Letter To Myself At Age Twenty

At age six,
you were chubby- cheeked and full of love.
Boys thought you were cute.
Your best friend,
A chubby Mexican girl
Who liked every single snack you brought in Kindergarten.
You wore glasses
Had a crossbite
Pawpaw Dan called you "Honeysuckle."

At age twelve,
the boys who used to like you called you "ugly."
You were the smallest girl in your class.
You had long, brown hair,
High cheekbones
Full, defined lips.
Self- esteem the size of a ladybug.

At age thirteen,
all the girls in your class were developing breasts.
Your mother shamed you for your skin,
Growing acne,
Blooming on your face like poppies in the fields of Iran.
You wore two bras everyday to school.
You thought you were fat because of a joke your brother made,
Etching into your brain,
Because you loved and trusted him,
You didn't believe he would ever lie to you.
You found out he had been lying the night you undressed in front of your mirror.
You turned your torso,
Your spine, overexposed,
Sticking out like it would jump out of your body at any moment.
You cried yourself to sleep that night.
You were crying yourself to sleep a lot around this time,
But you weren't so sure why.

At age fourteen,
you were short- hair,
Black eyeliner,
Combat boots,
Ripped jeans,
Bands who screamed what they wanted to say,
And a Punk attitude,
Before you even knew what a Punk was.
Your earliest metanoia.
Sneaking out of your bedroom window.
Kissing Tiffany in the girls' bathroom at gym.
Getting high with Brittany on the weekends.
Early Feminist in a little girl's body.
But, Kid,
You didn't know shit.

At age sixteen,
a boy you liked kissed you for the first time.
Holding hands in his truck.
Smoking weed at his best friend's house through tinfoil.
When he took your virginity,
It took you a almost a year after he broke up with you to admit
You never said "yes" to him.

At age seventeen,
you were in love with a boy with blue eyes and long hair.
After the first time he called you a "bitch,"
You understood how bad your self- worth was.
And you stayed,
Because you didn't think you deserved better.

At age nineteen,
you broke up with that boy with the long hair
And the sharp tongue.
After having it drilled into your head that you weren't worthy of love
Or confidence,
You started accepting it, from anyone who would offer it to you.
You didn't care about names.
They say there's something that happens to people who get hurt.
Something crazy in them.
You started sleeping around.
It started with a drunken mistake.
You didn't tell him "yes," either.
More and more after that,
Because you knew what happens when you said "no."
Not long after that,
You tried to take your Life.
You opened the skin on your arms
On the bathroom floor of the apartment you lived in with your two best friends.
There is something surreal and awful about hearing your best friend screaming your name in panic.

At age twenty,
you've kicked a hell of a lot of people out of your Life.
You don't look boys in the face.
You walk like thunder.
Your tongue knows kindness
And it knows malice,
And it knows that using the latter doesn't make progress.
You're learning that "beautiful"
Doesn't need to be seen.
You do not need it from a boy's mouth.
You don't need it texted it to you at 2am from a belly full of booze.
It will come from you.
You are consistently evolving.
There is no permanence in your twenties.
Beauty can shine on your arms.
You can wear it on your sleeve.
You can see it on the horizon at Bellah Mine, where your friends take you swimming.
You can see it when your cousin, Ember, laughs from her belly,
Because she's come so far, and she is so much stronger than she knows.
Your mother did not birth you into this World like stars colliding in our Universe,
So you could hate and destroy yourself.
Because if you never learn how you are beautiful,
How is everyone else going to see it?