my entire life, I have felt this incessant tugging at my conscience, telling me that I need to be pretty. that I need to be small. that I need to be attractive. that the only way I can find fulfillment in every other area of my life is through my appearance. that it is a prerequisite for everything else. once I achieve those aesthetics, then and only then can I begin my life.
over the years, I've tried so hard to undo this conditioning within my brain. it's less like cleaning out the cobwebs and more like cleaning up an ecological disaster. an oil spill, complete with birds coated in black goop on the front of a Dawn dishsoap commercial. the hands that bathe this poor, sickly animal have french tips and no wrinkles and no sun spots and no blemishes or marks. and even after it seems like it is all cleaned up, you look back down and realize those hands themselves are made of tar and blood and instead of cleaning up the spill, you've just smeared even more of a mess onto it.
my body is breaking and hurting and my joints ache and there's an unknown rash across my knuckles and my doctor shrugs her shoulders and sings research about autoimmunity and repressed anger. my body is breaking as I climb the stairs. my body is breaking as a stranger silently judges me for taking the elevator. my body is breaking as I guiltily question if I should've avoided the exercise. my body is breaking as I wonder if I should relapse or not. my body is breaking as I think about what it would be like to be the little beauty that everyone loves and cares about and never leaves alone and afraid and wants to ensure doesn't die out in the cold.
my body is breaking and yet I wonder if I should continue hurting it in order to feel cared for. my body is breaking and thousands of years of evolution created instincts to help it survive. my body is breaking and yet I still want to do the very thing it wasn't designed to do.
my body is breaking, and yet I care more about looking pleasing to the eyes of others, than I do about dying.
someday my mother will die and I will have spent decades upon decades prioritizing a fantasy over living as a full human being, and I don't know why. I don't know when this train went so far off course. I don't know. I don't know why people on the internet are so cruel. I don't know why they can't be nicer. I don't know why we can't just get along. I don't know why they can't see the pain and the suffering and the shared struggles and the humanity. I don't know why my broken body is so offensive to them. I don't know why I feel such an urge to fix it so that they'll be less angry about it. I don't know why that's the urge I have, instead of feeling like they're the ones in the wrong. I don't know why I assume it's always me who needs fixing. I don't know why I always assume it's my body's fault. I don't know why it always goes back to the fantasy of the little bitty thing who everyone cares about and who nobody's ever mad at because look at how beautiful, society says that's a body who will never be chided or criticized or mistreated (we all know that's a lie, but isn't it such a pleasant one to believe for just a moment?)
my body is a graveyard in more ways than one. sometimes I feel as though I'm just a bunch of grief stuffed into a shell of who I once was. sometimes I feel like I was when I was 15 and sitting in the back hall of my parents house, wondering when my life was going to end and if it was going to be at my own hands or somebody else's. sometimes I think about the last time I hugged her and the look in her eyes and the unsettling feeling that something was wrong, months before she killed herself. I still never got to read her suicide note, even though her mom promised to let me. I doubt much could've been gleaned from the writings of a child, though. she didn't mention me. she didn't mention much of anyone. the last thing she texted me was "you're really pretty, [name]. I really mean that". I don't think I've ever been able to find somebody who felt like a true friend in the way that she did. I hate that it's hard to imagine her voice now. I hate that she was only the first of many people I'd lose in the years that followed. I hate that each time I thought there was something I could've done to prevent it. I hate that I didn't drive myself to school that day and left them alone in the house. I had a panic about driving and had somebody else drive me. if I hadn't been so anxious, they wouldn't have been home alone that day. if I had said something sooner, if I had tried to talk to them, I don't know.
I hate that it's separated me from everyone else so much. I hate the way people react when they hear about it. I hate the way the energy in the room goes cold. I hate that even close friends of mine can't hear their name being mentioned casually. I hate that there are people who I can't tell dumb little anecdotes and stories about anymore because their memory has been turned unspeakable. I hate that people see me as gloomy for wanting to talk about death. I hate that people see me as depressed and worry about me when I mention everything I've gone through, as if it's not a major part of my life. I hate that I've been through so much that I can't relate to other people my own age anymore. I hate that it creates that wall between us. I hate that there's an extra punishment for going through tough times and trauma, in the form of alienation and subtle outcasting. I hate that I feel the eyes of other people's judgement constantly and I hate that I even care about that at all, but I also hate that I hate that I care about it because that hyperindividualistic "I don't need anyone else, don't care about other people's opinions. they don't matter anyways" crap feels rotten to its core. I just want to feel seen by someone. I just want to be understood. I feel like I've been crying out into a world that will never actually Get Me in the same way that a now-dead little girl once did. you know?
