Of Scarred Swans.

                     "She's got you high, and you don't even know yet."- Mumm-Ra


I've never been here before. I'm looking at myself from a distance, for the few moments that I can manage that, I don't like what I see. The three by two mirror frame that has seen me transform, lies. There was a time I believed it when one voice, not quite aiming to be heard, said it. But now it takes a million hollow voices shouting from rooftops for me to believe I'm beautiful. Or something like that. 
Ugly ducklings do turn into swans. But our childhood story never even hinted at the painstaking and dramatic evolving that takes place in the process of the transformation. And it still doesn't quite end there. Somewhere along the way you believe in Shah Rukh Khan and Santa Claus. Somewhere along the way you fall in love, face flat. And somewhere along the way your heart shatters to such pieces that the sound of the crash can be heard above the tremors of the ocean and the cheers of drunk bar crawlers.
You blame it on the alcohol, you blame it on too many restrictions that your parents imposed on you, even though you don't understand why. You blame it on finding so many opportunities to experience so much in one, metaphorically one, night. Especially when all you have seen up until now, is a narrow, deflated bubble romanticizing your view of the world by means of its constricted opening. Don't blame me. I was just having fun. I wasn't really thinking.
Each time you say those words, and the more you repeat them, the more you actually end up believing them. Even if it was all a lie to begin with. False claims about myself won't get me anywhere. Or won't they? 
Opinions and lectures will come from every direction. Judgements galore. But the swans are too self-consumed by now and have missed out on way too much for way too long to really stop even if they want to. We're too far along. We've all come a long way. But somehow there's still comfort in my, caught up with lipgloss, rising hemlines and too many tongues to remember, heart and mind when I learn that somebody still smiles when they think of me. That their heart beats a tad bit faster when they hear my name. And that there's a possibility that I'm the reason they endorse romantic cliches, tear jerking movies and sappy-to-the-point-of-being-pathetic songs. 
I'm still deriving comfort and discomfort from episodes in my life that just don't fail to disappoint. And duckling or swan, I'm still hopelessly waiting to be swept off my feet by a Shah Rukh Khan, if only to be dropped back down to Earth. Again. Always.