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by Angelina Nguyen
My name was pronounced
As a dissonance of four syllables
I was called a thousand titles
but only one mattered.
__________
I’ve grown increasingly aware of my mediocrity.
Sometimes I yearn to peel off my skin and slip out of my identity. Shatter my mirrors and break and break until art materializes from the glass fragments. Something about my reflection has gotten on my nerves recently- it’s a bitter aftertaste when I swallow the truth about myself. It’s not something I can digest- it is cold stones sedentary in my stomach, and sand in my throat.
Whenever I talk, I hate the sound of my voice. I was born without a zip on my mouth, but sometimes I run my fingers across my lips, wishing I could sew them shut. Puncture and thread them with strings of doubt. I was tired of my own sound. I was tired of gurgling the language of my people and coughing up its bloody memory of words I can no longer taste. I once thought my voice belonged to my mother and my father, but the chords had frayed and snapped, and I suddenly possessed a voice that belonged to nobody. Not even myself.
___________
The world called me wrong
Because I did not fit their standards
Because I didn’t fit them
And I changed to fit myself-
I would’ve liked to think
But in reality
Perhaps I had been playing into a lie
Puppeted by society’s claws
Under the guise that
It was all for me
But really I never did anything myself
Ever.
___________
I hate myself. My room is an artful display of my mental state. My mind is some place that I can live inside for hours. My thoughts are always my safety blanket. The world is always raucous and an agonizingly stimulating media to process. In a sense, the clothes tossed about the floors and the books rested on shelves and pillows thrown about were little capsules of time.
Clothes reminded me of a time I had cried on the floor, clutching a pair of white jeans I no longer could fit. When I look in mirrors, I appraise my body from every angle and every perspective. I lean in close, study the divots and blemishes, which spattered my flesh in ugly, raw marks. Peer at the way my hips dipped in hollow caves, every way my body bloomed and fell in all the ways I had been taught were wrong.
I had been taught many things, but I had not been taught how to love the imperfections, constricting and choking me.
Artwork by Angelina Nguyen
___________
I call myself a mistake,
because it was hard to believe that I wasn’t
My grades are sand slipping through
My fingers woodenly grasping
To maybe salvage something
But my hands were strangers to me
I’d forgotten
I’ve forgot
I forget
What did I once have that made me talented?
___________
There were the lies that I once delved myself in, all wrapped up in the name of passions. I was once a writer and now I can barely string together words that make sense. I was once an artist but now my hands can’t even hold a stylus. I was once a reader but now my mind is empty of alternate worlds I used to daydream about. I reveled in praise but now every compliment is eviscerated. Its mangled corpse is but a byproduct of what I once could do. I could write once. I could draw once. I could read once.
I wonder what it’s like to not be who I am, and I can't help but humor the thought.
When you strive for a greater goal, there is a bittersweet amalgamation of both inspiration and doubt and one's own capabilities. I have seen greater. There will always be greater. What was the point of pursuing something when you couldn’t achieve that level?
People have always been better than me. When you surround yourself with incredible people, it is a petty thing to feel inferior. I was, and still am petty. Then, I loathed myself, and I found myself abandoning a ship, which showed no signs of sinking.
Work. Work hard and you’ll achieve your goals. Work hard and it’ll pay off. Anything can be gained with hard work.
I never worked hard enough, spiraling in an abyss of self-pity. I hated myself for the things that I couldn’t change but hating myself for the things that I could was my biggest crime. I fabricated beautiful lies about the world that were pitiful, lusting for justification. What crimson fire once blazed in my heart were nothing but gray embers, and all that left in my chest were cauterized wounds.
___________
I want to forgive you
For every crime
For every sin
For every sorrow
You have committed
Against yourself.
___________
It doesn’t come easy-the forgiving. Learning to forgive myself for everything I had pushed away. I forgave myself for all the meals I missed. All the time I spent away from my hobbies. All the people that I kept at arm’s length.
I’m still forgiving myself to this day, stitching my wounds closed in a gingerly fashion. My burns will heal, and my scars will lighten, and I slowly learn to repent.