Erasure

"yes
it is possible
to hate and love
someone
at the same time
i do it to myself
everyday"
- rupi kaur

~

For as long as I can remember, I have woken up with a face covered in white pimples. They crowd the creases of my nostrils and clutter themselves along my upper lip.

My eyes creak awake- the familiar blurry scenery there to drip me in new-morning haze. The left seam of my favorite boxer shorts has completely deteriorated, so my thigh and hip, soft in this fetal position, fall without barrier. The creases of my nose and the line of my upper lip are filled with tension. The pain is concentrated pressure, and if I run my tongue along my upper lip, I feel the pointed ridges of the pimples. I start my inner dialogue:

·      What if puss is actually cream cheese and I am #blessed to have a lifetime supply on my face?

·      Wait, what is puss?

·      Can I pop them by rapidly flashing smiles for a 2-minute sequence? (*tries 2 minute sequence*)

·      Counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.5 (?), 5, maybe 6? Fuck if I know.

·      What do I want to eat for lunch?

·      How many of them have conjoined…

·      ARE THEY WHITE OR THAT WEIRD GREEN CRUSTY COLOR

·      Do they glow in the dark? Serious question.

I sigh, no answers clear after all my fretting. I get up to go to the bathroom. When I look in the mirror, I see them. There they are: white lines like parentheses around my nostrils and ridges as quotation marks on the corners of my mouth. I’ve been daring myself lately. I look in the mirror and see how long I can last without changing anything on my body. I must admit, it is hard to look at myself without reaching to erase the ‘ugliness’. When I look in the mirror, I see my crooked bangs and the hair standing straight out at the nape of my neck. Watered-down mascara from last night’s face washing puddles under my eyes. I can taste my own breath. In my hole-ridden shirt, I see the long hairs that canvas the bone between my breasts. I crinkle my nose and the white parentheses elongate; when I hesitantly smile, the quotation marks raise parallel to my dimples.  

I admit that I don’t last long before changing something. I reach to pop my pimples first. The puss smears, and spot by spot my face begins to throb. I push my hair down. I brush my teeth, sometimes spitting out blood. I tug on a sweater to cover up the hair on my breastbone.

Most ‘self-love’ narratives- even when they attempt to defy the dominant, standard-setting frameworks (i.e. capitalism, white supremacy, the gender binary, Eurocentrism, cisherteronormativity)- still depend on the use of the word ‘beautiful’. Narratives promoting self-love work to reclaim the word ‘beautiful’, using it to attribute value to qualities that have been historically marginalized or deemed ‘ugly’. Re-conceptualizing what it means to be beautiful serves an important, radical purpose, but if I’m going to be honest, sometimes I don’t want to be beautiful.

I want to be seen.

Maybe ‘beautiful’ is not always an adequate term. I have memories of feeling beautiful, softly beautiful in both expected and unexpected moments, but not fully worthy. What if I told you my ugliness is worthy too? I must tell you that I am afraid to wake up next to someone because they may dismiss me as ugly before they really see me. I wish I could tell them: sometimes, I have rosy cheeks and white blemishes together, unedited.

When I grow up, I want to be bare. I must admit I wonder if I will be liked in my barest state. In this bareness, I would be seen by both you and myself, unwaveringly. If I could be bare, I would redefine what it means to be strong. When I am bare, my worthiness will need no justification because it will not have to be beautiful. It will be from me, and you will see me. You will know that my battle scars are in my eyes and that in my first childhood memory I am talking to trees and that I like the ragged, discolored skin on my left knee and that I sometimes believe in fate even when I am told not to and that I wish I was better at being kind. If you see me, you will know that I am not always kind.

You will know that even though I’d love to be seen, I have a habit of smiling after saying something sad. In this way, I try to erase the sad thing into something small. And, do you want to know a secret?

Sometimes being small is easier than being seen.