I'll Never Finish This Book

ONE

There are times when I don't feel like myself. There are times when I don't feel like I'm much of anyone. How was that for self-awareness?

My face consisted of nothing more than the bits and pieces of others I've crossed paths with. Every strained compliment and sugarcoated criticism turned me into the person trapped behind the glass. I struggled to accept those features.

They were the small details. They were the freckles sprinkled on to my nose by the boy who sat behind me in the fourth grade. They were the faint acne scars on my forehead that I learned in high school from girls with a bad habit of picking at their skin. They were those extra twenty minutes I spent each morning pretending to be an artist as I painted my lips and scribbled on my eyelids. They were those frustrating moments when I wiped the slate clean; I wasn't a great artist.

Then were the times when I shrunk myself because I felt I was taking up too much space. There were times when I silenced myself because I was saying all the wrong things. There were times when I spent too much time thinking about how to fill the silence. The pressure to find the right words left me quiet.

I filled the silence reading books with ridiculously happy endings while a movie about happy people basking in their happiness played in the background. I figured immersing myself in things like that would make me happier. I may not have always been happy, but at least others were.

I'd be lying if I said I was independent and decisive like those girls in all the movies I've watched and books I've read.

When I didn't become the best version of myself by reading about it, I turned to write. I liked how I could create myself with the words I wrote. I liked how I could choose what words, and when I could use them, I could change the way people saw me. It was like lying, but not really. I carefully selected and strung together the words to create the person I wanted to be. I would have simply accepted myself so that I felt comfortable in my own skin, but how often did anyone do that?

***

The sky was a mix of blue and yellow that Friday morning. The curtains covering the window to the right of my bed did a poor job of being curtains. I spent my first waking moments tossing around in bed. Once I realized that I couldn't hold on to any sleep, I groggily sat up and pulled the curtains shut.

Humming quietly, I rolled out of bed and walked over to the bathroom. I showered for precisely six minutes; it was long enough that the scent of fruit lingered on my skin, but not long enough for my fingers to wrinkle.

I searched for a towel while water dripped down from my hair. Once I found one, I wore it as a dress and headed over to the sink. The transition from the warm water to the cold tiles made it difficult to walk.

I rummaged through the clutter of makeup and gently used cotton swabs on the counter to find the toothpaste. I squeezed whatever I could get out onto my toothbrush, hoping the paste wouldn't fall off the brush as I ran it under the water a few times. I stared at my reflection while mindlessly smearing the mint paste all over my teeth.

When I went to my six-month cleaning as a child, my dentist always offered me various toothpaste flavors that ranged from fruit to candy. As I got older, he went straight for the bland mint paste. It felt as if he no longer considered me a child. Maybe he just ran out of all those other flavors. I didn't have to read into everything so much, but that was another thing about me I couldn't accept.

What I did accept was that my eyes would never be comparable to oceans and diamonds or a clear sky. They were the rich earth that trees towering to the sky anchored themselves to; the golden flecks that filled them mimicked that of the sun. They did a lousy job at being eyes because I couldn't see very far without the frames that took up most of my face.