Lately, all I can think about is time passing. Time feels shorter and shorter every year. I think about the fact that I am the youngest I’ll ever be every single day, and not in a vain way. I don’t hate myself like I used to. It’s not like I believe youth is beauty, I actually find a lot of peace and solace in the beauty that comes with experiencing every year. I love smile lines on someone, it’s actually one of my favorite features on a face. I think getting old is one of the most radical things you could do.
I look at myself and I see pieces of every girl I’ve ever been. I can analyze my face and understand that underneath the sun developed freckles and wrinkles, there’s the foundation of a face I’ve always had. And that makes me sad sometimes. I have seen so many things on my face. I have a pooling little bruise right under my brow bone from my new piercing. It started as a sallow, greenish yellow and spread and developed into a deep purple that’s taken over my eyelid. I’m reminded of the same color I was given on my sixteenth birthday. That’s what makes me sad. I wore the same colors before, but this time I did it to myself. That stings. This same face was so tiny and so little, and hurt so much. I think about how my parents could see little me with my tiny face and feel rage. How they could see my giant eyes, probably weirdly big when I was little, glassed over in tears. And not care. I still have trouble understanding. Because I don’t hate myself like I used to.
This is the same face I wore the first time I dissociated. On the way to the grocery store, after picking me up from my first friend sleepover. I wore this face that I can remember so well because I still wear it. The same face my mom looked at me and asked me “what happened there”. The face that lied and said “nothing” because the truth is that it made no difference if I told the truth. I would’ve heard everything I needed to say from that face. That’s what reparenting looks like.
I feel a sense of sorrow, not at aging. Not at the lines that remain after I raise my brows, or the loss of the roundness in my cheeks. I feel sadness that I carried her face with me this whole time. I’ve worn the same face throughout it all, but all I feel is compassion. I feel sorry for myself, the way that I want someone to feel it for me. I’m okay with admitting that sometimes I just want to be felt sorry for. I want someone to look at my face and know it all. So that I don’t have to keep re-telling the same stories every time I have to get a new therapist because I ghosted the last one. I don’t want to have to self induce botulism because I don’t want to cry in front of someone. I just want people to know my face like I do.
ily gn ❤ -B
almondmilkhunni 