My name is Rasa, and this is my story.
Most fillies and colts believe that everypony gets a cutie mark in their life. And all of them get that special talent-defining image within the first several years of their life, or at least that is what I, and everypony else, was told. “Everypony has a special talent that is represented by a cutie mark,” our teacher would tell us nearly every day in school. I assumed her guaranteed to be absolute, that I would one day get my very own destiny defining mark. Sadly, I was wrong, but let’s start from the beginning.
I was born to two earth pony parents in the city of Baltimare. I went to school, I did as I was told, I stayed out of trouble, I was a ‘good filly’ according to those around me, but that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to be better than good. I wanted to be spectacular. I wanted to stand out. I wanted to make a name for myself. The pinnacle of that dream was wrapped up in my eternal wait for my cutie mark.
I still remember the first day of school. No pony, save one, had their cutie mark, and everypony was conceivably as excited as I was to receive their very own. The one pony who had their cutie mark, Lilac, was undoubtedly the most popular filly in the class. Everypony, myself included, envied the beautiful flower on her flank. I remember going to bed that night more hopeful than ever, believing that somehow being near a pony with a cutie mark would make mine appear sooner. I tried to create a friendship with her in an attempt to thrust myself into an accelerated track to a cutie mark. I now know that cutie marks come when the time is right, not by who you associate yourself with, but I was blind to that fact as a filly. Unfortunately, fame corrupts, and her popularity pulled her away from those of us who were late bloomers. I always wanted to be part of her ‘crowd’, that group of ponies who she deemed as cool, hip, and likeable, but that was a pipe dream just like my wish for a cutie mark.
As more and more of my class got their special stamp of destiny I became the outcast, the one who didn’t fit in, the untalented one. It was a slow, almost unnoticeable, descent into sadness and eventually depression. For most of my early childhood I was blissfully unaware of how my peers perceived me, what they said about me while I wasn’t around, how they marked me markless.
The early grades were the easiest, when it was ‘normal’ to be a blank flank. A time when everypony was waiting for their talent, just like me. The blinding excitement of self-discovery ran rampant through me and my peers, wondering who we really were, wondering what we could be. Soon, however, that veil came off of their eyes. They got their mark, they knew who they were, they followed their talents while I stumbled around in the darkness trying to follow something that wasn’t there.
That darkness was the theme of my middle school years. I told myself I would get that mark one day, but denial didn’t suit me well. I tried to make up a reasonable explanation of why I didn’t have that stamp of destiny on my flank. I claimed it was tiny, invisible, or that my entire body was one giant mark, but none of my answers truly answered the question that stung my heart like venom, “Why don’t you have a cutie mark?” It was a reasonable question, but reason can never argue with emotion and win.
Every time that question was asked, I came up with a reasonable excuse, but the reality was I would ask the same thing to that mare that stared back at me in the mirror, and I could never bear to lie to her. She wanted answers, answers that no pony had.
I dropped out of school, pushed out by my peers as well as my teachers. Pony society had always been fashioned around that image on our flanks, that driving force that locked us into our destiny. It identified us. It dictated our lives. It made us who we were. And if our flanks were void, we were excluded, because they didn’t know what to do with us.
As society rejected me, I slowly began to reject it. I isolated myself, creating what I thought was a safety bubble that only ended up hurting me even more. No pony was there for me, but that wasn’t their fault, it was mine. I sealed them out to save myself from the biting curiosity that was spurred from my markless flank, my talentless life, my objectiveless journey, my pointless life.
I lived, day by day, a life in wait for something I would never get. I wasted my youth in anticipation of a future, ignoring the present that passed by. I was so absorbed in my own pity that I locked out those I could have impacted. I kept looking up to the future as my past pulled my present to the rock bottom. If I knew what I know now, who knows, maybe I could have impacted somepony. Maybe I could have helped someone rather than hurt myself. Maybe I could have proved society wrong, but instead all I did was prove it right. I was the reason I failed to become the one thing I wanted to be. I kept on looking to something I wanted to be instead of being who I was.
I am a tabula rasa, a blank slate. I am a pony who could have been anything, yet allowed herself to be nothing. I wanted to make a name for myself, and I succeeded. I was named an outcast, a strange one, a failure, when I could have been named a pony whose similarity was the very thing that made her different.
I waited for my destiny. I waited all of my life for something to happen to me. What I didn’t know was that my destiny was waiting on me.
