You are bouncy bright, bouncy bright, always ready to go along and just be happy to be there. You love to be included for the thrill of it, to be the one to chime in with the perfect solution when everyone else is stumped. Your eyes are bright, your blood is victory, and you are so complete that there could never be a crack in you.

Until you are fleshed out and studied carefully, until all the wearing at your chinks from examination and exposure makes them weaker. Suddenly all that energy is spent, and how long have you been running a marathon without knowing it?

But its okay! Everyone needs you, everyone is nice to you, you’re having a blast, you don’t mind. You still talk too loudly and too quickly, because you’re still scared that someone will talk over you if you don’t, that you’ll be pushed back and forgotten, but christ you can’t have that. You know that it would be so, so easy for them to overlook you, to toss you in a box and move you to the attic like cheap, eighty-year-old knick-knacks and photos of people you don’t even resemble, let alone recognise

You’re too quirky, you fight to make your personality known because if you are a person, you can’t be tossed aside. If you are funny and interesting, people will want to be near you.

You are so happy that people think your emotional switch is permanently stuck on that setting. They don’t look below the surface because they barely even look at the top layer as it is. You are filed under “smart, loud, happy” and that is your place. You are also labelled under “chatterbox, annoying, desperate” but you are the only one who knows that.

You don’t like to be alone because you don’t know who you are. Who you are lets you down—the happy part of you, that needs something to fixate on and someone to tell a joke for. You do not want someone to see past your walls because what is behind your walls is not nearly as interesting as the bright graffiti clashing over it.

You really, really do not want to be pushed aside. You want to be valued, wanted, needed. You want to be the answer, not the storm of questions. You want to be calm, but you can never be calm, because you are scared, and scared people are the first to be discarded, so you pretend that you are brave (but you really are brave).

What lies behind your walls is not boring, but it is also not graffiti, It is not colourful, but it is undeniably beautiful. Your beating heart lies behind your walls, sealed off and vulnerable. Practically newborn. But it works oh so well, and it works just for you.

You are curious and smart, so you learn how to use it. You still wear bright skirts and smile wide. You talk softer. You make eye contact more often. You casually touch your fiends more often. You are still funny. You are still smart. You are still needed.

You are still scared.

You do not want to be thrown away. You do not want to be forgotten. But you are curious and smart. They might not love you as much as you love them, because they could obviously never love you as much as you love them, but they come pretty close, and they keep trying. And your walls are open. And your switch is permanently stuck on happy.