YOU CAN LET YOURSELF WIN

i've always had this sneaking suspicion i was evil.

i'm sitting on my new balcony, feet dangling out from the railing, head leaning against the poles while a cigarette dangles from my lips. god, i must look so cool right now. i'm not even trying. i'm wearing jewelry that my hands trembled to put on. i futzed with my hair in the mirror for an hour. my clothes are just copied from someone online. i have been pinching my stomach and holding onto the last of my depression induced starvation in hopes that i can fit into my vintage rodeo jeans that i paid way too much for. i look like a man in makeup. my thighs are too plump and feminine.

two quotes come to mind. the one where michelle obama told us not to waste our time in college dating around. and how nardwaur is the human serviette. 

sometimes i say certain things to get what i want. sometimes i loathe myself. how much of the soft clay of my body stretch? who can i morph into? what i am restricted to become? how often do we have to do what we don't want to? what does the greater good even want for me anymore when i can't make up my mind about my hair being long or short without crying and cussing out someone i love?

my friend walks up to me. i'm reminded of how awkwardly i flirted with her once. i descend the balcony, offer her some of my cigarette, and loosely cling onto a mug. all of this is unintentionally intentional. i am a portrait of gracie. i am the ghost that haunts her frame.

i sit at our destination and the cigarette catches up to me. why the fuck do i keep doing this. i excuse myself to the bathroom to dry heave. i'm reminded of when i did this at a jazz club. thin long legs shaking in the wind and i was still the most beautiful girl on planet earth. now i'm dry heaving into my friends toilet, legs unshaven because i couldn't be bothered and flabby from not walking for months. i try to get myself to walk around with my camera so at least i'll make art from it and post it on my instagram and try to get a job or new friends out of it. i make myself disgusted at the thought of my intentions. i can't even walk in the woods anymore without an ulterior motive. 

i go back to my friends and pull my lie out of my ass about not eating well and then i sit and start talking about business and managing and internships and resumes; none of which i have or even started. meanwhile, half the people i know went to europe for the summer. and their parents didn't even pay for it.

why is it so hard for me to do what everyone else is doing? why do i even care so much?

...

i didn't post this because it didn't have a happy ending. i was still ruminating on these insecurities when i closed my computer and went out with friends. i was hating them and envious and jealous but needy and scared and i was complaining to them the entire time. i felt embarrassed that i could stoop so low. i'm supposed to be confident, a boss bitch, a big girl.

now, coffee mug again loose in hand, i feel better, and i'll feel worse again, but before i tell you how i got better, i'll first tell a fable.

imagine what it would be like if there was a little baby, perhaps something prophetic or mystical or biblical brought us here, but this baby was powered only by love. all of the towns people have to give this baby their full love and attention for it to survive. and real love too, none of this fake two-faced bullshit where you say you love this baby and you really don't. you have to and whatever's controlling this baby can tell when you're fake as fuck. 

and so this baby is so fucking healthy and plump and rosy cheeked and happy and the town's people go everyday to coo and coddle her and everyone's happy and this town is completely peaceful. one day though, the baby gets a little sneeze. and the people lose their fucking mind.

everyone is fighting, people managed to single out a young man who shows indifference to the love bug, and everyone says he's the one who doesn't love the baby and the baby is going to die. through arguing he insists on his indifference, that he doesn't hate the baby and wants it to do well, so sure he loves it. and the townspeople are throwing him to the ground and screaming that he has to say he loves this damn baby and so he says he loves the damn baby but the baby still has a cold so he must be lying.

and through all of these days of fighting, it slowly slips out, that everyone sort of has indifference to this baby. everyone has felt like this all along. everyone's taking care of it because they're afraid not to.

and so now the village is in shambles. the peace is gone. but the baby manages to only still have a cold. it's definitely not dying. and the townspeople kind of miss cooing and coddling her. even the young man looks into her dewy big eyes and feels bad for kinda not giving a shit.

and like nothing ever happened, the baby goes back to this endless lifetime of coddling cooing ooing and awing, and the peace is restored.

last night when i got back i stood in my kitchen into the little hours of the night. it was peaceful to have this time to myself, and my head was buzzing from a couple of joints.

i couldn't shake the feeling that the smell and look of my new kitchen was identical to my late aunt's. it was eerie. i grabbed a can of tuna from the pantry. she raised me on tuna and crackers and ice cream sundays and fresh bread and sweet vanilla muffins. she grew up in the last years of the great depression. she raised 13 irish kids in the ghetto, add some lose some if you count how many died when they were still in infancy.

in her old years she took me to the opera. irish generational trauma is crazy like that. i remember someone saying her and i look similar. we really don't. i just wear the big brown glasses that were popular in the seventies. i look as much like aunt lenore as i look like hillary rodham clinton. 

i'm getting antsy about eating this late. i have been trying to watch my figure. i blame it on androgyny reasons. i would be more palatable as a thin little thing. 

but i toast my new brioche and stir japanese mayo into my tuna, and lean against the counter to take a bite. i start crying. 

how can i be so angry when i was once so little? 

how can i be so angry when so much love has brought me right here?

is that not just what i am? something that loves?

why would i ever use that against myself?

the matryoshka doll of my body slides everything into place. i am complete again. and everything that fills me is entirely mine. 

now i'm drinking coffee with extra sugar. i brought cookies to class for my friend. if i keep choosing to hate myself for whatever fucking reason, all i'll be left with is hating myself for any little reason. and i'm going to be a big girl about it. and it will happen again. and i'll keep calling all my little wooden pieces back to myself, because it feels good to.