Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

Smiling is something they can't force us to do.

It is something we must bring upon ourselves. For people like you and me, our walls took so long to build up that we only let in the people that we inexplicably trust. And because the walls are so high, there aren't many people around right now.

I'm tired of seeing plastic smiles stamped on faces by society. One day, their cheeks will fall and they will be lost in a world that turned away from them. And they will beg to be let back into a ring of socialites because it's all they've ever known. And curls will deflate and nail beds will cake with dirt as the silence turns them savage. They will finally revolt, as they refuse to let themselves break, and they claw, until their fingers bleed, at the walls society trapped itself in. But here's the difference between society and us; They built their walls high to shelter the people within. We use ours to keep people out.

But maybe the walls are built all the same, we only use them however we choose. Maybe we all share the same walls, but they are interpreted into or own boundaries until we think they belong to us. And the rest of society lives inside the walls, interrupted only by the rare outburst, which is disposed of like any personal thought to grace their minds. You and I, we live outside these walls. The difference between us and the savages is that we accept it. We are free to find beauty in our flaws. And it only strengthens us as we gladly sit in the rain and count the lines on our hands, our screw-ups, the people we love, and the crimes we've committed. And in situations like these, I find myself pressing my palms into the earth so that maybe I can leave an imprint of my journeys and someone can know that they're not alone.

There has to be something that separates us from them. From the people who drink to erase who they are, until they become indistinguishable from the next. From the people who look down on us because we are free to love the wind and admire it because it is ever changing. Our chains will not be from them. We are allowed to hold our thoughts out in front of us and analyze them as they rest in gentle fingers that pick apart. And they shut us out in the first place because we were smart enough to realize that something was offbeat. Maybe it was us. We just knew it wouldn't work out from the start. But in a way it makes me grateful. While they're confined to one familiar area, it's allowed the space that gives us room to wander.

But when walls start to cave in they try to turn around and take back words that are not easily forgotten. It is thought that this is acceptable because they think they are above us. But you and I know that there is no competition that connects us to them. They'll try to pretend that nothing ever happened, and this is all a big misunderstanding that they are going to pass off as a joke. And they'll expect us to laugh. But smiling is something they can't force us to do.