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Usernamemsprima
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an amateur artist and independent journalist. i love pink and hate humidity.
AND I INHALE: A MINI-ESSAY
Jun 26, 2019 4 years agoAccording to my mother, on the twenty first day of September in a California hospital, I was born being strangled by my own umbilical cord. The cord was unraveled from my throat and I inhale. God, or whatever Her name is, gave me thick hair and a short, sturdy body. I lost my balance easily and got nauseous when I ate dairy but I'll tell you that myself since my family album only documents days on the beach and trips to the school bus. I hurt myself on my way off the staircase, ruined my nice new leggings and pretty hair as I tumble and bleed all over the only home I've ever known. I checked myself for bruises, I sucked the air through my teeth, and I inhale. I wanted an ass and hips and the kind of underwear that would make girls hate me-that they did. I wanted breasts and the kind of shirts that wouldn't properly accommodate them-that I did. I wanted to be on the cheer leading team, then track, and then maybe gymnastics but my plump thighs and small feet that had grown fatigued from years of sitting with poor posture in front of the television said dancing was my only option. Not Zumba, that didn't exist yet, but small community centers with wooden walls and nice women. Here I could outshine girls my age for an hour but never give them a second glance by the time our school lunch started. My friends forgot about me on the playground and I cried on the edge of the sandbox where my classmates would stop and ask me if I was okay. They checked for injuries I couldn't explain. I went back to class with puffy eyes and a wet nose and I inhale. When I gave up on wanting to be beautiful, I instead dedicated myself to art-wrote stories on the family computer, read books twice my size, could write better than I could speak, practiced drawing breasts on graph paper. I created a fashion label in my sketchbooks and learned to hate my body enough to know I could never wear any of it myself. I threw away all the clothes that didn't fit me anymore and I inhale. By age ten I was seeing dermatologists and by age twelve I was seeing psychiatrists. By age sixteen I was measuring the steepness of my high school staircase and gave myself a free trial of bulimia in my high school bathroom. By age seventeen I misplaced my graduation cap but could always find my fast food uniform because even I knew money was more important than education. I thought about cutting my hand off with a pair of sheers in the deep freezer and I inhale. By age eighteen I was seeing my mother in the dim lighting of the bedroom she shared with my new father. Here we talked about colleges I would never go to and a car I couldn't drive. By age twenty I stopped putting kitchen knives under my bed because I knew my words could cut me better. I downed the expired medication in the back of my drawer and I inhale. By age twenty one I awoke with my hands around my throat and yet I still wonder why I haven't taught myself how to breathe.
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