this is only about 'on hold' by the xx in the sense that it has been the soundtrack to a month of downward spiralling.
i may delete this, but for now:
i may delete this, but for now:
Scrawled on my bathroom mirror, in glass-paint marker, are the words You are beautiful.
Aw.
Cute, huh?
An affirming, fuck your standards mantra. Wake up in the morning and feel like shit? No makeup can hide the exhaustion on your face? Well, honey, don't you fret -- beauty is a construct, and it's subjective, and darling, you walk out and own the world because you got it anyway: we are all beautiful!
Listen:
I am not beautiful.
I'm a 7 on my best days; for about a year in my 20s I verged on an 8. I'm not fat, not thin; some lighting or angles make me look better than others. And yeah, I hate it, too -- when ok-looking girls bitch about individual body parts not living up to expectations, but that's not what I'm getting at here. I know I'm not ugly. I'm not fishing for compliments. My point is simply that, as a whole person: I am not attractive.
It's strangely empowering to write it down. Like an actual fuck your standards statement -- not one that panders to my narcissism, assures me I have enough aesthetic capital to face the day. Nah -- that's all bullshit, and it only gets worse as we women get older. We spend so much emotional effort (and time, and money) trying to emulate a person we never actually were, except in our most self-deluded moments. What am I trying to get back to? I was never beautiful.
You know what I was, though?
I was full.Every emotion I had shattered me. I felt it all, with a depth I don't know I was even aware of at the time -- but when I look back, fuck. I vibrate outwards.
12 years ago I was overweight, hair a frizzy mess with too much gel, black eyeliner designs all over my face. I would have, still would, barked out a laugh if you'd told me anyone had looked at me twice. I was invisible. And I didn't fucking care. I mean, yeah, I cared; I wished I was pretty, but it didn't consume me -- I had no basis for comparison. All I knew was that invisibility. But I had this...inner self. Who rose violently, at that time.
And fuck:
She was beautiful. Gorgeous.
Hard 10.
This girl was goddamn riveting.
But: no one else could see her.
You're getting to that "your inner self is what's beautiful" bullllllshit, aren't you, Jill?
Nah -- the opposite. Because you, reading this, or anyone who knows me in real life, will never know how beautiful that girl was. Is, because she's still with me, as much of a "girl" as a prism living inside a person can be.
And I used to wish what people saw on the outside matched what I felt on the inside. But: you know that garbage we're fed about people being most "beautiful" when they're talking about something they love? Fuck that. Passion is ugly. If you take a picture of someone when they're talking about their loves, it'll get a fast delete.
Look: I'm tired of deluding myself. I'm so goddamn tired of trying to reflect how I look into my head onto my body. The fact is -- I never look "beautiful," and at no time in my life could I genuinely have been described that way.
But those past prisms of myself: ugly, invisible, vibrating with intensity ------ I love them.
I love those girls so much it rends my heart in pieces.
18-year-old Jill, chubby in an oversized David Bowie sweatshirt, alone on the bus in December, heading downtown to Christmas shop with a Lindsay Lohan CD in her Discman.
Grade 10 Jill, with 5 of the same pair of pants cycling every day because she felt so self-conscious shopping, staying up too late and writing song after song to sublimate some, any, of what she was feeling.
28-year-old Jill, confident in front of the classroom and sobbing in her car because her hair didn't look right.
All of these girls were so fucking loved and they had no goddamn idea. No concept that the 30-year-old version of themselves would be looking back on their fashion naivete, their terrible makeup, their extra flesh and thin hair,
and giving
absolutely
zero
fucks.
Because these girls were prisms.
Reflecting everything exploding inside them.
Often heartbroken. Sometimes ecstatic. But always remembered. Incessantly loved.
I think.
We spend.
A lot of time hoping people will love us.
Some of us think this happens because we look the way we used to or the way a symmetrical slender doll would. Some because of the success we attain, or the relationships we cultivate. Fame. Recognition. A glance on the street, a promotion: they amount to the same thing ---------- someone noticed.
But I notice.
And one day. As unattractive as I know I am. As devastated and lost as I feel these days.
I know I will look back on this version of myself and see her
strength.
bravery.
intensity.
experience.
and love her.
I am not beautiful.
But it doesn't fucking matter.
Because I am a prism. I will be a prism.
And I feel it all.
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