shirts nowadays anyway?

So I'll continue to sit in the cardboard box because it's better to be sitting and watching other people rush by than try to join them. Because I can't reach the expectations that I want to despite my best efforts, because I'm afraid of failure for the time being. Because wearing a mask is difficult and it's too embarrassing to relay your problems to other people because you've done it so many damn times, and you can tell others are frustrated with you because they don't understand why you can't pull yourself up. So I hold my hand up and shake my other hand, because disappointing myself is somewhat bittersweet; but if I only depend on myself, then I'll never have to be disappointed in myself for allowing me to do things to other people, for causing them their own stress. Is it fair for people to blame your doubts on yourself? Maybe the plate has been dropped so many times and glued back together that it's physically hard for them to overcome it soon. It's slowly being glued back together, but if the impatience of others affects the broken hands trying to glue it back together, it can be easily dropped and reassembly will have to start over, only with more shards and pieces this time.

So to quote Epik High's song, Encore:

"I didn’t realize that the show was over.
No, I didn’t realize that the show was over."
One individual who can not rid of these thoughts, despite trying so very hard, closes hers eyes to sit back into the cardboard box and eventually folds up the flaps of the box because she is tired.