Anyone But Me

the most important thing to be as a woman is beautiful. this is what the patriarchy has given us. stripped us of our humanness and confined us to an image. to a thing for its hearty consumption. 

…

for as long as i can remember, i have hated my body. it has never felt like home. it has never felt like mine. i was eleven years old when it started to reject me. that was the year i began junior high and became aware of my sex. aware of my politics as a woman. or, lack thereof. i had gotten my first period, my first training bra, and my first real crush. on paper i was becoming a woman, but my body retained its boyish shape. 

i kept a very thin frame well into adulthood. i didn’t fill out in the right places like my friends did in the high school locker room, and i would often get teased about it from friends and bullies alike. the constant reminder that something was wrong with my body was world shattering to say the least. out of a feverish need to be thought of as beautiful and desirable, i began putting socks in my bra and getting changed in private stalls. i was ashamed of my body. some days i wouldn’t even face it in the mirror.

i used to pray to the Creator to fix me. to make me into something i could be proud of. something i could look in the eye and call my own. i wanted to feel justified in my existence. but i never did. i was at war with myself, constantly. i wish i could say it was the bullies who broke me. who made me hate the body i inhabited. who made me regret the skin that dressed my bones. but in the end, it was me. i had the sharpest tongue for the parts of me that i thought were ugly. 

and it’s extremely hard to be with a person who doesn’t like themself. someone who doesn’t believe in their worth. i mourn the hearts of past lovers who’ve found bitterness where they expected something sweet. something like the juice of a grapefruit. they deserved more. but the woman i was, was always at odds with the woman i wanted to be. and she had a grip on me. whenever i tried to let go, she just held on tighter.  

it’s no wonder why i struggle with intimacy. why i require those around me to keep their distance. i fear they’ll see what i see. the ugly. most people don’t really know me. they’re only enamored by the girl i pretend to be. some have written love letters for her and whispered her name into crimson sunsets. some have held her hand and stepped into a dream. some have kissed her lips and thought about how forever wasn’t long enough. none have undressed her to see that which lies underneath. that which i’ve kept carefully tucked away. 

***

in the final stages of our relationship, E. admitted that he felt like he didn’t know me. he said that there had been an opening somewhere along the 5 month mark, where he thought we might go deep, but it vanished just as quickly as it unveiled itself. and we remained there, above the surface, pretending. this is the part of our union i like to omit. 

E. cheated on me a few times throughout our 2 year run. but that wasn’t why we split. i was willing to forgive his mistakes. my ego had been badly bruised and the only way i knew to fix it was to return my possession to its rightful throne. E. was mine. and i was prepared to have him, regardless. you can imagine the brick in my stomach when he told me he wanted to call it quits. 

i tried with E… i really did. but truthfully, i never felt like i was good enough for him. E. was conventionally beautiful. the kind of man people smiled at in the streets. he was tall and athletic, and had bedroom eyes. women perked up when he looked their way. he could have almost anyone he desired, and that exacerbated my insecurities. i would often compare myself to the women he knew and the ones he didn’t. they were always prettier than me. and though i never showed it, i became extremely resentful to the man i was claiming to love. 

yet i wanted nothing more than to please him. i tried to be the kind of woman he could be proud of. the woman he never spoke of but salivated at when he thought i wasn’t looking. the woman with a porcelain face and hourglass figure, who brought him to his peak just by looking at him. the woman his friends fantasized about. the woman that made him feel like a man. 

and so i developed this strange obsession with the male gaze. it didn’t matter that i was smart or kind, or super fucking talented if men didn’t think i was fuckable. if E. didn’t want me in the very primal way that a man wants a woman. so i began putting all of my effort into seducing his attention. 

it’s an ugly thing, seeking your partner’s validation. but that was the only way i knew to grapple with the insecurities. with the jealousy. if he thought someone was pretty, i’d be prettier. if he thought someone was funny, i’d tell a better joke. if he thought someone cared about him, i’d care more. that’s how i ended up routinely breaking night my senior year of college, rewriting his term papers. “you’re a writer”, he’d say, “this stuff is easy for you.” and though my brain would be fried after, i was delirious with joy that i was needed in such a way. 

but the ego always wanted more. and so nothing i did ever made me feel good. i’d experience spurts of really intense highs followed by shameful lows. i couldn’t separate the two realities, and it made me angry. not in the typical way, flushed cheeks and callous words. but in a quiet way that created space between us and filled it with suspicion. i could never figure out why the highs were so fleeting, yet the lows seemed to linger. we were in this relationship together, with daggers in our chest. pretending to not know it. the worst part about it? i was intent on keeping up the charade. i’d had a lot of practice.  

***

so much is lost in the pursuit of beauty. i’ve lost friendships to it. i’ve lost time. i’ve lost myself. trying to be this thing. beautiful. and if i wasn’t this thing. if i couldn’t be it, well, then there was no reason to go on living. 

you see, there’s this power given to a woman when the world says she’s beautiful. life opens up and she’s rewarded for the way her anatomy is arranged. the arc of her nose, the roundness of her lips, the hue of her skin. the texture of her hair, the size of her ass, chest, and waist. if you look like that, like how they say a woman should look, then you’ve won the lottery.

and so beauty becomes survival. some of us would do anything to be beautiful. some of us would cut ourselves open and split our bodies right down the middle if it meant beauty could be ours. 

but beauty is a thing that’s always left me feeling empty. a thing that separates me from myself. separates me from true love.  

i don’t want to be beautiful. i want to be free.