On Green Moths and Buckets

What happens when I try to write a memoir

Brown eyes don’t exist. Yet, there are eyes the color of tree bark after a thunderstorm, the color of Belgium chocolate that is sold in seashell shapes, or the color of a recently polished mahogany table with water rings on it, those eyes, do exist. Brown eyes are such a normal trait that they are the ones that are always on the background. How many times does one receive compliments on the color of their “brown” eyes? It’s very noticeable when someone has grey eyes the color of the sky minutes before a hurricane wreaks havoc amongst the lives of those under it, or when two blue jays are trapped in someone’s features. Brown eyes are just simple. Writers never really describe them like they should be described; they just say chocolate and steer from elaborating on it further. Plain and simple.

That’s what I grew up thinking of myself, plain, basic, simple. My skin is a regular color, not too dark, not too light, just a regular skin color that will pass unnoticed in Mexico. All around me girls would be a pale color that let their cheeks bloom roses when a guy told them they were cute. You could see their veins crisscrossing their arms, as if they were delicate canvasses to be displayed in a museum. Yet, there I was, my skin greenish at times, like Bruce Banner in midst of turning into Hulk. There were moments when I wished I could be paler, when I wished my skin would just lose its color so that boys wouldn’t give me third place in the “Who has the darkest skin” list they created, as if having a higher UV resistance was a thing to be ashamed of. And still, I was simple, those with lighter skin were the majority in my school, but in my mind they were still the ones that stood out. Who noticed the moth on the bark of the tree?

As I grew older, I became that moth trying to be a butterfly. First I tried to lose lots of weight to be really thin, because being thin makes you feel special. So that I would hear “You are so thin!” or even whispers behind my back “Is she anorexic?” As I exercised and ate very little, I realized I could never be as thin as I wanted to. I was regular. The rest? Either too thin or too fat. Everyone around me was special. They all had qualities that made them the biggest stars of their constellations, their tinkling laughter or their voices that painted the atmosphere like stippling with a fine pen. Meanwhile, I felt like an unnoticed speck in Orion’s belt.

I didn’t want to be a dot in the sky, or the moth that blended in so perfectly with the 87^th tree of the forest. I desired to be the sun, so that I wouldn’t care about what people said and if people liked me, because they would notice me anyway and remnants of me would be present even when I was gone. Nobody brought down royalty.

And so, I crowned myself. I wore buckets on my head. This was actually done as a carbon copy of my brother who never reproached me for rubbing his idea on my own paper, in fact the bucket felt like it belonged on my head. Like a way to color water without adding flavor to it. My parents still remember when I did that. They keep reminding me I just followed my brother, and, after retracing that phrase inside my brain, I wonder if there was anything that made me stand out that was wholly part of me. Wasn’t I just an echo of my parents?

My hair was almost a wig woven out of my own mother’s hair. A dark brown consisting of scribbles that were neither curly nor straight. When my hair shone it wasn’t a clean shine rather one that looked greasy and slobbery, as my mother kindly pointed out when I got back from school. I don’t reproach her for it, mind you, she was only trying to help, although she didn’t do it as well as she could have. But, parents make mistakes, and that’s okay.

Everything was okay. At least for a while. One day everyone around me began engulfing me and condensing me until I was nothing bigger than the dot at the end of this sentence. My wings were torn and I couldn’t fly, but I was so unnoticeable that no butterfly ever saw me bleed, or heard my veiled cries for help. I searched my tree for someone to hold me and turn me back into the silly girl with the bucket on her head. But moths are not what people kiss in fairytales.

I wasn’t fairytale material. My body was tattooed with the words I never managed to speak, red ink decorating my skin and dripping on the floor. Hidden by my jeans and sweatshirts, I walked behind the champions. Their unused words became my foundation and I built my fortress out of prose and poetry hidden beneath my bed.

Yet… I couldn’t shine the way I wanted to. Even in the days when I had a big fuel supply, I would burn through it quickly, leaving me with no energy to use by midday. I became used to my thoughts aching and my smile straining; I became addicted to the numbness that had installed itself in my bones. And if I looked back, I thought: “Who the hell have I become?”

Mostly I wanted to die. I thought that if I did I could get a new slate. Maybe even a new carving tool that would make my results even better, but a frog taught me that the tool used does not affect the artwork, rather the skill of the artist behind it. Eventually, I got my clean start. I managed to smooth out the surface of my previous experiences and even if some bumps were still in there, I could still start anew. Although, as it can be expected, I carved the same words I did before, making the grooves deeper and darker. I kept falling back into my regular pattern.

Nothing and no one could help me. Those who tried would get tired and leave after a while. Because of this, I started to give up on myself. I didn’t care about what I ate or what I did, I stopped believing I could become the sun. I let myself die little by little, my body becoming a canvas where I cut out the numbness.

Instead of something beautiful I was just shredded paper, a sight so typical no one really stopped to see what the paper was of. But one day I found myself taped up and floating in the words a person said to me. I didn’t want to believe it and doubted his intentions, but something about the way he smiled, hurt and hopeful, made me want to open up to him, as he did to me. Our time together was not as long as we would have liked, but when it was over I looked at myself and saw pieces of that boy that had stuck onto me. When he left, he gave me a new mirror that I believed to be magical. I could see the different hues of emotions coloring my body and the pockets where I stored the instances in which I grew. The red had started to fade already and my skin looked like the child of gold and copper.

The mirror had some flaws, like everything does. Sometimes my plain-self dulled my true reflection and my tattoos started to crawl up my thighs and my hands once again. These days were not as occasional as I would like, in fact, they happened quite often and there were days in which I would just lie down and let the pain shadow the rest of my senses.

As I regained my hearing and my eyesight I caught glimmers of things I hadn’t noticed before. Like the complicated canyons that decorated my hands, the extra seconds a person would look at me wondering what my name was, or the ways people phrase their thoughts, all of them structuring their sentences differently. And although those moments didn’t last very long, they were enough to make me realize how wrong I had been about me, about others.

Nothing is simple.

The leaves falling onto the ground have all gone through chemical changes that will allow them to become the red lips of a woman kissing the earth. Their falling follows a waltz directed by the wind who playfully changes the melody the moment we think have got the tune and can join the ballroom guests.

That feather you found as a child is a crucial component to a bird’s freedom, carefully crafted by smaller feathers made of much smaller feathers. That feather will soon be replaced, but an exact copy will never be made.

My skin is not brown and green. It is trillions of cells that cover my veins and are so thin that even thousands of layers of them still create a slightly translucent skin. It pains me to think of what harm I have put them through.

And finally, my eyes aren’t   brown. They are the color of honey and cinnamon, all mixed together and warmed up for a person with a sore throat. They are the roots of a tree that is being replanted. They are the nose of a puppy sniffing the wet soil for the first time. And they are my very own landscapes that you can look into and see something different every day.

Some people have told me I am over-thinking these things. They tell me to tone it down because “it is weird”. But these people are the ones we should avoid. The people that want us to be simple and fit snugly with what makes them comfortable. No oddly shaped thoughts, everyone must be a circle, a square, or a triangle. Everyone must fit in blue, green, brown, or grey.

I detached from this thinking.

Because I realized

We are not as simple as they want us to think.

 

 

I might even sport my bucket again.

Author's Note

My native language is not English, if there are any grammatical errors, please let me know so I can learn more

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

I don't say "wow!" or "amazing!" very often, but those words are definitely called for here. And let me tell you--you could school at least half the native English-speakers on this site in the proper use of the language. Seriously, I'm very impressed. As for errors, I saw one sentence in which you left the word "the" out twice.