But There's More To You

1 | When our worlds collide

Tense.

If there had been one word that could describe how Cynthia had felt at that moment, it would be tense. Clad in the elegant baby blue dress she was instructed in, Cynthia could barely breathe although the neckline of the dress was wide, so wide that it hung off her shoulders to reveal her collarbones. The dress was not the issue, but the nerves circling her body like a ritual, she knew it, she just chose not to acknowledge it, because the moment she gave into the feeling of anxiety, she slipped through her own fingers, melting into a puddle of nervousness and crippling unease.

Slipping.

Drifting.

Sinking.

Drowning.

She knew being an artist came with its perks and hindrances but right now, Cynthia seriously couldn't capture a breath of oxygen without feeling her chest fill up with anything but the certain gas she was longing for; as though the air suddenly lacked the element she needed to survive, as if she was being deprived of the one thing that granted her the ability to stay alive.

She truly and utter mostly loved music, with all her heart really, with her whole body and soul; she loved singing away lyrics she spent every waking moment scribbling down on crumpled pieces of paper or typing away on her phone screen, memorizing verses she wrecked her brain for, high notes too many for one to utter all at once with little to no breaths in the middle, playing the guitar for acoustic versions of songs for a change and producing her own music on her own, adjusting every tiny detail to her liking so that if someone- at least one person heard her music and was able to look past the lyrics, they'd know how much it had been significant to her, how much she had worked to achieve the precious masterpiece they were listening to, to know how much this truly had meant to her.

But...

That didn't mean she enjoyed the public's suffocating attention on her.

Don't get her wrong, if there had been something stronger than utter gratitude and love she could feel, Cynthia would have been bursting with it. The undying support she got truly was able to fill some of the inevitable void inside of her heart, reducing the feeling of the crippling emptiness that threatened to down her whole, but Cynthia has never been the type to draw attention to herself even during high-school. She was the shy kid that was silent most of the time, head drowning in thoughts and lips sewn shut so that if she ever thought of the forbidden idea of unleashing her inner notions and beliefs they'd remain stuck together, lacking the ability to exist independently. She was barely noticed or seen outside of the building labeled 'school' and perhaps that caused her trouble talking with others before she found herself developing social anxiety.

That was just the way she was though. She didn't like going outside, she preferred pajamas over outdoor clothes and fancied sinking into the comfort of her bed rather than sitting on a chair amongst people of her age; and perhaps the idea of socializing truly made her shiver in her skin because although her mother worried about her, urging her to get to know new people so that she wouldn't be cursed with the undying feeling of loneliness, she couldn't possibly get herself to step out of her comfort zone.

She thought the career she chose would be stress free- ironic, isn't it? but truly, it wasn't ironic at all, because the public was never meant to know her face, the public was never supposed to recognize her facial features, the public was never ever intended to know anything about her but her music.

Yet all of that was shattered to pieces when a foolish, young trainee in the company she was signed under exposed all of her private information to the public, stripping her away from the comfort of her own anonymous identity and exposing her to the world as Cynthia Rose, the infamous, hidden gem.