I think that it’s funny that some men believe that beauty for a woman is a golden ticket to a shiny trophy wife life.
That since I was a little girl my dads friends would peer down at my little six-year-old self and turn to him and say “she’s going to be a heart breaker”
My future was not to be in my hands but in the hands of whichever man’s heart I was apparently destined to break.
For some reason I stopped thinking that being attractive and maintaining my appearance could be useful.
I grew so frustrated with the consequences of my appearance that I didn’t want to maintain it anymore.
I thought that people followed me and chased me down blocks and harassed me verbally while jogging down the street and roofied my drinks and had fun with me on a night I can’t recall was because I aligned with some beauty standard with the whole wavy dirty blonde hair light eye combination and little short shorts that showed my butt cheeks if I bent down to grab something.
But I chopped and dyed my hair and hid my body with loose clothes and I shut the world out and I drank until I puked and smoked cigarettes until my mucus turned black and ripped my bong every time I woke up. I mistreated myself for years but eventually I realized that it was no fault of my own that I was mistreated. And that people were still shitty and it wasn’t necessarily about me.
But anyways it’s still funny that beauty is envied so much when it comes with so much pain. Because even tho people still bothered me when I altered my appearance, it wasn’t as often; my plan still sort of worked but at the cost of my own health.
I used to take scary as a compliment. It gave me a sense of control. I liked the thought of seeming scary because if I was feared I wouldn’t have to be so afraid. If I acted aggressive and mean they wouldn’t know how scared and sad I am. If I pushed everyone away and kept them at a distance and kept my emotions to myself nobody would be able to use them against me so nobody could hurt me too bad.
Nobody but me could know the truth about everything because then they would know how to hurt me best. People think I’m an open book because I share my experiences so openly with people.
The thing is though, usually when I tell stories about myself I don’t necessarily lie but I don’t tell the whole truth either. I leave out the darker parts to make sure everything still seemed like I was in control.
I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember.
“I fell and hurt my arm” my eleven year old self said while walking into the sixth grade twenty minutes late with puffy eyes from crying, leaving out who angrily tackled me to the ground in the driveway that morning.
“He took me back to his place” my sixteen year old self said the night after I woke up in an unfamiliar room covered in my own blood.
“I broke up with him” my nineteen year old self said about the boy I never stopped loving after I begged him to put in more effort to communicate so he could stay with me.
“I don’t care about him anymore” my twenty one year old self said when I finally realized a different guy was taking everything from me without being able to give anything in return. we weren’t really in love at all, just two chaos addicts getting high on each others inconsistency.
“I’m just a really good employee and he respects my opinion” my twenty two year old self said while being groomed by my boss who I would get so ridiculously drunk with after work.
“It’s okay I’m not attached” my twenty three year old self says as I continue to intentionally choose partners that I don’t fully respect in hopes that the potential future rejection will sting less than it would if I actually really liked them as a person.