WRITING: beautiful

This piece was written in August 2005. I'm not entirely sure what prompted it. I think it was one of those monologues that just start running through my head that I try to scribble down before the eloquent words vanish back into nothing. I do remember that my self-esteem was still weak at this point; I was sort of coming to terms with what I would never be. This piece ended up prompting an entire related story. I intended this to be the introduction then have other snapshot sections; all would compile to show the development of poor self-esteem. I have written some additional segments, but the project is largely abandoned.

Beautiful

How do you live with the fact that you will never be beautiful, will never be exceptional in any way? How do you truly accept it and settle into the reality of what you are? I don’t know. As much as I stare at my reflection and try to realize my unsatisfactory appearance, or as much as I force myself to study my mediocre life, I cannot stop the flood of fantasies of being attractive or wanted or even loved that my mind constantly pours over itself. I cannot survive on this reality. My mind refuses that this life and this me is truly it.

Average. That is how I have always been described. After a depressed rant over how fat and disgusting I am, my friends would comfort me by saying, “No, you’re not fat; you’re average.” Perhaps there is not other more vibrant word for me. Not big enough to be fat, not small enough to be slender, not attractive enough to be beautiful, not hideous enough to be ugly – I am trapped in a boring middle ground, too average to stand out in any good way or bad.

I have always slipped even farther into the mundane by comparison. I blend deeper into the scenery as I am outshone by the many that are more striking, that are just something more than me.

Somehow I have always ended up with beautiful friends, placing myself constantly beside something better than myself. Ever since childhood, I became the secondary friend, tagging along behind the infectious light of another. Then, with becoming older and sex, I slipped farther down to the unattractive friend, the second or third choice, the third wheel.

I would walk with my friends through the mall or sit with them at the bar and notice men’s eyes move over them with interest. Yet I never felt the graze of those same eyes on myself. Girls are more attractive in groups, but the guys always competed for my beautiful friends and left me in the background.

I would sit silently at parties, a sweating beer in my hand, and watch the drunk guys swarm fascinated around my friend. They all wanted her for her pretty face, her slender body, and her soft voice; but only one could have her, so the rest poured more alcohol down their throats, blurred their sight, and turned to the leftover, the only other female – me.

I have also always been the single one. As my attractive friends cycled through their series of relationships, I watched from the sidelines, sat as the third wheel because I had no where else to go. There is a horrible, burning jealousy that comes from being the extra, unwanted person. I would observe their relationships, listen to their scripted words, and see their physical affection and ruthlessly critique myself over what was wrong with me and why I did not deserve that.

No one has ever wanted me. Not the father who said I got in the way of his life and his girlfriends. Not the family I have never been good enough for. Not the drunk assholes I would lay down with in casual sex to try and fill that aching emptiness inside me. I was what they settled for, acceptable only through drunk eyes, and they never wanted me to stay.

I would feel the invisible touch of someone who truly wanted me stemming from my mind and a fantasy of being something better. But these ghost hands never materialized, and the real, fumbling hands on my body never compared. The movements always felt dead and hollow to me; my screams were always fake because I knew in my heart that I was not what they wanted – I was not beautiful or enough for them.

My family has never been shy in pointing out the flaws or average features in my appearance. But I am again placed beside someone more dazzling. More comparison to people I am unable to live up to. My sister was blessed with the good genes – golden hair, big blue eyes, petite, slender, large breasts, tan – and serves only as the ideal I should have been able to achieve as my family insists that I desperately need diet and exercise, to change my hair color and style, to dress differently.

They disapprove of the tattoos I have had scratched into my skin and the piercings I have had stabbed into my body. But these modifications are the only decent things on me. They are the only things that stand out on their mundane flesh canvas; they are the only things that are not naturally me.

I have learned to hate the mirror. I have begun to loathe that average, unattractive person that stares back at me. She cannot be me. This cannot be my reality. But the mirror is not limited just to that glass – it is in the eyes of every man that looks me over and to another or settles to go to bed with me; it is in the cold side of my bed every night; it is in my family’s words; it is in my failure to compare to those around me. It is everywhere, constantly reminding me of what I am not and what I will never be.

So how do you live with the fact that you will never be beautiful, will never be exceptional in any way? I don’t. I can’t. I choose to stand before that stranger in my mirror with a blade in my hand. I slice through my skin slow and deep. The blood is striking, the cut is beautiful, and, for a moment, I am something exceptional. And in the thick tranquility that follows, I ride my mind to another fantasy where I am better than this.