Skip to main content

Scout on Maturity/Broken Glass

 

On the other side of the glass, I see the perfect version of myself. She walks with a skip in her step, and nothing about herself keeps her up at night or down in the morning. Everyone she knows loves her, and she finds a way to love them back. She has everything, she is everything, and her confidence is unwavering. The days behind the glass are long because they’re spent clawing at myself until I bleed. Why can’t you feel like them, love them like them, be loved like them? I hate when my reflection is too clear, when those eyes look as if they’ve rejected the idea of happiness. The glass breaks. At the shift of my image, I get angry with myself. You, in all your light and life and experience, sit here digging holes through yourself because you don’t fit a perfect mold? You sit here hating the color of your skin, your eyes, your hair, your body, your face, when you have everything to be grateful for?

The wall shatters onto me, destroying the person that I ruthlessly despised, and gives me real wounds to hate. Now, I wish I had what I lost. The grounds that I stand on feel golden when compared to the rumbling stones halfway across the planet. Through my phone, I feel their pain and feed my guilt. Is this who I have become, a shadow of self-loathing so distant from real problems? In my dreams, they tell me not to forget them. They tell me that even though I ignore the news of their death and try to erase my responsibility, it will stay there forever. There is no more glass, and the two versions of myself become three. The present chases the ignorant bliss of the past, and the deluded impact of the future. All of them are equally flawed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scout on Cycles/Without Fail

      And so I return, back to the black and white letters and the soft clacking of the keyboard. I return after the rejection of my fragility, knowing now that the escape is temporary. How can I find meaning in this obscure trouble? How can I continue to be angry at the fleeting wind? When all is said in done, I sit in crowded rooms alone and listen to phones ring without an answer. I look around only to count how many people have run from me, mistreated me, and spit on my name. Shallow walls swallow me in whenever I walk, cloudy air consumes my sentences whenever I speak. That pit in my stomach doesn’t leave because it is my soul; broken, abused, self-pitying, and pathetic, but still my soul. It and I long for the day that it will be free to find its purpose. Today, I watched the breeze shuffle through the leaves, and I remembered the days when I would stare up at it and wonder if it was all the same. Every road had trees almost exactly alike, which I learned from...
1 comment
Read more

Scout on Knowing/Tamo

  Tamo had hair that stuck up like it was animated, and probably the biggest eyes that I had ever seen. He used to cry almost every day, and just as often, I would get frustrated. Shouldn’t a six-year-old be past this stage? I wanted him to apply himself, to use the intelligence he clearly had. I taught him and the other seven or eight kids alone for almost a month, and eventually, the crying stopped. I told myself that it was I who had gotten him here, and my efforts had a true effect on him. There I was, feeling so proud about how good he was doing, when he went and started crying again. It hurt me when the waterworks came, and he wouldn’t explain why, just stare at me for periods as if he had something to say. I would ask what’s wrong, and he would shake his head, and I couldn’t do anything to get him back to his seat. Today was different, though; he hardly had any energy to cry. He lay on the floor, watching me again, but something had changed. No matter what teacher or parent ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scout on Trying/Mud

  The mud was the first sign. It was freezing outside, and I couldn’t find my gloves, so I tried to push the ice away from my car with my bare hands. They were numb, but it felt good. I was told my car would have trouble because of the ice, but it was the mud that kept swallowing it back into the ditch. I think that sums up maturing pretty well because what people tell you will be a problem almost never is. The ‘virtues’ of life come in as Trojan horses, and I naively let them in with an open heart and a blank mind. My mind was blank then, too, when I was pressing the gas as hard as I could, and instead of moving, I was treated with the fine smell of gas and burnt rubber. They told me to get rid of the mud so I could get out, but I couldn’t get rid of the mud unless the car got out. I was met with the same paradox that my therapist had presented me with: to become happy, you must practice the things you love, but I could only practice the things I loved once I was happy. Eventual...
Post a Comment
Read more