Falling Down The Rabbit Hole
Smiles, Laughter, Parties.
Day in, day out, nopony sees the work you put into those parties. They just go to them. Nopony notices the effort you put into your laugh, because it’s an expected response. And nopony can tell when your smile is a lie, and that you’re just wearing it to seem normal.
Nopony intends to make another pony feel like their drowning. I know that. But just because they don’t intend to, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It’s like this: You’re floating on top of water. There’s blue sky above, and there’s dark water below. When you wake up, you’re just floating there. Sometimes something may come and jolt you from the water, into the sky, as high as you can go, when there’s nothing stopping you from happiness and you’re living the greatest life you can and everything is great. But other times, something will happen. A criticism will come toward you, like a cart full of party supplies. You’ll be floating along, neither happy nor sad, then BOOM- The cart is taking you down, down, down under the water into the darkness and nopony sees you drowning because you are still holding that smile.
You are expected to smile. You are expected to laugh. You are expected to throw great parties. And Celestia help you if you don’t meet everypony’s expectations, because if you don’t then you’re letting them all down, and carrying the weight of a town full of ponies on your shoulders just might crush you. And if you try and do what is expected, but you do something wrong anyways- Well, then you’re just a failure. The culmination of your efforts comes crumbling down at the slightest touch, and you spend minutes, hours, days, trying to pick through the wreckage and figure out exactly what you did wrong. You will constantly blame yourself for that mistake, whatever it may have been- even when it is entirely out of your control. Thoughts of, I shouldn’t have invited Pokey because he made the twins cry popping that balloon or maybe Why did I make chocolate cake when I know Treehugger won’t eat it? Will play on and on and on. And you can’t stop it.
When you’re pulled into that dark water, you cannot pull yourself out. That party supply cart is weighing you down, and you can’t get out from under it because the more you try, the more stuck you get. Other ponies may say something kind to you- points of light in those dark waters- but you cannot hold onto the occasional glint of sun so high above you that you cannot reach it. It is simply impossible to do.
Your hair deflates and straightens. The color of your coat turns gray. You try and keep a smile but you just can’t because it takes so much effort and energy that you don’t have. Laughing seems like a luxury that you could afford in some past life, as if the sound of your voice and slight movement of your body wouldn’t shatter the glass dome of protection you’ve built around yourself. You put yourself under the dome, and sit there alone, with all your thoughts fogging up the glass, and your self-criticism making it storm and rain under it. You can see out, and other ponies can sometimes see in (If you let them in the room, that is) but you cannot touch each other or reach each other. Because you, in your wisdom know, that no matter what your friends try and do to put a smile on your face, you would be lying to them if you did it. You simply have to let this get out of your system. It isn’t fair to your friends, who try to help you out of it, but nopony can help you out before you’re ready to get out yourself. You promise yourself that when you’re feeling better, you’ll do something great for them, because they deserve it. You don’t. You don’t think you deserve anything.
You lay there under that glass dome, under those dark waters, until you go to sleep. The hours before bed are both brutal and somewhat nice. Brutal because you know nopony will come to check in on you and on some level (however unconsciously) you appreciate the fact that they care enough to do it, and it settles in that you are all alone in your feelings now. But it’s nice, because the sky now matches your mood, and the cover of darkness hides the tracks of your tears that the sun shows all too brightly.
Sometimes you cry. You cry and cry, until there are no more tears, your eyes are puffy, and the dried tears make your face feel stiff. Sobs occasionally match these cries. It’s rare that you are alone enough to have the heaving, loud, guttural sobbing sessions you sometimes need to really get this out of your system. When you do, it makes you feel good- even if it feels like part of your brain is hurting because you’re so sad.
Other times, you sit and listen to the quiet, or look out at the night sky. You feel dwarfed under the massive sky, the size of the world, and you feel smaller than a speck of dust, tinier than the faraway stars you look at. You look up at the moon, it’s place in the sky forever held, and you wonder how it managed to do what was necessary to keep pony kind alive all through the years. And when you choose to listen to the quiet, you imagine two brooms sweeping the clutter away from your mind and leaving you with a welcome nothingness.
When it comes time to sleep, you will huddle under many blankets. These blankets are the closest you will get to contact with any pony until morning, and you savor their warmth and cuddliness. The light goes out in your room, and you stay very still, eyes shut. You try and focus on the blackness in front of your eyes. You imagine going deeper in it until it stretches endlessly in all directions, so that you cannot think of anything else. Because if you start thinking, you will never get any sleep.
But somehow, you do start thinking. It usually starts as a random thought- I need more Royal Blue streamers -and then, through a series of barely related thoughts, you are back where you started.
Floating along, cart hitting you, down, down, down, why couldn’t you have done this right?, lick your wounds, berate yourself for your mistakes, cry again, throw off the blankets, pace around the room because you have to try and outrun the thoughts, before you finally lay back down. You do not sleep. Sometimes thoughts try and creep in and they make you bolt up in bed like you had a nightmare, but you lay back down. Sometimes you rock back and forth to try and calm yourself down but also because you kind of like the noise one of the springs in the mattress makes.
Finally, you lay down for good. The thoughts are cleared and you sleep. Sometimes for eight hours, other times for sixteen, until the sad feeling in your brain is gone. When you wake up in the morning, it’s a new day and a new start. A blank slate. You are finally floating above the water again, not drowning anymore, unless another cart comes to hit you. And sometimes, it will.
Sometimes other ponies will make you feel like you’re drowning. And sometimes you feel like the smile is forced. I’ve forced smiles way too many times to count. I know I shouldn’t, that it’s important to let other ponies know how you’re feeling, but sometimes I just can’t because I feel like it would make me a burden. I was always different growing up on the rock farm. Even when I didn’t have my cutie mark, I was the pink sheep of the family. My coat didn’t match the grays and browns and purples of my parents and sisters. I was the odd one. I didn’t like rock farming particularly, I didn’t have reasons to smile. But when I saw the rainbow from Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom, I found that reason to smile. And I made that party. But my smile also sealed my fate. I would never fit in with my serious family, and even though I loved them to pieces, there was a growing divide there, and it eventually made me leave for Ponyville.
I love them all and I care for them deeply, but sometimes it weighs on me just how different I am from them. I know they love me, but sometimes I don’t think they understood how different they made me feel. I was never a burden to them, I was… an obligation. Something that had to be taken care of and dealt with appropriately. To lessen that feeling, I became a mesomorph. I turned into whatever made me easier to deal with. Though my hair stayed curly, I made my smiles smaller, adapting to my environment until I got a new one. And even now, that feeling that I must become whatever is expected of me has followed me to this day. There is a certainty in the back of my mind, that at any point in time I can completely change everything about myself if I want, like one of Fluttershy’s chameleons. I could just shed this skin like a snake and become somepony totally different depending on where I was or who I was with. I want to sometimes. Because I want a break.
I want to not have to feel like I have to smile all the time. I want to not be afraid that if something goes wrong at a party, I have let every partygoer down. I want to be able to not laugh in a conversation and have nopony ask me if I’m okay, because when they ask me, I am definitely not okay, because it makes me sad that they even ask me. I want all those things, but I know I won’t be able to have them. I am aware that most of these standards are ones of my own creation. But I fear if I don’t meet them, I won’t just be letting other ponies down, but myself too.
So I keep smiling, and laughing, and throwing parties, so nopony will see what’s hidden underneath.
