Buzzed
Grace
Back and forth. Relinquish and then resign. Will there be a last time? They say you have to choose. They all tell me I must choose "one of them," or the lonely road. They say, "but why would you want to do it? why if they look at you strange? you used to be so beautiful." I still have tubes of it rotting in some old bag little jars collecting dust artificially scented and full of bacteria. There's maybe 5 bags worth of clothes of various pretty shades and fabrics just lying there piled on a cardboard box and a forgotten rocking chair. I remember the spoolies and the last things I needed to feel "just right." Already late as hell, it would make me later, anxious and my anxiety would increase with every insecurity every doubt that something wasn't quite perfect enough. Then there was that time I jogged through a crosswalk in West Hollywood. Years later in a different world, and I had this thought, "naked and I've never felt sexier." My freckles showing on my lips. A t-shirt and jeans. I could always work the plainest things and still look chic. I stopped feeling that way a long time ago now that everything is an attempt to avoid feeling the pain that follows me, wherever I go every inch of skin, all my joints and muscles. I pull my sleeves over my wrists. I tie my hoodie tight around my face to keep out the wind. I exist in a way that makes me seem almost invisible. Funny how I feel the best truly naked because there's nothing there to make me worry about how it looks or how I wear it. At least my mind can come in with the argument: "anybody would enjoy this sight or a lot of people," but then there's that line of thought that it matters at all what anybody likes or wants but me: it doesn't. I hate the way my hairline is growing in, and sometimes I miss looking like an ethnically ambiguous barbie because I know there are benefits to being pretty. I know people want to know me more when I fit a certain stereotypical image. I know opportunities are offered to me and doors are opened more easily. But I also and have known the pain of it for decades. It is harder to be hated and loved in so polarized a way to be typecast in the snap of a judgment to be treated like how pretty you are is all that matters than to be looked at like you are disgusting or ignored, and maybe they don't understand, but I do.



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