noun.
a trace of infection, contamination, or the like

Do you know what it feels like? To be washed up and used?
Do you know what it feels like to be left broken and bruised?
Days of laughter and joy all but cease to exist.
While you're stuck with leftover memories on your wrist.

Contaminated, ugly, and possibly infected.
It won't shock me if by everyone I am rejected.
*****, sour, and a little bit sore
Makes the pain beneath my chest burn deep in my core.

How can I be liked, how can I be loved?
When it seems my throat is where the pain has been shoved?
I wear the marks and the sores openly, on my sleeve.
Where the truth of everything makes it hard to believe
That someone can like me, someone can love me
Because all I wanted was to be his one and only.

I blame myself, make myself to be the victim
So I can swallow the pain so it's constantly hidden.
I cry, I scream, and sometimes I beg
That instead of everything failing it continues instead.

My head is filled with doubts, "logic" at it's best.
That when it comes down to it, I'll always fail the test.
But I believe in You, with every fiber of my being.
Although right now I'm, "Believing is seeing."

My heart aches, and I sometimes feel sick
Because I'm dreading the possibility that I'm in the middle of a trick.
Because as I sit here, part of me is dying.
The math and the signs makes me see there's no denying,
That while someone once liked me, someone once loved me
I'm broken and used and while it's all behind me

I wish it wasn't happening, wish it wasn't true
That we didn't lose something that never came through.
So we can go back to normal, doubt free and happy.
Because my heart aches for me to remember us sappy.

You're there all around us, protecting and watching.
I know you can do things that I have no way of stopping.
So I ask right now, in this confusion and hurt
That deep in our soul you make something stir.
The love and the caring and the passion within
Can withstand all the distraction and sin.

So we can go back to that place You had us before
Happy and carefree and falling in love once more.

It's fantasy, marriage. An idea threaded through a woman's mind like a masterpiece;
Little seeds planted from the time she was little.
A big party, equally large dress; the day you get to be that princess in your favorite story.
You nervously walk down the aisle where you see the prince you are about to wed,
Your story ending in happily ever after.

It happens, to other people besides myself. They get their princess day.
With the white gown and the elegant hair and dancing the night away in the arms of your beloved...
But it doesn't happen to me.
Marriage isn't for me.
Something I have always known, but finally admitting it has left a vacant and crumbling hole in my heart.

Scared, nervous, and unsure he decides to forgo marriage as well.
Scars from the past making his views obsolete. Marriage isn't for him.
But he loves a girl. With his whole being he loves her.
And she knows it. And she loves him back.
But she wishes and hopes and prays that one day his view can be changed.
Because even though marriage isn't for her, she still dreams of one day seeing her man down on one knee asking her the question she has always wanted to hear.

"Will you marry me?"

But the question doesn't come. She's sure the question won't but always the hopeful one she stands patiently waiting for the day she hopes will come.
She doesn't hold her breath. But she hopes.

Because nothing hurts more than knowing that marriage is out of the picture while you watch people you know tie the knot.
Live her dream.
The dream she is letting go.

Her names mean princess; she was her daddy's princess.
She wants to be his princess.
She wants her princess day.

But will it ever come?

I wanted to try new things this year.
Instead of accepting the limitations people put on me
I wanted to step outside of the box.
I wanted to set goals and not stop until I get them done.

I'm like a butterfly trying to get out of a cocoon
Or a baby chick pecking it's way from the egg.
I have a lot of potential inside me, just waiting to be released.

One of my biggest passions is acting.
For a few hours I get to be someone else, putting on their shoes
Living their story and temporarily forgetting the thoughts people put on me.
I've been trying to make it in the industry since I was twelve but it's like I'm
Running up the down escalator. It seems like I'm going nowhere.

I will never be the skinniest or the prettiest girl according to the eyes of
The entertainment industry but I've accepted that.
I won't starve myself or force myself to be skinny just so someone will pay attention
To me. All I've got is my talent and my ability to try to change your mind.

But it never works. I'm always overlooked by someone skinnier, prettier, and taller than me.
Because of my looks I'm put in the back row, cast away to the side because the person with the long legs and straight teeth and size zero waist is the one people want to see.

I stopped trying. I accepted the role of the helper, the background.
I let the pretty girl go and stopped doing things outside of the box people gave me.
No contests, no auditions, no movies.
Just the simple, heavier, not-as-pretty girl who stands in the back smiling while I hold your coat.

But I don't want that this year. I want to meet my goals, try these auditions
Enter these contests even though I'm positive I will not win.
I know the person with the thigh gap, long locks, legs for miles will beat me in the contest or beat me in the auditions.
But I can always be proven wrong. I can always be the one chose, and it will never happen if I don't try.

I can't let other people define me.
To truly know my own potential
I gotta try.