Forever

She traces the outline of a smiley face from the condensation on the window, two dots for the eyes and a curved line for the smile. It’s funny that she’s always drawing happy faces and hearts with arrows in them when she doesn’t feel that way. If she could pull what she feels inside, it would be broken hearts bleeding with stitches as if stitches could sow up her own sadness. But instead, she draws happier things because those are what’s accepted. 

She lines her eyes lightly with a brown eyeliner pen, smudging it slightly to soften it, she’s always loved makeup. She uses her face as a blank canvas, painting who she wishes to be. This shade of blush makes her cheeks look pink with happiness, contouring her face with a soft brown to give the illusion of glowy skin and adding highlighter to add a little bit of sparkle.  She dresses in light colours also, sticking with ones that are “feminine” such as light lilacs and purples. Clothing that isn't too loose to seem ‘boyish’ or too tight to be ‘s****y’. She goes through her life pleasing everyone, putting everyone’s happiness in front of her own and she wonders why she feels so empty. 

She plays a facade of a young woman, loving life, taking it by the horns and showing it who’s boss when in reality, she feels like she has no control over what she does, says or feels. She feels like a stranger when she looks in the mirror, practicing soft smiles, when she doesn’t feel the feelings that are associated with her reflection. 

She has so many friends! But none of them know her. 

They don’t know her secrets. 

They don’t even try.

It’s all fake.

And she feels alone. Lost in a world that forgets people like her, well the real her. The one who is screaming, banging her fists against her skin to get out. Causing contusions of worry, sadness and pain because she can’t let it out. She can’t show the world how broken she feels, she can only show the good. 

She doesn’t let anyone see her cry, she made the mistake of that before. She’s tainted from past experiences, past failures before she became the perfect woman. Back when her eyes were stained with her pain. She misses that person sometimes. Because at least she felt free. She didn’t like a fraud or an imposter in her own life.  

She’s a good girl.

But it’s all a lie. 

She has fantasies of breaking free from the chains of others’ expectations. The day when she pulls herself up off the ground she’s been using as a bed to sleep on. She runs away, to a far-off place where it’s just her. No one is shackled to her, she rides in the night on a white horse. She’s her own hero.  She rides through fields of daisies, stops and lies in the flowers as she soaks up the sunshine and watches the bees collect pollen for their honey.  She sees all the colours and contours that make the world she wants to live in. She doesn’t feel helpless, she feels in control, and although she is alone she is happy. Because there are no expectations, there are no rules besides the one that she makes for herself. She doesn’t have to follow a routine she hates or go to a job that feels pointless, she lives on her own terms.

But that’s not real. 

She escapes in her dreams to her made-up world. What she doesn’t realize is that this inner world is a real place. 

She just isn’t brave enough to go there. 

Not yet.

But one day she will, when she breaks free from the expectations of others that continue to shackle and imprison her. 

She has imprisoned herself, thinking that she has to live like this, that she has to put everyone’s needs and wants above her own. 

She can make boundaries, she can be vulnerable and she can live the life that is waiting for her on the other side of self-hate and self-punishment. But she has to get out of her own way first, and that isn’t as simple as it sounds. 

Self-hate is as loud and undeniable as the waves crashing at sea in a storm.

It’s as heavy as a brick wall falling on you, flattening you until you feel like you can’t move.

It’s as painful as being cut from the inside, having your heart ripped out.

It’s that voice of all those who told you that you weren’t good enough, in your own tone.

It’s the constant worry that you aren’t good enough.

It’s crying tears that feel like thousands of tiny needles hitting your fingers when you wipe them away.

You punish yourself for the way others hurt you, you continue to show yourself that you are not good enough, because you are ashamed of who you are because people have told you you are not enough as you are. 

It’s lonely. And it’s painful.

 But it doesn’t have to be forever.

Reviews

[John Sullivan]

It doesn't last forever. I'm 36 and have found out that so often life does in fact get better. People age, they mellow out. It's so hard to find a proper outlet to vent, at least we have our poetry!