Are you an overachiever?

They call us the cool kids.
But they look straight into our eyes with that stare.

That stare.
Smells like jealousy. But sympathy it is.

Life gets better - so much better that
you wouldn’t believe me if I told you
but before that happens
you’ll learn some lessons
some of them will be fun
others bitter medicine
swallow them though
they’ll make you strong

don’t beat yourself up so much
don’t put yourself down
you are actually pretty awesome
don’t obsess so much about being the best
the less you do that the better you’ll become
there is no such thing as “perfect”
but you will be excellent
you’ll be quite an overachiever – even when you don’t try!
You already know what you want to do
Not many 15 year olds have that kind of clarity!
You’re a rare, unique one – you’ll do exactly what you dream to do.

But there will be speed bumps
You’ll lose your way sometimes
and confused Gemini that you are-
you’ll always want both sides of everything
but you’ll figure that out eventually

you will never be as thin as you want to be
but you’ll learn to appreciate your body
just as it is
you’ll find you look beautiful when you smile

you’ll have a job you hate, and one that you love
you’ll do well in both-
much to other people’s envy
you’ll mostly have good bosses

you’ll never have a boyfriend, your marriage will be arranged
but you will find love-the love of a good man
who will stand by you even when things go wrong
he won’t at all be like the man of your dreams
but he will be exactly what you need-he’ll make you happy!

what I’m trying to tell you darling-
is that in ten years all the stuff you’re worrying about won’t matter
you’ll find new things to fuss over.
High school will be a distant land
That you would have left behind
The bullies who trouble you now
won’t be anywhere near

you’ll see that its okay
to be an introvert in an extraverted world
you’ll make a handful of super-friends
who you can trust and who care
and many acquaintances who don’t mind your company
but there will be some who you can’t trust
some who will take advantage of your kindness
ignore them and move on
there is more important stuff to take care of!

your writing will get better; you’ll be a super cook,
you’ll never like sports-stop trying to
its just not you!

in a few years time
you’ll be touching lives
and changing them for the better
you’ll be a teacher and a student
all at once
you’ll inspire and influence

so don’t give up on life yet-
don’t be so depressed
wear a smile and face the world
your life is going to be all set!

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
08.09.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

Some think that a well thought out compliment
Is the best gift to give me.
What they don't know is that it stifles me,
Buries me under yet another layer of self doubt,
Wondering yet again, “What if I fail them?”
What if I'm just a fake, a fraud?
What if suddenly I wasn't so amazing, so perfect?
I love to be treasured,
But what happens when everyone
Finds out I'm just fool's gold?

When my dark clouds rise

And dirt clods fly and I try

In sheer panic to replace

Rotten fruit with dull wax fruit

And wilted blossoms with

Plastic flowers and she thinks we

Will be on yet another short-lived

But cold cycle of tightrope and

Eggshell walking . . .

She comes home


With bags filled with

Apples green & red

Peppers yellow & green & red

Grapes green & purple

Plums yellow & purplish-red

Strawberries, peaches, tomatoes

Bananas & Greek salads.

 
This usually inspires me to make

For this setting a centrepiece of a

Vase filled with a variety of fresh

Picked wildflowers which brings

Her more joy than two dozen

Of the overrated overachiever rose.


At times this seems like

One of  few bridges back

To a healthy & colourful world.

I am an exoskeleton
Falling to pieces
Half alive yet entirely dead
Crumbling and translucent
Delicate, and drifts, fluttering
With a single breath from someone
Nearby
I could be crushed or mangled
By a strike of the hand or a flick of a finger
But because I am considered beautiful and strange
I am kept preserved
The world revolves around beauty and
Oddities and I become one of these
Studied anomalies, a curiosity, merely
Because I am not like them
I am Oriental
And Occidental
I am a Southerner
And a Northerner
I am malnourished
Yet well fed
I am thin and short
But my stature belies my power
I am a geek, nerd, braniac, dork, and overachiever
But remain a stupid, ignorant, procrastinator
I am certainly an curio; a
Living
Breathing
Walking
Oxymoron

I am not what you expected
A paradox in locomotion
A pendulum marking out its own time
An uninspired
Overachiever
Who refuses to write in words that sound similiar
And I too will leave you wanting

don’t be defeatist
they say
as if i am not already worn to ruin
as if my fingers have not bled
all i am capable of bleeding
over their pristine paper sheets

just believe in yourself
they say
as if belief alone has ever offered salvation
as if i could will myself into being
as so many others wish they could with god

all you can do is your best
they say
but what if this is my best?
what if i am a husk of a human being
before i reach the age of 30
what if all my light was used up
in a voltage too high
squeezed out of me like a surge
in an electrical storm

what if my peak is behind me
looming above me like atlas
blotting out the sun
and leaving me to get swept up
in the wake of an overachiever
what if i am incapable of what you believed in me
because you pushed me too hard, for too long
because what you needed of me you needed immediately
you took me in your hands like goliath took his stone
wrung me out until i was bloodless
wrote out my worth and found your pen inkless before you’d reached the end

worth is relative
i say
now that i forced you to see your mistake
now that i am bedridden and useless and limp like a doll
now that my good days are not when i write 100 pages
but when i remember to drink water
when i remember to bathe and eat and wake before noon
as if all your pushing just wound me up like a coil
set me tight enough to regress unto the mean

i am doing my best
i say
now that i am barely capable of anything at all
now that the pedestal you put me on looked like a ledge
and you see it for what it was
now that it’s too late to walk back from the gallows
because i’ve already been hung like a ghost
and all i do these days is sway in the wind


i have been defeated
i say
but it was because you put me in the colosseum
with nothing but my tired self leaning on my tired self
and i lay on the floor waiting for the lions to come

i have been defeated
i say
to my defeatist self
because no one stays around to watch a losing fight.

I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.

Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for my iPhone,” he said. “Your phone already HAS a flash,” I replied, helpfully.
“No,” he explained, “a professional, external flash - they’re much more subtle and variable.”
“What are you going to take pictures of?” I asked. “You,” he said, smiling slyly.
“Me!?” I said, with a wrinkled nose, somewhat alarmed. “You don’t take pictures of ME.”
“Not usually,” he admitted, “but we’re going to Paris and the snaps will look better with a flash.” “Just ME?” I asked, “What about some ussies?” “We’ll take snaps of us, but you’ll have savage new pics for your poetry sites.” So, Peter got his flash and he’s taken a baZillion pix.

“Smile,” click, (iPhones don’t always click, so the click’s a writer’s dramatic effect)
Peter takes bursts of 50 pix at a time and only one in fifty turns out looking good (my opinion).
“Look this way,” click “toss your hair,” click. Apparently salads and my hair are better ‘tossed.’
So now we’re in Paris, but before we can take our tourist pic, I must lean over, like I’m going to throw up and comb my hair forward, so when I flip it back, it will appear fluffy.

“Look sad, look happy, try not to look so drunk, look ****,” he asks. “You’re kidding,” I replied. I exist only in his view finder.
“Just part your lips slightly and look vacuous,” he advises.
“Can I DO both at once?” I asked, as if challenged by a scientific equation.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” he said. Today, he was ‘the serious artist’. I’d never want to be a model.
Finally, I’d had enough constant photography and I just started looking moody. Peter seemed not to notice.

I read somewhere that when you smile, the activated muscles of your face actually improve your mood. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m trying to deepfake myself and smile my way to happiness. I ordinarily think of myself as tough, but lately, I’m soft.

A Yale counselor once told me that sometimes we tell ourselves a story and we just hold on to that version of things until it feels true. I have to stop thinking I’m on the edge of a deep, blue loneliness. I need to get on a metaphysical bike and ride away from my sad-self.

Later, when we’re back at the hotel, Peter was reading in the living room and I was lying on the bed, watching another Heraclee Beach, sapphire and ruby, sundown through the hotel windows. Peter came looking for me. He had a book in one hand, his place saved with his index finger.

“What are you doing?” He asked, lightly. “Want to go out to dinner or get room service?”
“I’m thinking thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts? He asked, taking a seat on a desk chair he’d rolled over. Now I’m watching his face and he’s watching mine.
“You know how, everyday, at school, we tell each other everything that happened?” Peter nodded. “Which, of course,” I’d continued, “is impossible, but it’s as if we’re having experiences just so we could discuss them later - share them. It’s like, when we aren't together, it isn’t real life.”
“So..” he said, verbally prodding me on.

My voice felt thick, like it knew I wouldn't say things right. “Well, I’m two me’s now, I’m split right down the middle. Before you, things were easy. I was becoming Dr. Me, I had one goal, things were simple,” I shrugged, “but now, there's the me that’s going to be a doctor and the me that needs you.” I can’t seem to take my eyes off his face.

He touched my foot and wiggled it a little. “You don’t have to figure out the future right NOW, Mz overachiever.” He said in his soft, western drawl, “You can’t wrestle the future into orderly submission, like a chemistry test - we don’t have enough data (says mr. physics). Anyway, don’t we have forty or fifty years to figure it out?”
Suddenly, my head felt clearer than it had for days. I chuckled. I may have had my hand over my mouth and a smile was so big it hurt my face.

“You were very patient to put up with me today,” I said, turning slightly and quietly serious.
“You be you,” he said, smiling bigly back, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Then I got serious. “Do you think we can find barbecue?”
“But of course!” he said, in a fake French accent, like Lemiure, in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’