Smudged

     Hi, my name is Penny. But everyone calls me Pen. 

     I’ve always felt like my life was a little bit smudged. 

     Your’e probably wondering what I mean by that. But to be completely honest, I’m not so sure. 

    Now, the definition of smudged is to “cause (something) to become messily smeared by rubbing it.” Or to “make blurred or indistinct.”

    But I’m not going to bore you with that stuff. Who wants to read a story that feels like a dictionary. NOT ME. 

    But nevertheless, that’s always how I’ve felt. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been like a splash of color that lived in a world of black and white. I had so much colorful creativity and ideas swirling around inside and outside of me, but whenever I would touch something Oreo-colored, it would just… smudge. 

    Not only that, but sometimes it felt like the people around me were smudged, as if someone had smeared a pencil drawing. Now they were blurry, and I couldn’t make them out. I couldn’t tell who they were no matter what they claimed. All I saw was a smeary blur. 

   Almost everything and everyone around me was either smudged or blurry. I was confused and sometimes a little scared. Not only were people smudged and puzzling, but so were their believes and ideas. They said they believed one thing, but really, they meant something else. They’d say they wanted everyone to be accepted equally, and they’d fight for that till the day they die, but that’s not what they meant. They just wanted themselves to be accepted… not anyone else. At least most people acted like that, anyways. 

    But one day as I was strolling through this world of pepper and salt, leaving a colorful trail of paint behind me, I stopped short as I spotted harlequin footsteps. 

    Perplexed, I cautiously followed the footsteps down the grey sidewalk and through the black street, eyes pinned on the vibrant and colorful footprints. 

    My shoulder suddenly collided with someone else’s, and stumbled back, startled. 

    “HEY! WATCH WHERE YOURE GOING!” A man with a gruff voice shouted.

    I stared up at the face in front of me who’s features were as clear as day. There were no wobbles or smudges on his figure, but it was as if someone had drawn a perfectly shaped man, with a fresh black sharpie. 

    Everything this man believed or thought shone clear through his explicitly drawn figure. 

    “Sorry,” I muttered, sliding away towards the colorful footprints as the man shook his head in irritation, stuffing his hands into his pockets. 

    Eventually, I found myself standing in a park with rolling hills, pencil-drawn like people scurrying around the area. My eyes followed the footprints until they disappeared behind a clump of  pepper-black bushes. 

    Swallowing nervously, I gingerly tiptoed over, the peered around the bush. 

    On the other side, seated on the bleached ground, was a boy. And he was breathtaking. He didn’t look like he had been drawn by a clear black pen, or as if someone rubbed their sweaty hand over a penciled drawing. 

    He was a splash of color just like me, leaning back against the bush, which was soaked with colorful paint-like liquid. 

    It was like someone had let a single drop of rainbow-colored paint splatter onto a sketched paper. He stood out like a dazzling light in the dark, like a brilliantly-red flower blooming in the middle of a withering forest. 

    And then he froze as if sensing something, and slowly turned his face up at me, the colors swirling around him at the slight movement. He caught my eyes and my heart jumped into my throat. 

    At first shock then wonder crossed his eyes. 

    A smile crawled on his face and one crawled onto mine. 

    And just like that, he invited me over to sit by him and we talked. We talked about many things. About our creative imagination and ideas. About how we felt different from everyone else. About how we could change this smudged world of black and white, and if there were more like us. 

Maybe it’s okay if my life feels and looks a bit smudged. But, you know what? As long as I have a good friend by my side, maybe I can trudge through. As long as someone can be there for me, maybe I can make it through this perplexing and different world, and maybe even change it.