November 7 - Blue lips, blue veins. (Written January, 2011)

I used to do this thing when I was younger, where every time someone would compliment me, I would counter it with some statement that opposed what they’d just said. If someone told me they loved my hair, I’d immediately say something like, “It’s so flat and dull.” If someone said they thought I looked so skinny that day, I’d tell them, “Are you kidding? I look like a cow.”

My family always used to tell me I had beautiful hands. My dad especially, he’d hold up my hands to the light coming in our living room windows and tell me I had such beautiful hands. I always told him, “No. I have man hands. I hate them.”

I just thought that’s what you were supposed to do if you were a girl. I’d never met a girl who didn’t do that. I thought that if I accepted their compliments, it would mean I agreed with them, and I thought that would make me conceited. I thought I was supposed to brush off people’s compliments because I didn’t think any of them were true.

It just seemed like if a girl thought she was ugly, everyone always rushed to convince her of otherwise. They would say it was so sad that she couldn’t see what was right in front of her. But, if the girl knew exactly how beautiful she was, she was full of herself. She was conceited. People would purposely try to bring her down. There was no right answer, no right way to act.

But you know what? Fuck that. Fuck it.

I have beautiful hands.