Buttons

A note from your faithful observer--
Thanks for your well wishes! I stayed home Thursday and Friday, but now I'm back and feeling better. Thank you so much for continuing to read and comment. Now on to today's entry!

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When she was in eighth grade... There's not really any way to put this lightly... Her breasts became sort of huge. I'm sure she's had to endure thousands of rude comments about it over the past few years, but she never mentions it. She must've gotten used to it. But I don't think that it stopped bothering her.

When you're in middle school especially, who you are to everyone else is almost as important to you as who you actually are. If not more so. Whether you're the Cute Sporty Kid or the Paper Passer or the Girl With Way Too Much Mascara, that label is important.
So this girl enters puberty, and for a long time, through no fault of her own, she is known as The Girl With Huge Tits.

She must've made a decision, at some point, to change their minds. To show them who she really was. And since then, she's spent all her time, focused all her energy, into creating a new image for herself. An image that means so much more, an image that shows who she really is.

Not many people are capable of creating an image like that, but she's done it.

She dresses in bright colors--big colors, and lots of them, all shining yellows and grass-greens and vivid purples. She usually wears a big necklace or two, in clunky, abstract shapes, and earrings that match. Nobody else dresses like that, and nobody else ever could. Her style is so different, but it's all hers.

She asks lots of random, unrelated questions, that often spur discussion all around her. For example, "In action movies, when the hero steals some random guy's car to chase after the villain, what happens to that guy? Does he ever get his car back?"

A lot of people don't even bother thinking about those kinds of questions. But she does. And not only does she think of them, she also asks them, throws them out into the world to see what people do with them. Instead of just keeping them in her head.

It's rare that you find someone like that. Someone who is so weird, so beautifully weird, yet so unafraid of really being who they are. It's that kind of bravery that keeps her weirdness from being awkward.

Around freshman year, she started collecting buttons, and sewing them all over her clothes. Her mission was to make an outfit covered entirely in buttons. Almost two years later, she finished. Pants covered in buttons. Shoes covered in buttons. Shirt covered in buttons. Hat covered in buttons. Buttons for earrings. Buttons all over her bag.
And no two buttons alike.

Sometimes she wears her buttons outfit to school, just because she feels like it. And you laugh when you see her, because it's so awesome--Ridiculous, in a way, but awesome.
Because she's not The Girl with Huge Tits anymore. She's the Girl with the Buttons.

One day recently during a passing period, I was walking to class with Buttons and a few friends. It was cloudy, and the wind started blowing, and suddenly Buttons burst out, "Oh my god, I want to FLY!"

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the tips of her index fingers against her temples, concentrating. "I know I can do it. I know I have the ability, somewhere. I just need to let it happen."

She concentrates. The wind catches in her yellow cardigan and lifts her dark hair from her face and her earrings clatter and she spreads her arms wide, a smile creeping across her face.

Then her eyes pop open, she sees she's still on the ground, and groans in disappointment. "Damn it!"

Sometimes, I forget what an incredibly beautiful person Buttons is. And I never ever should.