I have considered calling this entry "The Skin Under My Nailbeds".
It is not with the intention to make your own skin crawl, but with the intention to try to make you even fathom what it is like to want to start over. But this time starting over is not the clean slate mentality, but the one where my body needs to change as well.
I don't want this thing. I don't want to feel these skin pads on my fingers press these keys on this keyboard. I don't want to rub these lips together, I don't want to feel this hair curl and lay against my neck. I want a refund.
Insecurities are poisonous; they are mandatorily there, and almost all the time they cause a human to experience defeat. It is often said that a person can't do something because of what their physical attributes encompass. I can't run that fast my legs are too short and I'm out of shape, I can't wear that because of my stomach, maybe even I'm too tired my body feels like it's going to collapse has become an excuse as well. It's healthy to admit limitations, but why?
Why can't I be the epitome of the being that I want to be in this lifetime? It's something you work for too and I know it is impossible to have preferences on your own body, but if I can't then why can anyone else? I myself am constantly labeled due to what I look like. I'm too this, I'm too that, it's hardly ever where have you been and how are you feeling.
My body has been through enough. I always discuss my brain, but can we talk about something that people can't change as much as they'd want? My insecurities, or uncertainties, rooted with the disliking of my body. It's deeper than not liking the color of my hair or the size of my feet, it's resenting where my hair and feet, among the rest of my body, has been. My skin feels overused, dirty, not ready to endure what is has to as life goes on.
It's always been a relief to pretend to be someone else. I mean, my high school drama club offered me an opportunity to be someone I'm not. Someone who's possibly happier, freer, knows what they want. And that's what I have always felt that I needed. To feel the way someone else feels.
Something else that is impossible is feeling like somebody else can love this skin. This foreign skin, that is not theirs, that isn't something with a purpose or that isn't valued. Why take the time of your day to see this skin and not disregard or hate it just as much as the person in it? There have been people in my life that have left this thought burst through the concreted walls it was placed in; that had allowed me to use these lungs and not always feel like they're collapsing. But their love or adoration for it, was temporary or had vanished altogether. Believe me when I say that it hasn't always been their fault, but they decided to disregard me because I had disregarded myself. Or they had liked me for me in the first place.
Another thing that I've taken into account is feeling like somebody else. And I love the feeling mostly, but to not get the same from another human always leaves me empty. It's hard to find or to allow people to put you light years ahead of them, and it's easy to crumble the moment someone even compliments you without you making a strenuous amount of effort. I don't want to say I regret being compared to somebody, because I do not, but this particular instance hit me. Like a passionate linebacker in American football, the wind was knocked out of me and that's awfully dramatic of me, but awfully true and it's sad that I'm not very embarrassed about it even now.
I had a complicated person in my life, who was bringing up all kinds of excuses and just throwing their faults at me, and the minute I had not comforted them, they misconstrued them and acted like it was my fault that I didn't want to be used anymore. They mentioned a person in their life who I "resembled", or maybe I resembled what the person used to be, because the culprit had made the excuse of being caught up in me and my life because I had mirrored their person they had mentioned. That I was a repeat; they had kindly admitted that I was a rebound. That's where the linebacker had drove into me.
I wasn't Aaliyah to them. I was someone else.
They had stapled the shoes of someone else onto my feet, and the minute that I had protested that, the minute that I had came back up for air, they had said that I misinterpreted it. But there was no going back. My body had already experienced that, my heart was already heavy. And all I wanted to do was scratch. Rub, scratch, pull, freaking erase. This skin didn't need that, my skin doesn't need another person to love it and then leave. My skin doesn't need another addiction and then to quit cold turkey. My nose doesn't need another scent to feel comforted by, and then for the scent to remind it of a time I hadn't wanted to even consider the occurrence of.
It takes a millisecond to be belittled and conquered, and a lifetime to be built and worshipped.
I want you to put yourself first. To lotion your skin, let people hug it and love it, but don't have a dependency. I want you to put that skin first. Th1s 1s My Sk1n. The minute it becomes someone else's is the minute I have failed. You are a priority, and the relationships (every kind, not just romantic) that you acquire don't make up the skin cells on your bones. Your bones might've endured a lot, but baby please don't think for a second that you want a refund, like I had said.
You are number 1, and if you need someone to remind you of that, look in the mirror. Rub your lips, wiggle your nose, wrinkle the corners of your eyes and take in the beauty of that smile that you have gotten complimented on.
You need this body, this one is for life. Take care of it, in your own way!
[The photo used is one of my legs, in a bathtub. I have decided to use this one, because for one it is intimate, but a common thing for girls like me to post. It shows a part of me that I am definitely hesitant about; I don't like my legs, but that's not new. It shows the tender parts of my legs, including my atrocious thighs and the back of my knees. My feet, which come with common insecurities because feet are simply feet. It's just a picture with a bunch of underlying meanings, ones that in all honesty probably shouldn't be there. But it is very much me, it sums up my summers, and the need to probably keep the faucet running because the water is at an unreasonably low level. I'm just contently lonely, and that is how I was in this picture.]