I sat in the dark on my front porch as I stared into the distance. I was about to take a walk. Everything was blurry. I couldn’t make out the end that some part of me knew existed. I felt as if I had taken my first steps yesterday. The sound of small shoes tapping the sidewalk echoed on repeat in my mind.
Some time around the start of high school, I began to fear my reflection. It was unknown, yet familiar. An inflexible, fragile, babydoll dress. The one buried at the bottom of my dresser. The version of myself in mirrors clung to doll parts. An unevenly stitched creature sewn from strange features she saw in others. Eventually I chose to not live in the discomfort of confrontation. I pretended I was a marionette pulled in different directions or a princess in a dollhouse. The princess was controlled by the little girl in myself who destroyed her toys. Why did I break what was beautiful? Be it my new blush in a gold tin or my birthday crown that I stepped on as I cried sitting on my bedroom floor.
A scratched magnifying glass lived with me wherever I went. I used it to observe those around me. I asked myself if they too lived in repulsion of their reflection. So many wore the masks of band aids covered by years of glitter, eventually congealed into a thick layer of glue. It took me years to see the bandaids underneath. I hardly knew the little girl in me anymore.
On that night there was no moon in the black sky. All I could see was myself as I walked four lonely blocks to a 7-Eleven. The glittering, green, twenty-four hour sign illuminated an endless alleyway in my mind. Was I the same person on that sidewalk as I was minutes before, gazing out the window at the night sky? Was I still a little girl or was she buried deep inside me?
We built a dollhouse when I was five. Too large for a doll but just right for us. It collapsed because of heavy rain one day. I ached at that moment to go back inside the dollhouse. The mud in the cement’s cracks turned my pink shoes brown as the rain wiped the chalk hopscotch away. The 7-Eleven greeted me with a kind of light the little girl only knew from her bedroom fairy lights.
When I was about to set foot inside I realized that this was a hollow procedure. Standing there I was the same person as I was at this time yesterday, lying in the bathtub with the room pitch black. I was the same marionette only in new shades of pink. A plastic doll with a new hairstyle.
*****
When I arrived home I turned on the TV. The screen flickered, before revealing the enigmatic face of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He embodied a character too unearthly to live yet too ethereal to die. I stared at the ceiling while I tried to make out the shape of the chandelier, before my eyes were redirected to the screen by the words “Once you’ve been up there you really know you’ve been someplace.” He said this while he looked up at a planetarium. His character was a shell. If dropped once, it would shatter and waves would escape. He would feel as if he hadn’t lived before, a feeling I knew well. I wondered if I had been someplace. Perhaps I had when I was five and played inside the dollhouse. Even when I explored life’s new corners, I watched through a mask modeled from the characters I saw in old Hollywood films and the cool girls at school. The layer of glitter glue I wore grew thicker and shinier with each passing year. There would have been no characters in outer space.
*****
Lying always troubled me. There was already too vast a distance between the minds of two individuals. I was the only person I lied to. The untrue version of myself floated at the surface while I sank deeper into the ocean, until at one point I thought I had drowned. The image in the tea I drank from my gramma’s cup didn’t accurately reflect who I was. I saw within the cup all my different faces and all the different places I had been; the only missing piece was the face I held and the place I existed in at that moment. It grew difficult to reconcile with the sameness I felt to my younger self, seeing that my reflection in the liquid shattered myself into pieces. I tried to change the image I saw by altering my expression, unsure whether my smile or my scowl or my cry would reflect most beautifully. Even in front of myself I wore a mask.
Some time around the start of high school, I began to fear my reflection. It was unknown, yet familiar. An inflexible, fragile, babydoll dress. The one buried at the bottom of my dresser. The version of myself in mirrors clung to doll parts. An unevenly stitched creature sewn from strange features she saw in others. Eventually I chose to not live in the discomfort of confrontation. I pretended I was a marionette pulled in different directions or a princess in a dollhouse. The princess was controlled by the little girl in myself who destroyed her toys. Why did I break what was beautiful? Be it my new blush in a gold tin or my birthday crown that I stepped on as I cried sitting on my bedroom floor.
A scratched magnifying glass lived with me wherever I went. I used it to observe those around me. I asked myself if they too lived in repulsion of their reflection. So many wore the masks of band aids covered by years of glitter, eventually congealed into a thick layer of glue. It took me years to see the bandaids underneath. I hardly knew the little girl in me anymore.
On that night there was no moon in the black sky. All I could see was myself as I walked four lonely blocks to a 7-Eleven. The glittering, green, twenty-four hour sign illuminated an endless alleyway in my mind. Was I the same person on that sidewalk as I was minutes before, gazing out the window at the night sky? Was I still a little girl or was she buried deep inside me?
We built a dollhouse when I was five. Too large for a doll but just right for us. It collapsed because of heavy rain one day. I ached at that moment to go back inside the dollhouse. The mud in the cement’s cracks turned my pink shoes brown as the rain wiped the chalk hopscotch away. The 7-Eleven greeted me with a kind of light the little girl only knew from her bedroom fairy lights.
When I was about to set foot inside I realized that this was a hollow procedure. Standing there I was the same person as I was at this time yesterday, lying in the bathtub with the room pitch black. I was the same marionette only in new shades of pink. A plastic doll with a new hairstyle.
*****
When I arrived home I turned on the TV. The screen flickered, before revealing the enigmatic face of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. He embodied a character too unearthly to live yet too ethereal to die. I stared at the ceiling while I tried to make out the shape of the chandelier, before my eyes were redirected to the screen by the words “Once you’ve been up there you really know you’ve been someplace.” He said this while he looked up at a planetarium. His character was a shell. If dropped once, it would shatter and waves would escape. He would feel as if he hadn’t lived before, a feeling I knew well. I wondered if I had been someplace. Perhaps I had when I was five and played inside the dollhouse. Even when I explored life’s new corners, I watched through a mask modeled from the characters I saw in old Hollywood films and the cool girls at school. The layer of glitter glue I wore grew thicker and shinier with each passing year. There would have been no characters in outer space.
*****
Lying always troubled me. There was already too vast a distance between the minds of two individuals. I was the only person I lied to. The untrue version of myself floated at the surface while I sank deeper into the ocean, until at one point I thought I had drowned. The image in the tea I drank from my gramma’s cup didn’t accurately reflect who I was. I saw within the cup all my different faces and all the different places I had been; the only missing piece was the face I held and the place I existed in at that moment. It grew difficult to reconcile with the sameness I felt to my younger self, seeing that my reflection in the liquid shattered myself into pieces. I tried to change the image I saw by altering my expression, unsure whether my smile or my scowl or my cry would reflect most beautifully. Even in front of myself I wore a mask.