The Box

You are a simple box.

You are not ornamental or wrapped in glitzy papers. You are small, but you can hold many different things. And, for ornamentation, you have a small red ribbon.

You are simple, but you yearn to be called beautiful. You long to be opened up and loved for all that lies within. So you wait for that one person who will open you up and realize that you hold so much more than you appear to.

People come and go, they pass you by without a second glance and others stay for a short while. Some people open you up and laugh at what you have to offer. Others try to force more into you, things you don't want to hold; hate, fear, self-doubt. Some can accept parts of what you hold, but they can't accept you as a whole being.

You begin to doubt that you will ever be given to the right person. After all, you are just a simple box, simple to the point of plain and stupid. You tell yourself that you aren't worthy of being given to someone who matters. You begin to lose hope that that one person will come along to love you.

You become ashamed of what is within you. You try to hide the pieces of you that people can't seem to accept. You try to change who you are to fit in to this world, so that you will belong to someone. You try to change your shape, change your color, change your ribbons and your spaces. You try to be everything anyone could ever want, but they still pass you by.

You slowly shrink, though you should expand. No one wants a big box full of life, they want a tiny box with a diamond or some other expensive trinket. They don't want you because you are too bulky, too plain, too full of things they can't comprehend. You begin to believe that no one could ever really want YOU. Not the YOU that you are.

Then the day comes when someone tells you that you are beautiful just the way you are. They compliment your ribbons and they look at your insides without flinching. You think that you have finally found a home, a place to belong, to be accepted. For a little while you are happy, but it never lasts. There is always that one thing inside of you that you can never express. Never let anyone see, because you are ashamed of it, because you have been made to be ashamed of it.

And that someone leaves you, open and exposed, abandoned.

You begin to believe the lies that have been told to you. You are ugly, you are useless, you are too empty or too full, you are worthless. You have no value. And you try again to make yourself useful, beautiful, lovable.

If you are not unlovable, why does no one love you? If you are perfect just the way you are why can't anyone accept you? Why does everyone try to make you fit into the ideas they have for you? Why?

You continue to wait for the day you can say all the things you need and want to say; a day when no one walks away from you. And, though you begin to lose faith that that day will come, there is a tiny bubble of hope building inside of you. A tiny butterfly of hope, waiting for a Pandora to set you free.