Chapter One

(This is a story I decided to put on my blog.)
"They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds." - Winston Churchill

In my world everyone has problems and no one is happy unless there's something wrong with them. If they can't find it immediately then they go searching for something. Anything. Everyone wants to be flawed. It's the new craze. Companies make bank off of people and their insecurities. They always have. There have always been commercials to make you feel ugly. There have always been doctors to suggest that there's something wrong with you. Even, when you're beautiful. Even when there's nothing wrong with you.

In my world everyone wants to be perfectly flawed. It's the new trend.

My flaw is that I don't have one. This isn't to say I'm perfect looking. If you're expecting me to tell you that I'm a five foot, eight inches, perfectly curved, teenage girl then you are seriously wrong. I'm not ugly, and I'm not pretty. Just average. In fact, I will give no hints of what I look like physically. There's nothing about me that makes me stick out in the crowd.  However, while others around me where craving to wear glasses in order to have flawed vision, I had twenty-twenty vision. While my peers went through so many disorders I lost count of their names, I didn't. That's not to say that I'm not insecure. Because I am, just like any sixteen-year-old. I feel sadness. I feel anxiety. I'm human after all.

The reason my peers are all flocking to the latest doctor isn't because there's something wrong with them. It's because they want something to be wrong with them. And, if they look hard enough and pay enough money then they'll find something.

The hallways of my school are filled with people comparing their troubles.

It's sad because you can't tell the people who have real problems from the ones just looking to have issues in order to have a higher social status.

I was wrong earlier to say that I'm not flawed. Because there is something wrong with me. With my brain to be more correct. While the rest of the world is persuaded by subliminal messaging in commercials, I seem to be immune. And, for a while I went along being just normal. My parents were a little worried and took me to a shrink. They wanted there to be something wrong with me. And that's when the doctors found out about my immunity. I was quickly given a medicine that would make just like everyone else.

And, for a while I tried to take the medicine. Deep down, I didn't want to be the freak who everyone stayed away from because I didn't go running towards the latest therapy craze. It's strange to think that that's how my world operates. But, the medicine didn't work all the way. I always felt so fuzzy headed and...wrong. One morning I decided not to take it. I couldn't handle the strange buzzing in my head each time a commercial for some skin product came on. It was like my brain was fighting against itself. One half of my brain, that part of me that was real, didn't want to comply with the newest fad. Then, the other half , the side affected by the medicine, was urging me to go to the therapist to discover that I was actually OCD, or that I had issues with my parents.

Ever since then I've been pretending. I found a pair of glasses and acted like my vision was suddenly horrible. I carried around a pill bottle in order to overcome my sudden tics. If anyone looked close enough they would see it's just Smarties.

Soon, I blended in with my peers.

My name is Avery Brown.

Welcome to my world.

"Perfectly Flawed" by Otep