This Side Up

Fragile.

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When you were a kid, did you ever wonder what that drawing of a broken glass on big packages meant? I was always intrigued by that particular symbol and the word accompanying it: FRAGILE.

I always looked for that symbol every time I see a new box of whatever my parents bought or got from someone. But only a few things had that like a box of wine glasses – which made me think that all the glasses inside were broken due to the similarity of the symbol with the content – or things that are not resistant to shock. So due to the confusion, I looked it up in the dictionary – yes, unfortunately, I loved the dictionary since I was a kid.

Flipped to the page where the letter F starts, looked for f-r…f-r-a…f-rag…frag-ile! Fragile; an adjective that refers to something that is easily broken. It became one of the words I liked best. After a few years, I was finally able to apply it to myself. I am fragile.

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I am a self-proclaimed introvert but a very bad one. I’m not very good at being one because I’m such a shallow well that once you start fetching water, you would be able to extract all of it out. I’m that simple, yes. Once people start asking me, I give out answers. I’m not the type of person who initiates, though. But I do share when I am asked to if I am comfortable with the one who asked. It’s really easy to know me because I do not hide much. I just don’t spill automatically.

That’s how easy it is for people to break my shell. I guess some people know that because they use it to their advantage. There are those people who try their best to open you up so that they would easily gain your trust, yet their major intention is to break it when they have it. Maybe that’s how a clam feels when humans forcibly open their shells to get their pearls and just leave them broken after. Well, at least my shell is figurative because that would definitely hurt.

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I always wanted to try being the bad guy sometimes. I mean, I know people always assumed me to be the cutie-patootie type, or the childish type, or the good-little-boy type because of my image – due to the slow aging of my earthly body – but I wanted to be someone else. I tried doing, saying, achieving, and everything-else-ing things others wouldn’t believe I would. Like after joining a certain group, everyone I know couldn’t believe. Some didn’t even believe it until they finally saw it with their own eyes. It’s hard to maintain an image that people put upon you because it is not the image you created yourself. No matter how hard you try to show them this is you, they would still stick with the image they associated with you.

It’s scary when people try to see you differently. It’s more frightening when they actually see you as someone else. It’s kind of heartbreaking.

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I was always the frail kid when I was younger. I couldn’t even count by my fingers how many times in a day I fall, trip, scar, roll, bump…(the list goes on) myself. That’s how fragile I was. But I definitely grew out of that special skill of not avoiding accidents easily by now. I wonder when I’ll get to overcome this fragility of my persona and my heart…

P.S. Maybe I should try putting a red sign on my clothes like what Emma Stone did in Easy A, but I’ll be putting a fragile sign like that of a package instead of the letter A. Probably people would know what it means when they try to handle me, right?