the pretty dresses

I always drew the pretty dresses because those were never the ones I had. I drew the pretty girls because my face was so plain, and clothed my barbies in scant promiscuous clothing made of stupid stapled felt because I never could find the courage to venture outside my baggy masculine pants. I wanted so badly to wear red because that was forbidden, even after I'd received a bright pink hand and a sour tongue, the result of painful soapy scrubbing of both fingernails and mouth. I drew charming princes taking blushing girls' hands because I couldn't open my mouth around boys, and girls with bright hopeful eyes because mine were dim and cloudy. I always drew the pretty dresses because those were never the ones I had, and I always drew the smiling girls because I was always crying.

In the sand I drew the figures of laughing children, as that was all I saw around me at recess... The stick people disappeared twice a day when the whistle blew and my school mates drug their running footsteps across the sand to get to the teacher. I drew the figures and my fingernails gathered dirt and my mother, oblivious to my pitiful state of lonesomeness, merely sighed. I sat by the kitchen sink, knees bent on the metal frame of a chair as she stood over me, gently dipping my hands into a tub of hot water. At least it didn't hurt this time, I thought, recalling the red nail polish incident, closing my hand tight into a fist in the water. She said, "it looks like you've been playing in the dirt all day..." as of course I had been, always drawing the smiling school children. At least it didn't hurt, I thought again, eyes closing around my tears.

At least this doesn't hurt.

It didn't hurt all the way through elementary school when the boys called me names and pulled at my baggy clothes. It didn't hurt come junior high, when my leg pants got too short on me and I pulled my arms tighter around myself. It didn't hurt when I passed the nail polish I couldn't own or the pretty dresses I couldn't swirl around in or the makeup I couldn't wear in the store front windows on my way home from school, not hurting even more when my face started to break out in horrible pimples that I couldn't hide, that of course defined me as a person, not worthy of the time of the beautiful people in my drawings. It didn't even hurt the day my mother cried because my nieces and nephews were being taken away from their mom. Of course it didn't hurt when I broke down in the shower, crying because my mother was supposed to be strong god damnit she wasn't allowed to cry. Not when my tears that I couldn't stop were indistinguishable from the water on the wall, and not when I wrote a note to God begging him to kill me. Of course it didn't hurt when I found the blade, when I sliced open my skin and further, the blood dripping down the tile wall. When the water accompanied and it swirled soft into the hot, wet drain. it didn't hurt when I realized the pretty dresses wouldn't cover up the scars on my wrists, nor when I realized I would never wear them. The pretty dresses were in my head and now they were fading because I no longer cared about them. I didn't need them. I had the beautiful red I had wanted instead... It had been inside of me all along.