Black Beauty (Z.A. Love Story// Explicit)

1// Mercedes-Benz

   I knew the feeling of tears going down my cheek and the burning in my throat. I knew the feeling each time something came out. I knew the calloused and bloody knuckles which would turn to a scab. 

   Each time it came up, I could feel the strain from inside my forehead and behind my eyes, like they would pop out of my head and like the small veins would burst.

   I giggled amidst everything; the tears and gagging, imagining the scenario in my head if it really happened.

   When I had finished, I drank from the glass of water I had next to me and sat there in my bathroom.

   In my mind I could hear my ex, Richard calling me attention-craving and self-pitying. I could picture it just as well as I could also picture me in his arms, snug as a rug. The affection would be so short-lived. (He was a bear and I wasn't like him at all really. Every time I hugged him, my face would itch against his forest chest.)

   It was always like that; short lived and I knew I would get grossed out in the process. The purging I begun a while ago was a habit I developed to alleviate my anxiety which had continually gotten worse from when I was fourteen years old.

     Viewing myself as small was something I've always done.

     The boys I've dated before, before the ten months with Richard, were the kind to give me compliments, and shower me with compliments, calling me beautiful; I never believed them. They said they loved my blue eyes, and black hair, but it made me feel like a ghost. Isolated and bitter.  It made me think.

Am I not that way now?

I thought long and hard.

nah

   $$$

   I then began to think of the time when Richard would say he loved me. But also the times he would hit me for not kissing the right way, or making food the way he liked. Memories of the time where I was happy and loved myself hurt the most. I used to love myself, my long hair, and toned, even chest with my smaller breasts.

   I knocked my head back and forth against the tile, harder each time. Being vulnerable, and in pain was a feeling I hated. It was a feeling that always caused me discomfort and great instability. To be so open and bare in front of someone's eyes and intellect was a position I had found myself to be in too many times before. I rarely ever cried in front of anyone. I cried in front of Richard sometimes, but it was routinely followed by regret, as it usually brings with most people. Always.

   He ate me up like a bear. I would regret putting my face against his forest chest when I was sad, but he still always got what he wanted.

     The tears were drying on the sweatshirt my father bought me when I was fifteen and from when we went to the ocean together in Malibu, it was an uncomfortable feeling then. My parents, both of them were never stable, nor were they ever the kind of parents I could confide in. We hardly ever went out on vacation or trips, but that day excursion was a fond memory among the... not so fond memories.

     The ocean was nice that day I remember, the air seeming to wash away the angst and thoughts we had. My parents were usually always miserable, but the thing they loved was the sun. They loved the sun, and I loved the ocean, and the breeze from the water that brought me goosebumps even in the hottest of summers.

     Coppertone on my back, and sand in our butts. It was the perfect situation, despite how little they spoke to me that day. They removed the labels from the beer bottles in the ice chest, wary of the lifeguards and would ask for the "brown sodas" whenever they were thirsty.