Do You Know What I Look Like?

I wonder… do you think about what I look like? Beyond the girly smiles and ambient green eyes, I mean. Would you care how I actually looked?

Personally, I don’t actually know what I really look like, but I know it’s not just a pretty face with a bubbly giggle and sheer facade of optimism. But I have a pretty good idea. I can picture a pale scrap of bones and anxiety; eyes having been removed from their sockets to reveal empty voids, my tongue tied up and twisted into a bunny-eared bow. My ears are way too big for my head, almost the size of tennis rackets, picking up every little noise, accept for what I’m actually supposed to be listening to.

My skin is covered in bleeding gashes and boils, each one ready to tear open and let loose a mosh of horror and abhorrence for this form, the external form, how others really think of me. You can’t see my brain as it wails and screams bad jokes and awful attempts to connect with people. But the wailing stops when it sees you.

I have this fingers that are half the size of normal fingers, constantly reaching out to make it, but I keep missing my mark. I always seem to miss my mark -- especially when it comes to you. You can’t see my teeny tiny legs and super fat feet trying desperately to keep up with what everybody else is doing: keep your figure, always be smiling, don’t say the wrong thing, don’t let them think you’re weak.

You can’t see how weak I really am, but I can see how strong you really are. Strong, feral, confident, with a shining smile and the kindest eyes, and the ability to make me hang on every single word you say. I can see you as the Hercules of the millennials. Meanwhile, I’m more like Phil if anything.

I sit on the kitchen floor as I write this; and if I smoked I would have an ashtray sitting next to me. That would be the visual aesthetic and that is what I've chosen to draw here. This portrait I've drawn is straight personification, but that is not what I look like. This beautiful, mysterious woman who sits on the floor and smokes away her problems is the idealized image of who I could be... maybe want to be? Maybe I want to be more eloquent than I am? Maybe I want to be a red hot (or blue) mess that people hope that they can save? Well, I sort of am a mess already, I just don't share it often with you. As opposed to letting you in I'll hide behind my humor and confidence and sarcastic honesty instead of being brutally honest with you about myself.

I’m so glad you can’t see what I actually look like… but at the same time, I wish you could. Just so that I could know that you actually like me. Want me. Care about me. Because this is not some fairy-tale where you kiss a frog and they turn into a princess… or a perfect person. I think the idea is that I’m not perfect, I’m fucked up, and I’ve got a story, and I’m not sure you’ll like it. You may even hate what I really look like. I think you may just. Either way, I’m not brave enough to show you, not yet. I just want to pretend for a minute that you’re Hercules, and I’m Meg, and Hades would just fuck off and let us live in this twisted fairy-tale I’ve created of you and I.