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Usernamelaltus
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No matter what I am, I am a writer.
Inches of Myself
Mar 29, 2020 4 years agoI thought he was the first person who could see me, but he was just the first person to speak about me with any authority. Told me he knew what I wanted more than I knew myself. He made me feel like a girl in a rock song, sugar turning to something poison. He loved to be the thing that poisoned me. He always said that. I told myself I wanted to be a good friend, but really I would have done anything for a boy to like me. When I looked outside of myself I knew that I was valid and worthy and good. I got straight A's and I was the newspaper editor and I was a cheerleader and I had enough friends that I wasn't totally alone. But I craved. Everything was happening to anybody but me and I was born with this big dumb body five sizes too big and if I could have skinned myself like a carrot I would have. There was not an inch of myself that I did not hate, did not want to hack off piece by piece until I was a bloody mess with a heartbeat humming a Taylor Swift song. By the 8th or 9th grade I realized everyone was sick of hearing me call myself fat and so I stopped. I did not give the feeling a language and kept it deep in a hollow inside myself. Would walk past a mirror and pinch my skin—arm, face, elbow, hand, it didn't matter—and wish it would be gone. Fall asleep at night trying to put my face on a skinny girl's body. Night after night I could never make the image make sense. I would have to start over, shave off piece by piece until I got a version of myself I could live with. Wonder how many pounds it would take to do that, and always assume it must be a thousand. Feel trapped in this stupid flesh that I never even signed up to inhabit. Never ask to borrow my friends' clothes, because it will not fit, and then I will die. So when a boy with black hair and brown eyes and a smile like it knew my secrets wanted to touch my heaving earthquake body how could I ever say no to that? It did not matter if he would leave me waiting for hours or if he would pick fights or sometimes call me things like a dumb slut stupid whore just it admit you know you are one. Because sometimes he would press his forehead against mine and trace his fingers against every inch of me. I want you so bad he would whisper with his hands full of my skin and for a moment, gasping, I would believe him.