there's nothing in this world
that i hate more right now
than shiny happy couples
than sappy pop country love songs
than visions of their storybook lives

maybe it's because it reminds me
of the love i took for granted
or maybe i'm just now realizing
that maybe it truly was an illusion
not just for him, but for me, too
and maybe i was right all along

but that doesn't make me feel any better

because where now are those two years of my life?

we may have looked magical
but peel back the layers
and you would have found
a boy willing to do anything
for a little bit of attention
willing to do anything
to pop his enclosing bubble
and a girl that loved her bubble
and was so wrapped up in it
that when it popped,
she was left aimless and confused
and scared beyond her wits

so, when they met,
they pretended that the bubble
had never existed at all.
for a moment, they were both
happy, shiny people
like the ones you see in movies
and so, they played the roles
even though the characters
were people neither had ever met before

as time went on,
we fell in love with the idea
that we could be different people
than we always thought we were
with each other, we broke boundaries
we never knew existed
and in a way, we became those people
if only in our own minds

it became easier and easier
to dress up and play pretend
until it was almost a natural thing
and it worked, in a way,
because we both got what we wanted
we were both validated
and the people we were before
seemed to fade away

i didn't realize this was a bad thing
until i couldn't recognize myself
looking in the mirror
and i knew that i had lost
all the pieces that once made up
ashlynn elliott

i looked in the mirror
and all that i saw
was colt monceaux's girlfriend
the dance captain's sidekick
the library club president
the girl that did everything perfectly
because that's what everyone else saw me as
that's what everyone told me i was
so that's how i began to see myself
those were the labels i lived by
and so, what made up the rest of me
just died away

and then suddenly the bubble popped

neither of us mentioned it,
but I think we both saw it
around the exact same time
we saw who each of us really were
and it scared us
both of our bubbles popped
suddenly we began to crack
and he saw the anxious, whiny mess
behind the confident, talkative facade
and i saw the selfish, arrogant contempt
behind the kindness his mother had enforced

i see shiny, happy people now
and it makes me angry
not because i hate them for it
not out of envy
because it hurts me to think
how long people try
to carry on pretending

that others think
they have to be perfect
to be beautiful

that people, in general
think that beautiful
means perfect

because i think
that we, like most people
really had one thing in common:
our brokenness
and maybe if we had seen that
in the beginning
we could have made each other
shiny and happy