letters lament

Dear Me

Dear Me. 

I'm not sure who you are anymore, so maybe this won't be the first letter I write to you; to myself. Who are we anyway? There's a beast, and someone proud to be who they are; there's that tiny little girl that's broken up and has nothing left to lose. All coming out in different ways at different times. I suppose the one writing all this? She's broken. I'm broken, in a way. Damage doesn't heal, never completely. Every blow the fragile girl's ever received stays with her, drowning; sinking lower until there's nothing left but madness. Am I mad? Insane? 

Maybe. 

What do I see in myself? That's what this is supposed to be about; not the way I think, or the strange voices that are me but not me. It's not about feelings; not yet, I suppose. This is simple; what do you see in the mirror? What do you see yourself as? Answer those questions. Come on; do this with me. Answer them, and tell me who you are. 

Maybe I'll go first.

Fifteen. As I write this, I've been fifteen for a few weeks; it's probably been more by now. I might even be really older, in the present time, but for right now, I'm fifteen. I'm near the end of my freshman year of high school; it's March. My eyes are green, and people tell me they change to blue or brown sometimes, but to me they're just green. A soft, meadow colored green, mixed with a darker one; the color of the stormy sea. You know, comparing them to the sea makes them sound dark blue, but if we're being honest here, the water of lakes or the sea is green. It's that sickly color, from all of the trash, waste, and pollution we thrown in them. Maybe I'm like the sea then; we all are. The more trash is thrown at you, the more you absorb, and the more it changes you for good. 

No one can clean up the mess in my eyes. 

Back to what I see in the mirror; my hair, my face. I've got blonde hair, slowly fading into brown. Somedays it's ugly, but sometimes I run my fingers through it, and I smile for real. I smile at how long it is; straight down to the middle of my back. My hair is one of the only really beautiful pieces of me, and as long as I have it, I'm not ugly. No one's ugly unless they let themselves believe it. 

My face isn't bad, but it's not pretty like others think. Sure, I've got okay skin, tannish and minimally covered in acne; I only have zits by my eyebrows, or my hairline. It's warm, my skin; all the time, except for my hands. My hands shake sometimes, and I think I'll be like my mom, going to therapy for her hands. Unable to type a lot. Unable to write. That would kill me. She said that if I stopped writing so much, my hands might not get bad until I'm older. I do it anyway; I have to write, or else I'd fall. 

My nails are small and damaged from playing piano; I don't worry about them much, and my bad habit is to bite them, until they bleed. Sometimes, I let them bleed, and then I have to wear a stupid bandaid, and it's hard for me to write, so then I have to sit there and let it bleed while I write. That's not pleasant, but I have to do it. There are callouses all over my fingers from writing so much; I'm proud of that. I like my nose too; my lips are normal, if not a little cracked. My lips bleed in the winter, and I tell myself that I deserve it, and that if I bleed, it makes me stronger. Crying makes you stronger. 

Bleeding makes you stronger. Not from wrists; not from self inflicted harm. Bleeding makes you stronger when it's without your control; when it's just God's way of giving you something, like cracking lips, or a small cut from a fall; he does that to make you stronger, right? If there's a God, maybe he's doing all of this for a reason. 

I'm not sure anymore, but maybe I'll write more about it later. 

My ears are a different story; let's just say that I have hearing aids. Maybe it'll be in another letter; the way I feel about my ears. How I hate when they ache and I can't hear what people are saying, so I don't interpret their words correctly. I mess everything up that way. My body is another story as well; maybe that will be another letter too. Letters. Letters about every single thing. 

In the mirror, I see myself. I see someone who's gone through loads, just as others have. I see a girl who's confused, and confusing. You might be confused by me; I know that I am. 

To shorten this all up, I see a survivor in my mirror, but I'm not sure if she'll survive. Someone who wants to go out and make something of herself; someone who can't completely explain why she is the way she is, but is trying to anyway, through words. 

I see me. 

-Lexi.