Feeling: sleepy
Listening to: Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words
Reading/Watching: nothing

For the Ampersand project (and also a topic of conversation last night): We Are the Dead.

I have been many different people in my life, searching to find which skin fits me best. They say each of us only gets one life to live, but I don't agree. I'm exploring my options, and this life I lead now wants nothing to do with that which I've been before.

As a child, I was fearless. Bolstered by a loving family and a frightening amount of confidence in my own charm, I would smile brightly at strangers and strike up conversations with grocery store clerks to get them to carry a watermelon across the store for me. My mom half-joked that I would walk off with Godzilla if he asked, chatting like great friends. This lasted until I was 8 or 9, and changed schools into a larger, wealthier elementary, where I had no friends, and was looked down upon for wearing off-brand jeans and never having the latest slap bracelet or treasure troll to bring to school.

I once was a fearless child, but being sent to third and fourth grade as a pudgy frizzball with buck teeth on the cusp of puberty was disastrous. I had never learned to fight, because there had been no need, and so I couldn't fight back. When people insulted me, I took it to heart. The fearless child I once was died, huddled behind a shell of tears and bravado.

The changeling that took over was a coward. She ran away when people said hurtful things, which naturally encouraged them to say more. She walked around the edge of the playground alone, singing to herself, running away when other kids would tell her to shut up, stop showing off, quit crying you big fat baby. She wrote stories in her spare time, about characters that were bigger, stronger, prettier, and never let a crowd of cruel fourth-graders shout them down.

She lived in me for years, losing all confidence in herself or other people, and began to think about what it would be like if she never had to go to school again. Began to think about death, about whether it hurt as much as people said, whether it was true that Jesus took all children immediately up to heaven, or whether it was true that people who committed suicide would indeed go straight to hell.

She tried to find out. She failed. She could not kill the shell in which she was imprisoned, the awkward, hideous pre-teen she became. But at the age of fourteen, she was destroyed. I could no longer walk around with this self-destructive beast under my skin. I killed her, and started to live.

It was precarious at first, learning that people sometimes meant it when they said something nice, learning that sometimes doing something well wasn't showing off, wasn't begging for attention, wasn't cause for shame or embarrassment. I began to take pride in myself again, realizing that when people insulted me, it was often because something was wrong with them, and not me.

I feel like highschool was one long cocoon. I wove it around myself, a protective covering, and began to plan what life would be like once I broke out of it. I wasn't sure how, or when, or even if it was possible, but I knew that there had to be something that made people beautiful, more than construction of blood and bone. I determined to make myself into the person I always watched with envy- someone who held her shoulders straight, who spoke loudly, who walked boldly, who stood in front of a crowd of strangers and sang, who delivered a joke in ringing tones and listened to people's appreciative laugher, instead of whispering it and giggling to herself. The only flaw was that I wasn't there yet, and I wasn't sure how to get there. I went about it a lot of wrong ways before I figured it out, including trying to bend myself to fit everyone's expectations, putting on a different face to please whoever I was talking to, and several desperate attempts to lose weight that usually backfired.

Now I am here. I kinda like this life. I am most of the things I always wanted to be, even though sometimes past lives peek through my eyes and whisper things I wish forgotten. But life is good. Life is good because I wake up in the morning and don't wish I hadn't. Life is good because I want it, instead of its alternative.

I am no longer the bright-eyed, fearless child. I am no longer the frightened, worthless pre-teen. I am no longer the striving, starving teenager. They are the dead, and I am the phoenix from their ashes, flawed but flying.

Counting down through my nine lives... eventually I will find one that satisfies me.

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