When Amanda was young, she knew she was an odd girl. She played with dolls like the other girls, yes. But also had interests she didn't dare share with the rest. She liked the strange, the macabre, the unusual. She found beauty in the weird and wonderful, but kept it all to herself.
Instead, she struggled to fit in. When she couldn't, she tried to hide. She hid in books, music, poetry, and she hid in her own mind. Still trying to ignore the iridescence of the wings of a housefly as it fluttered around the kitchen sink.
Occasionally, an inkling of unusual would eke out, and she'd be shunned, prayed for, and disciplined. "There's no room for weird in our world!", they'd say. So she hid away in drugs and sadness- the only solace she could find. Her sadness became a comforting friend, the drugs a protective shroud from those who didn't understand.
But her weirdness kept flickering deep inside her. Eventually, and suddenly, she took a deep deep breath- to her toes it seemed, and it was ignited in an explosion of creativity! The drug shroud slowly crumbled- no longer needed, and the sadness became more like a friend who had moved away. They were still part of each others lives, but no longer as close as they once were.
Instead, she let out her strange. She let it out to grow and play, and roll in the mud. It got bigger and brighter and more beautiful than she ever thought it could be. It dug it's claws into the dirt, steadfast, and began to create... and in a torrent of smiles, glitter, death, rainbows, laughter, and skulls, it became beauty.
