Misfit in an Imperfect World

Chapter 2

Shubham continued dropping his hints and Vartika, foolishly enough, kept taking them seriously. Ironically, she still wasn't sure of her feelings. "Something almost like a crush" was the best way possible she could explain herself. As time went by, her feelings intensified, and so did the eagerness to date him. She gave him all the care and support that he needed to heal from the breakup. She thought he would be smart enough to understand that she was very much into him. He sure was smart and probably understood everything, but was ignorant and didn't care much for her, or maybe not at all.

Her phone buzzed. After a week or so, it was a message from Shubham. This time, as every time his message came, her hands turned cold and her heartbeat sprinted like a cheetah; but in a second everything came back to normal as she read the message.

"I'm dating her!!", he texted.

"Who??", within a second she replied, even though she knew who he was talking about.

"Anya. Who else? I proposed to her yesterday and we're dating now."

"Who's Anya?"

ANYA!!! That drunk chick who's picture I sent you!!"

"Oh right! Anya. I forgot about her. Congrats bro. Enjoy!!", she wrote unmeaningfully, pretending that she wasn't bothered at the least.

His words flashed in front of her eyes again and again. Every time they did, she felt a weird pull in her stomach. She felt defeated and worthless. It felt like all this while she had been floating blissfully in the infinite expanse the universe, not having to worry about anything, and then all of a sudden, someone pushed the gravity button and she started falling, not knowing where the fall would end, whether it would even end or not.
It was more disappointing than heartbreaking. It was shatteringly disappointing that even after all those hints and inside jokes they shared, and all of the nights that she stayed up only to talk to him, he still chose Anya over her. She felt used, exploited and deeply hurt. "All men are the same.", she thought to herself. She hated herself and her incapability to lure boys like the other girls could. She hated that she didn't have what Shubham wanted. She hated Anya. She hated all tall and skinny girls like Anya who looked good in anything they wore. She hated them for getting the best pictures of themselves. She hated them for having the best things and the best guys. She hated Shubham for taking advantage of her, for playing with her feelings. She hated all the boys like Shubham who were narcissistic and cared for no one, who chose attractive bodies over beautiful hearts. She hated their selfishness. She hated their parents for bringing them up like that. And then, she hated herself even more for having so much hatred for people who didn't even know they were hurting her.
It wasn't anyone's fault but hers. Her friends had warned her about him and she herself knew the kind of person he was but she still jumped right into it. She was to be blamed. In that moment, no one in the entire universe hated her more than herself. She hated every inch of herself.
She became bitter towards everyone and everything. She misunderstood the people who genuinely liked her and spoke to her. She would push away anyone who tried to talk to her, because, in her head they were all traitors.

Fantasising became her favorite thing to do. She sometimes imagined herself on a stage, speaking to hundreds of people, telling them about her miserable teenage and how she came   out of it; sometimes thought of herself as the female character from a romantic movie, tall and skinny with flawless skin, always managing to fall in love with someone and ending up with the same person, knowing that she could only fantasize about such things.

"What's with this world and its obsession with just one type of girls?", she questioned in her head. She was stubborn like a child, and she just couldn't understand why people were so narrow-minded and so audacious to confine beauty only to someone's body. She was a total misfit in a world like this; or at least that is what she thought of herself.

She cried and cried till her eyes swelled up; not because she couldn't date Shubham, but because she was angry. Angry with the world for favouring tall and skinny and fair girls, for portraying them as the only type of girls who were worthy to be loved and for portraying their features as the epitome of beauty. She was angry with God and Mother Nature for making her chubby and not tall enough and for giving her a patchy skin, full of pimples and blackheads. She was furious with herself for being lazy and not working on herself, because, had she done that, Shubham would've been hers.

What was left of her was just a useless, hormonal and toxic teenager, a sack of unhappiness that was filled with all sorts of negative feelings and emotions and didn't know how to deal with them.