greasy fingerprints

every time that i write something on this dad-gum thing i always title it with whatever is coming into my head at the time. thats a lie. i don't. but tonight i did so let's let all that lie be a truth for just tonight.

i just want to molt. i have this skin-crinkling, itching, metamorphic desire to reach down and peel away all the ashy, sticky film that has accumulated on my body and soul in the last few years. or really since i was born. not that i can remember that far. by the way i think that it's silly if people say that they can remember the moment they were born, i think that they are lying. nobody can remember that. anyways. i do. i have this utterly inexplicable desire to just burst, to erupt--but in the most delicate, beautiful, chrysalis-exploding kind of way. but i don't know what im going to become or what's going to happen when i do burst out of my cocoon, when i shed this dirty, melted plastic from my body and wiggle out. and even worse, i don't know what the old skin looks like--sometimes i do--i can see the tendencies, the jealousy, the self-consciousness, the quick anger, the anvil on my chest, but other days it just blends in and decides to melt itself into some sort of invisible presence that clings to my body and can't be seen--it's almost parasitic.

i swear i'm not doing drugs in new york. it's just. i don't know. i have this picture of who i want to become in my head--of who i wish i was--who i can be. i still can't figure out if that's wrong. i mean, i want to be this radiating woman, content in who she is and how she is, braving every day with a vigor and a fire that's so ethereal and eternal and otherworldly--i want to be free. and yet, i hold myself back. i can't go outside without wearing a tanktop underneath my shirt. i have to have layers. kym tried to make me go without it and i couldn't. there is no way. and i don't know why. i can't do it. i can't bear to feel the fabric wrinkling and rubbing up against my skin. i can't feel protected if i don't have my under-armor on guarding whatever figure's underneath against the judgement of passerbys. i can't bear to look and see the indention of my belly button against my shirt or the fear of my less than toned mid-section making its way to be seen through dresses or sneaking into wrinkles when i sit down. this has to stop. i have to stop this nonsensical mindset and behavior. i keep asking myself--how does a woman become beautiful? is she born that way--some, yes and i find myself wanting--which is such a lie that satan puts in my head. does it come from a woman finding that she herself is a beauty, is indeed full of beauty and made from it and in that sense wshe can be nothing but beautiful? do beautiful women hold their heads high on a street next to woman with 20 inch weists and 6inch pumps and clinging dresses? yes. i think so. there is something to be seen in a woman who knows who she is and doesn't have to apply a dab of makeup or jewelry in order to be beautiful. not just to herself, but in radiation. does that make sense? maybe. i just don't know what this beauty is, i know the source, but for some reason it still eludes me.

give it up jessika. there are so may more beautiful and complex and lovely and delightful things to be thinking about than clothes, or weight, or male attention, or masks of beauty.

look at flowers, look at crooked baby teeth wandering around inside a child's gurgling mouth. look at old couples, look at exhausted mothers of three. look at the people who choose to walk slowly and see and smell everything around them. look at the women who sit on their stoop in their nightgowns. look for those that are sleeping in public. look at eyes, irises, pupils. there is beauty. there it is. even if just a momentary glimpse.