Louie 
Caitlin Louie
Julie Wood
Visions Of Unity
December 26, 2020


GROWING PAINS


ACT I
HOW BORING, THOSE BROWN EYES OF YOURS.


Jamie had never been one to care about the world. The world, her world, was only stretched gummy smiles, sweaty long ponytails, and warm hugs. At the age of ten, she was only a child who spoke with the roar of the innocent and carried herself with the reassurance of a thousand kings. 
Eyes like hers, everything pure and innocent, with smiling crinkles and a diamond glow, was something special. Intoxicated with the way the brown orbs would glitter like gold beneath the burning sunshine or how her sleepless lids would occasionally form double eyelids when she rubbed them hard enough, she adored them. But Jamie was only a naive child with her beautiful eyes, ignorant to the world, cuddled in the protective arms of her parents and shielded within their little bubble. 
When Jamie hit puberty, her innocence of the world crumbled as her parents' sweet smiles transformed into their wicked grins. They were starlets made out of velvet and silver, with fingertips casually draped across the world's riches. They made kings bow and angels sigh. They walked with a confidence she was beginning to lose and a tilted smirk she was beginning to grow wary of. But most importantly, they had eyes of crystal blue, so light and brilliant, Jamie just couldn't help but long for. Her eyes, with orbs of brown and everything pure, was meager compared to their large luminous blue eyes. She knew it was wrong, but when she saw her dull brown orbs eyeing back at her, she wanted to cry of the fallen and sob storms of ash and rust. Their pair of lucid blue jewels represented everything she quite frankly couldn't change.
They were the lipstick that stained her mirrors red. Jamie always noticed their whispers when she brought her homemade sack lunch filled with what she thought was "delicious" kimchi and rice, she saw how their smirks hung heavily through the dry air as they complimented her English, and she watched as they began to snicker before asking for math help. They always left Jamie with the taste of heartache and hot wax burning her skin. Their honeyed words bit her veins and left a bitterly cold scar as its souvenir. God, Jamie felt her sun child dying within her. She's suffocating. All she wanted was to end their blue-eyed stares and smirks. Cause if Jamie was like them, with their golden hair and crystal orbs, then those dratted feelings would finally disappear. Right? 


ACT II
BUT OH DARLING, YOU KNEW ALL ALONG YOU COULD NEVER BE THEM. 


Now Jamie's nineteen with the innocence of a child long gone and the rush of her teenage years trickling away. She no longer wanted to childishly chase after the backs of those blue-eyed starlets. Instead, she returned to sprint after the culture, the food, the history she turned her back on oh so long ago. It was all there waiting for her, like stars splitting apart the skin of the night, it pierced her lightly sewed fabricated reality. Drunk on sleepless 2 am nights and blind in her dusk of thoughts, Jamie cried. Sobbed for the sucker she was at age fifteen who craved for their wicked smiles and thoughtless attention. Wept for the idiot she was who resented her beautiful eyes of everything pure and innocent. Cause it was all there, open-armed with cheeky smiles and engulfing hugs. Jamie was finally coming home after years of desperately trailing after their golden hair and crystal gems. 
Enclosed by her love for who she was, Jamie realized that all along those blue-eyed starlets stained glass was cracked and broken. They were never the godly kings and queens she once envisioned, no their ocean eyes and golden locks didn't make her swoon with envy as they once did long ago. They were beautiful, but Jamie no longer longed to be them, for she realized that she was a masterpiece sculpted by the gods. Her almond teary eyes were kissed dry by the growing crooked smile of acceptance. Her carnation cheeks stained with the fluttering relief of happiness. She welcomed that she too was honey sunshine muttered from the wild heavens.
The lost translation between her melancholy youth filled with empty hearts and confidence to her twenties was eulogies and forsaken sorrow. Jamie began to understand that she wasn't the crumbled happenings of what she could've been, for it was the world that was everything beautiful and ugly. The painfully real world wasn't her world of stretched gummy smiles, sweaty long ponytails, and warm hugs, no it was the darkest hour of dusk, shy gaps of happiness, and hot whispers of uncertainty. Jamie ached for the fall of this cruel world's racism and prejudice till it hanged like a breathless nightmare. Cause Jamie wanted to change this god for saken world for the better. Her growing pains clung, kissed, and entwined within her soul as they finally made Jamie care about the world.