Ink Lips, Paper Smile

Apparently, applying to high schools require certain things.

Such as essays.

I'm Not Who I Used to Be

The best birthday I can remember was a long time ago. When I still lived in New York.

I was 6, maybe. Or 7. I don't know. But it'd snowed overnight, so when I woke up and looked out my window, our entire suburban street was blanketed in white.

It was early, or maybe just dark out, but my mother had snuck into my room in the night and tied mini chocolate bars to helium balloons, and scattered them across the floor of my room. They looked like a kelp forest of plastic pink ribbon and purple bubbles, bobbing gently against one another.

My family came in to wake me up. I can't remember whether or not my dad was there. I was wearing my favorite blue nightgown, the one with a plastic picture of TinkerBell on the front, and my hair was still long back then. Down to my back, all straggly and sleep-mussed. I must've been missing a few teeth too- all the old Polaroid pictures we have of that morning show me with gap-toothed, surprised grins.

We had cinnamon rolls.


We don't eat them anymore.
Cinnamon rolls, that is.

Idle Teen

I ate melted brie for dinner tonight and set a poptart on fire. I've been drinking milk out of tea cups and handfuls of cereals out of their boxes and there's an awful lot of warning signs that I'm falling into deterioration again.

Which, y'know

Would suck.

I got my hair cut super-short today and I look like a brunette Tinker Bell. My mother is making noises about ditching my homeschooling and attending a public high school next year, and I have the irrational fear people will mock me for having a "butch" haircut.

(I don't have a very good track record with public school kids)

For some reason an awful lot of strangers have been complimenting me tonight and it made me smile and grab fists of my (short) hair and cradle my grin into my hands because I've never known how to respond to compliments, and a whole tsunami of them renders me absolutely incompetent. Except for squealing and flailing my arms about- but that seems pretty incompetent to me anyways.

But it reminded me of all the times I've stared into the mirror, or into the synthetic-white-page of a text document, and berated myself. The times I've told myself "you're fucking worthless." or "you're an absolute idiot, what the hell do you expect to accomplish in life?" or "no wonder you don't have any friends- who'd want to be friends with a piece of shit like you?"

Self confidence, thou art not a common word to my ears.

Basically I used to get really upset with myself and sort of cuss myself out which is really depressing in retrospect and probably not the least bit mentally sound? But it worked, in it's own weird, derogatory way, and I sort of ended up programming myself to hate myself. My sister recently asked if I loved myself, and I said that for the most part, I'm apathetic towards myself. With occasional, seldom bursts of pride. So she asked if I'd ever really loved myself, and I told her the truth.
Which was no.

Which isn't good or healthy, I suppose, but I am a teenager and I'm of the general impression that self-loathing just comes with the territory. So it's kind of a shock to me on the few nights like these, when I look into the mirror and don't immediately recoil from what I see. It's a surprise when I smile and don't mind the reflection that grins back at me. Because sometimes, some few, glorious times like these, I get to like myself. I get to think, "you're pretty nice" or "you're an okay writer" or "wow nice bone structure there girl. A+ on your genetic makeup". Because really, I've got a decent set of cheekbones on me. And that's pretty cool.

Maybe someday I'll be courageous enough (or, perhaps, naïve enough) to love myself, really, truly and unconditionally.

But for now, I think occasional bouts of self-like is a good start.



(Wow this is very depressing in hindsight basically it's just me talking about my inability to love myself yikes)