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

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...

Scout on Standards/Thursday

  I don’t need their theme to play in the background. I don’t need to hear their whispers to know they speak about me. I don’t need to hear their footsteps to know they run from me. I don’t need anything. I can hear the tapping of the clock just fine, the drums just fine, the stomping just fine, the waves just fine. I don’t want to be able to read their lips or know the length of their stride. The drums are loud enough to drown out the sound of my ignorance. They asked me what I thought about love, and I told them I didn’t want it. Because the ones who told me they loved me whispered and ran and sang in the background of my misery. I heard their sultry piano on a long Wednesday afternoon. They drowned the clock, moving backward, and the drums blasting a Phil Collins song. I shook my head, hoping that my eardrums could come loose and my feet could plant roots immune to my temptations. The smooth solo drifted through the hardly open window, and I forgot what I did and didn’t need. I ...