beautiful, beautiful.

September 1999.

See Mommy, I got dressed in the clothes that you layed out for me. See Mommy, I didn't do it wrong this time. I shouted the words through my five year old brain, as I stared down at my pants. The most hidious pants, why couldn't I be dressed in jeans that didn't cling to my ankles like the girl over there? No. I was wearing almost leggings but they were baggy every where but at my ankles. With printed yellow flowers against marroon, and the knees were faded almost white. With a matching shirt, I learned to be self consious about these pants until third grade when I finally graduated to jeans.

I learned to be self counsious about everything about me that was not the same. I picked at the scabs on my knees when I was supposed to be sleeping. And sometimes I made scabs appear.

I used to lay on the bed, with my long brown hair floating above my head because it made my neck itchy if I lying on it. I would squeeze my eyes shut, hard, hard, hard so that I would see colors in the black. And when I opened them I would see rainbow colors dancing before my eyes, and floating around my bedroom. I would try to catch those colors I created, but I could never touch them, never touch them, never touch them.

November 2003.

The leaves faded from green to golden yellows and oranges, to dead brown. And I was angry at them for becoming ugly when they died, they were beautiful when they were alive. And I was angry at the way people stepped on them on the ground, ripping them apart. My mom couldn't understand why I walked on my toes through the grass and groaned when I pulled a brown leaf apart. Would someone step on me and destroy me when I died? Would I become even more ugly when I died?

I forgot about how I would become a pile of bones, instead of a dryed out body with my long brown hair floating around me.

I picked at my fingers through CCD class, the way the lady with her overly bright red lipstick and overly red sweater, and the way she got stuck inbetween the desks because she was too big to get through. It all made me nervous and how I was stuck in a room with a bunch of children I didn't even know existed until two months ago. I would squeeze them until a bead would form, grow, start to slip down my finger until I had my tongue take it away. The boy next to me would stare, so I would put my hands under the desk, stare straight ahead at the crucifix on the wall. The kids around me would prattle on about all the good deeds they had done that week, while Mrs. Bright Red put gold stars next their names. I remained silent, they didn't understand that good deeds were so much more than taking some puking child to the nurse. And passing the ball to some other kid on their soccer team to score a goal. I felt guilty, because nothing I ever did to earn a gold star next to Mary Kate was good enough for me. It never made some lasting impact on anyone. I didn't belong on a soccer team, and I was the one some good doer kid would take to the nurse only because the teacher said they had too. All they did was stare at me while I swallowed my little yellow pill for the nurse, and I wondered if they stared long enough would they burn a whole through me. Mary Kate never had that many gold stars, because Mary Kate could never figure out what a nine year old could do that would seriously matter someday. Because Mary Kate didn't want to do these things just so I could pick a prize out of the box, no one would care ten years from now that I won a sticker for having stickers next to my name. And still Mary Kate was embarresed, feeling guilty, and not good enough. And so Mary Kate picked her fingers under the desk, while someone passed around the ancient crayons.

August 2005.

They left me behind, doing things that I could never envsision myself doing. I'd rather live in a hole.

I didn't feel normal, why did everyone make a point of subtly pointing it out?
I didn't want to play karoke revolution, I wanted to play pretend. No I wasn't singing pretending to be some girl who didn't have a shirt that covered her stomach. And I didn't Instant Message, I didn't have the slighest clue as to what that meant. And no I don't know what Puma sneakers are, is there something wrong with shopping at Payless? And I can't get my ponytail to be perfect, at least I do my own hair.

I tried to convince myself that it made me unique, and it worked to some extent. I was proud of the fact that I wasn't like them, and I didn't want to be like them. But there was always that tiny part, that wanted to be like them. Some part that was embarresed at how I never understood what they were saying, and how people had to include me into a conversation because I could never insert myself into one.

I liked the way the sun danced across my window pane, and left bright yellow circles in front of my eyes when I stared too long. I missed the sunlight when I cried to the light on in the hallway flooding through my open door at night. When footsteps came around, I held my breath, didn't move. No one found at about how I would highlight my hair with salty tears, or how the pillow was still wet when I woke up.

My mother said that I would get skin cancer if I kept doing that to my fingers, when I said that to my friends the next day behind the big tree on the playground they said she was just trying to scare me.

May 2007.

I was the only one in Social Studies with an A.
I still had bangs like a six year old that my mother tried to cut.
And daddy said I was fat last night.

My notebooks hidden in drawers sound so steroetypical, I was never on some sort of pubescent rollcoaster. I was on my own rollercoaster, and I knew it. I knew the way that I constantly bumped, flopped, screamed had nothing to do with the daunting prospect of having a period. It had nothing to do with wearing a bra, nothing to do with deoderant, and those blackheads on my nose. And yet that's what it says in all those notebooks. I was just hoping to find something inside myself that would fit what I was supposed to be like.

Thunderstorms made my skin tingle, I loved the way thunder boomed around me. I loved the way lightning made the world look like daytime without a sun for a few seconds. I wanted to be someones lightning, because I could never be sunshine. I killed it long ago.

November 2009.

I have too many bad habits to break. Procrastinating, procrastinating, procrastinating. Eyelash plucking, because they are just so damn beautiful, but I want long eyelashes once again. Thumb sucking, thumb sucking at fifteen, while everyone believes I've stopped. I'm sorry but it's the most consistent thing that has existed around me and within me. All those home videos of me as a baby and in the secret of my room now. It's the one thing that hasn't dissapeared from the world, and it's the one thing about me that hasn't changed much. Finger picking, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

But maybe I don't want beautiful skin around my nails like some people, and maybe I don't want even nails either. Maybe I can't explain why, but maybe I don't want to break my bad habits. Because maybe they make me beautiful in some twisted way.

My hands are beautiful because I can't find them on someone else.

According to science,
what we consider beautiful is actually
symetrical. So to us symetry is beauty.
But see hardly any of the atoms in our faces
are symetrical with all the other atoms
so really none of us are beautiful then.

And I think that is what makes us
all so damn beautiful, because
Chemistry says none of us are.
Because then if no one is technically
beautiful then even people who we don't
normally call beautiful are beautiful
because those people that we call beautiful
aren't symetrical either.
So aren't we all beautiful?

It'll be the tenth in two days. And I don't want to care, because I know I won't be properly happy if I don't feel Him. Because right now I'm slowly dying while He keeps me alive. But I will feel like a hypocrite. But still in two days, it'll be one year. And it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, because yes I am a miracle. I know I'm not the only one that will be finding themselves at one year and looking back and seeing how much it's not the same anymore. And they'll be happy, happy, happy, and be a miracle just like me. And they'll find it oh so beautiful, beautiful, so damn beautiful too.